Alienware do a pretty nice job of advertising their Steam Machine & SteamOS in this new video

You talking about those graphics cards on a pcie stick things laptops use? Yeah that would be a good solution for steam machines...

You talking about those graphics cards on a pcie stick things laptops use? Yeah that would be a good solution for steam machines...

Yeah. It's a $200 external graphics card enclosure + USB hub. The new Alpha R2 has the proprietary amplifier port for it while the Steam Machine R2 doesn't.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/alienware-graphics-amplifier?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19

I was talking about the PCIe cards, you know, gpu on a pcb mini board. Not sure if that is whats happening here but not long ago they were talking about how they got a standard 980gtx running in a laptop fine. NOT USB ADAPTER.

What your suggesting will add $200 to the price tag, kinda pointless.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 9 Jul 2016 at 11:40 pm UTC

they got dying light the following running that smooth ? What's inside it a quad sli titan x setup ?

Dying Light runs pretty well for me on an Nvidia GTX 760 in my SteamOS HTPC. Had to turn some settings down but that video probably isn't maxed out either.

Needless to say it also runs great on my Arch Linux desktop with a GTX 980 ti.

DL the following runs slower for some reason than the base game. I also have a 760 also.

I was talking about the PCIe cards, you know, gpu on a pcb mini board. Not sure if that is whats happening here but not long ago they were talking about how they got a standard 980gtx running in a laptop fine. NOT USB ADAPTER.

What your suggesting will add $200 to the price tag, kinda pointless.

This is an external graphics card unit that accepts a PCIe x16 graphics card and has it's own PSU unit. The cable and connector is proprietary but handles the PCIe and USB traffic.

Yes, it's $200 plus the cost of a graphics card which means it isn't a great deal but my point is that the Alpha has it as an option and isn't required to be bought, whereas with the Alienware Steam Machine, you're stuck with the GTX 960 period, with no upgrade option. Basically, Alienware screwed Steam Machine users by not officially bringing external graphics card support when it's supported by the kernel. That's not to say a GTX 960 is a bad GPU but it doesn't go as far on Linux with some demanding AAA games running at lower framerate than on Windows. This just means the Windows Alpha R2 and Syber Steam Machines w/ 6th gen CPUs are better options.


Last edited by Xaero_Vincent on 10 Jul 2016 at 12:54 am UTC

750$ for a sub-par gaming PC.

what's sub-par here is your trolling.

IMO, it makes more sense to buy an Alpha R2 then put SteamOS or another distribution on it instead of buying the Steam Machine at this point.

Definately not, because the hardware is the same. You can connect the graphics amplifier to the Steam Machine, you just need to support yourself. Because of lack of Windows license to spend money on, the Steam Controller and the game bundle, the Steam Machine is way preferable over installing SteamOS on the Alpha R2.

IMO, it makes more sense to buy an Alpha R2 then put SteamOS or another distribution on it instead of buying the Steam Machine at this point.

Definately not, because the hardware is the same. You can connect the graphics amplifier to the Steam Machine, you just need to support yourself. Because of lack of Windows license to spend money on, the Steam Controller and the game bundle, the Steam Machine is way preferable over installing SteamOS on the Alpha R2.

The more important thing here is buying the Steam Machine tells Alienware it's a sale for SM/SteamOS and not Windows.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-nvidias-next-laptop-graphics-chip-is-gtx-980

See this adapter? see the image? that is what they should have used, less components and compat. Also allows for upgrading.

750$ for a sub-par gaming PC.

I can't believe I'm agreeing with Meraco for once.

IMO, it makes more sense to buy an Alpha R2 then put SteamOS or another distribution on it instead of buying the Steam Machine at this point.

Definately not, because the hardware is the same. You can connect the graphics amplifier to the Steam Machine, you just need to support yourself. Because of lack of Windows license to spend money on, the Steam Controller and the game bundle, the Steam Machine is way preferable over installing SteamOS on the Alpha R2.

The hardware is not the same.

Alpha R2 with graphics amplifier port (Port #3):

Steam Machine R2:

750$ for a sub-par gaming PC.

*lol*

There [he](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/black-mesa-developer-shoots-down-anti-linux-troll-confirms-linux-version-is-in-progress.7593/) is.

Is this the level of constructiveness we can expect from your postings here?

Why don't you get rich selling better PCs with the same form-factor for a lower price?

Great, there is just a comment and because it doesn't fit in the image of some people here it has to be "trolling". Wow, have you ever encountered the idea of asking the experience behind? The only thing I can see here in the spot is some proprietary hardware, a complete closed box, should be sold, combined with a close, proprietary platform. Yeah, and you people like to party for having a Linux completely looking like the black-box Windows here. Party on! :D

You like to party for your Steam-platform and your Steam-machines? So go on: Make everything to let your Linux look like an open-source version of Windows.


