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It's ironic that this effort is trying to get gamers to buy Steam Machines when gamers already have machines far more powerful than the ones launched. Valve wil
by javipas 11y ago
It's ironic that this effort is trying to get gamers to buy Steam Machines when gamers already have machines far more powerful than the ones launched. Valve will have a big problem if they want to convince traditional console gamers. Which are the benefits for them if the cost is bigger? It seems TCO is good on Steam Machines on the long run but that's a tough argument for people that want instant gratification.
Steam Link seems the way to go for most HN readers, I guess, and that is the device I would buy if I had to choose. BTW, a question on this: I've read somewhere that although NVIDIA Shield works only with NVIDIA GPUs, the Steam Link will work also with AMD GPUs. Valve doesn't confirm this but says that it supports OS X, Linux and Windows PCs. Any ideas? Doesn't it run on NVIDIA's GameStream, like NV Shield does?
- fpgaminer 11y agoSteam Link uses Steam In-Home Streaming, which is a different technology than nVidia's GameStream. Steam Streaming will even use the CPU for video encoding/decoding, so it isn't necessarily dependent on your GPU. Though, for best performance you will of course want hardware encoding. I do not know which GPU's Steam supports hardware encoding on. A quick Google and browse through Steam's FAQ on this topic indicates that they at least support nVidia GPUs and Intel GPUs for hardware encoding; no mention of AMD. But again, Steam will happily use your CPU to do the work if it has to.