Wait, what do you mean by Nvidia 970? Are we talking about the Geforce GTX 970? Isn't that almost double the gflop speed of PS4 with 4GB of VRAM? I don't see the performance good at all for such a beast card, unless you are talking about a different card.

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Quoting: melkemind

Quoting: BeamboomWaaaait a second: Could this be related to the recent finding in Birmingham? 'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University?

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33436021

Ergo this has more to do with Birmingham, or libraries, than the Koran or islam?

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The original image from Feral was a scan of "A Thousand and One Nights," which predates the advent of Islam, so it's not directly related to the Qur'an or Islam. If it is related to anything Arabic or Persian though, any game about the Middle East (including Assassin's Creed) or Central/South Asia is a possibility. Many say the original story came from India or Persia rather than Arabia. But that's probably too easy of a guess. I'm sticking with the Witcher 3 because I want it more. :)

This is not true. The image posted by Feral is from the Islamic era, well after the advent of Islam. Also, the "A Thousand and One Nights" book is a collection of folklore tales that predates Islam, but collecting them into one book with this specific name happened in the Islamic era. However, none of this has anything to do with the Koran. I am guessing the game in question is Prince of Persia.

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Quoting: adolson

Quoting: Nyamiou

Quoting: MaelraneBUT: Valve isn't doing this because they see Linux as the great platform it is, they do all this, because they wanted to break free from Microsoft when the rumors about a (n even more) walled garden aka MS Store first appeared.

Microsoft can still potentially kill Valve business easily (and most probably will eventually try), this hasn't change at all. Windows is already moving from a product oriented business to a service oriented business, which means that services like Steam will be competitors that need to be put down and imagine how easy that would be for Microsoft.

Apparently Valve felt the threat, so it must be real, but I mean... If I'm Microsoft, how do I go about getting the millions of Steam users to leave their dozens/hundreds/thousands of games - not to mention dollars and time invested - in their Steam accounts behind and move to whatever Microsoft's solution is? If Microsoft is to make this kind of a move, they'd better do it fast, before Valve has their own platform out on the market that customers see as an easy jump-to point.

Valve doesn't only have threat from Microsoft. They also have threat from Origin and other similar services.

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Quoting: liamdaweI still think it's a fad that will fade with time, I don't want to strap a bloody device to my face. I'm not bothered personally.

There are three things that need to be done to make VR successful:
1- Light headset, i.e. something not much larger than regular sun glasses. The current VR headsets will probably tire your neck very quickly.
2- Large FOV. You need to feel the image surrounding you rather than seeing a rectangular image that feels to be half a meter away from you.
3- Low latency. Latency in VR will be much easier to notice than in monitors and will be annoying.
If they manage to fix the upper three then it will definitely be a success (assuming reasonable pricing). I don't know how the Vive do in terms of latency and FOV, but it's size definitely doesn't look right and neither does Oculus.

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That's disappointing.

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Quoting: EKRboi

Quoting: sarmadDoes anyone know how powerful the Alienware Steam Machine GPU is? We know it's a custom GTX 860m GPU, but what's custom about this? What did they get nVidia to modify in it? Wikipedia states that this GPU rangs in power from 1.2 TFLOPS to 1.8. Where in this range is the Alienware gpu sitting?

I wouldn't mind an answer on that as well out of curiosity. A PS4 pushes roughly 1.8 tflops so it is in the same ballpark, not bad at all, but not great. Certainly playable, especially if you can deal with 30fps if you like to keep some eye candy in recent games. A Nvidia GTX980 pushes roughly 5 tflops so an 860m is roughly 1/3 as powerful as it.

Absolutely, PS4 level performance is not acceptable 2 years after the release of PS4. Also, if the hardware is PS4 level the final performance of the games will be less than PS4 due to the extra overhead of OpenGL and the lack of console-like optimization. My hope is that the customization in the Alienware machine's GPU includes more cores.

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@MontainMan, @kon14, keep in mind that Steam Machines aren't released yet. Delaying a SteamOS release doesn't mean anything when the machines themselves aren't released yet. If they delay Linux releases after Steam Machines are out then it would be a negative sign, but right now there is no point of delaying the version of an already released system for the sake of a system that isn't going to be released for another 5 months.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: sarmad

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: lucifertdarkLinux users have to play the waiting game again, this is how it's always been, heck we've waited years/decades for game support as good as Valve is supplying, a few more days wait isn't going to kill anyone.

That's not the problem. The problem is that even Valve is treating Linux users like second class citizens despite their efforts over the past few years to promote Linux as a viable gaming platform. If any developer were to have a day-one Linux release, you'd expect it to be Valve. A move like this sends mixed messages.

Valve is not treating Linux as second class, it's in fact treating Linux as first class and Windows as second class. If you want to use the "Steam Machine" brand you have to use the Linux based SteamOS. If you want to include a Steam Controller with your box it has to run SteamOS, or at least that's what the Alienware guy implied in this video:
http://www.maximumpc.com/e3-probing-alienwares-steam-machine-and-steam-controller-video/

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. I think you responded to the wrong article.

No, I didn't respond to the wrong article. You were saying Valve is treating Linux as second class so I mentioned some facts that indicate the opposite.

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Does anyone know how powerful the Alienware Steam Machine GPU is? We know it's a custom GTX 860m GPU, but what's custom about this? What did they get nVidia to modify in it? Wikipedia states that this GPU rangs in power from 1.2 TFLOPS to 1.8. Where in this range is the Alienware gpu sitting?

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Wonderful news.

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