Last edited by throgh on 10 Jul 2016 at 10:20 pm UTC

Great, there is just a comment and because it doesn't fit in the image of some people here it has to be "trolling". Wow, have you ever encountered the idea of asking the experience behind? The only thing I can see here in the spot is some proprietary hardware, a complete closed box, should be sold, combined with a close, proprietary platform. Yeah, and you people like to party for having a Linux completely looking like the black-box Windows here. Party on! :D

You like to party for your Steam-platform and your Steam-machines? So go on: Make everything to let your Linux look like an open-source version of Windows.

I do keep forgetting that there are many Linux guys who also own consoles "for the exclusives" but I guess not everyone is here for the freedom. Like why complain about closed software and monopoly abuse then go out and monetarily reward companies who sell closed software to create abusive monopolies?

But like you say, I probably don't understand the experience behind that rational; somebody explain?

750$ for a sub-par gaming PC.

I can't believe I'm agreeing with Meraco for once.

I bought the $450 Steam Machine when they first came out, and added an extra 4GB RAM to it. Very happy with it from a hardware standpoint. I thought the i3 CPU would be under powered for gaming, but it's a newer 4 logical core CPU (via hyperthreading) that seems to run most games just fine.

Sexy and small form factor, runs quiet and has a well behaved sleep/resume on the Alienware power button.

I mainly just run it in Desktop mode in my PC room, and it runs the vast majority of my 132+ Linux titles just fine - I didn't buy it for fast AAA gaming, I already have a main PC for that.

In SteamOS, the sleep/resume is fast and very stable - all my open GNOME 3 desktop apps don't dork out on me even after many many sleep/resume cycles. I use the sleep/resume extensively, it's my day-to-day Linux desktop. Especially during the work-week when I don't feel like booting up my main gaming PC just to mess around for an hour or two before bed.

In short, I consider it $450 well spent - only caveat is Valve needs to be keeping SteamOS itself more up to date, if not sexy new features AT LEAST on graphics and OS driver updates.


Last edited by Halifax on 11 Jul 2016 at 2:11 am UTC

But like you say, I probably don't understand the experience behind that rational; somebody explain?

Surely you can think of one reason to prefer Linux other than freedom? I can think of several. I certainly like the philosophy, but I probably wouldn't limit myself to a free operating system if indeed I found the experience somehow limiting.

I do my share of Linux and open-source "evangelism" if you will, but I leave the actual activism to others.

*lol*

There [he](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/black-mesa-developer-shoots-down-anti-linux-troll-confirms-linux-version-is-in-progress.7593/) is.

Is this the level of constructiveness we can expect from your postings here?

Why don't you get rich selling better PCs with the same form-factor for a lower price?

Great, there is just a comment and because it doesn't fit in the image of some people here it has to be "trolling".

I didn't talk about "trolling".

Wow, have you ever encountered the idea of asking the experience behind? The only thing I can see here in the spot is some proprietary hardware, a complete closed box, should be sold, combined with a close, proprietary platform. Yeah, and you people like to party for having a Linux completely looking like the black-box Windows here. Party on! :D

You like to party for your Steam-platform and your Steam-machines? So go on: Make everything to let your Linux look like an open-source version of Windows.

I didn't talk about such things either. I was talking about the price tag, which is reasonable for the form-factor, and about Meraco, which didn't yet troll here (but wasn't posting anything constructive either), but clearly is a dedicated anti-Linux troll in the Steam forums. He's actively derailing discussions there; look at his posting history.

Feel free to dislike Steam Machines, but this has nothing to do with the destructive nature of Meraco's postings.


Last edited by Eike on 11 Jul 2016 at 10:00 am UTC

I personally prefer the steam setup with steamlink. I'm not going to put a strong box in my living room, having one strong box "delivering" the games to my other pcs is pretty much enough.

I've now one box ("game server") which delivers the content either via steamlink to my living room or streaming to my notebook with screen in the work room.

Steamlink still has issues (the black flickering in the steam client can be annoying - all the settings/options to set I found were just temporary fixes, the flickering came back, I never had this while gaming though).

Don't know wht the reason is, but at 1920x1080 suddenly the stream increases the traffic heavily (as if compression was submitting black screen/actual screen/black screen/actual screen all over again). This may be related to composite and/or kwin as well, I just didn't figure out why this sometimes happens.

I Just wish Valve adds steam Workshop for steamOS. Cuz i want my xorg.conf settings and some xinput settings work within SteamOS bigpicture mode without needing the desktop. If they do this i could just easy upload flash player from the site into the bigpicture mode. :P with just some few minutes. It fixes every sites such as twitch :D.


Last edited by IDNO on 11 Jul 2016 at 10:31 am UTC

they got dying light the following running that smooth ? What's inside it a quad sli titan x setup ?

Dying Light runs pretty well for me on an Nvidia GTX 760 in my SteamOS HTPC. Had to turn some settings down but that video probably isn't maxed out either.

Needless to say it also runs great on my Arch Linux desktop with a GTX 980 ti.

I've got a Fury X. It runs like crap at 1920x1080, and not much difference from the still reasonably powerful R9 285 which I upgraded from.

DL is horribly unoptimized. I suspect I'll be better of waiting on Wine to be able to run the Windows build.