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Alienware Interview Video About Their Steam Machine, SteamOS & The Future

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Not our video, but an interesting watch and it's good to see a company speak so highly about Steam Machines and SteamOS, even if the Alienware rep is a little wrong at times.

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The one thing that made me really chuckle, was talk about performance. According to the Alienware rep there's no performance "degradation" on SteamOS. We all know most ports perform worse than they do on Windows, so it's marketing speak at its finest. Again, Vulkan is going to certainly help, as will Alienware/Valve and others talking directly to Nvidia/AMD/Intel to improve their drivers for OpenGL too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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drmoth Nov 11, 2015
That was really great, and quite uplifting. Good to hear the long term dedication from the Alienware rep. He was also hinting at some AAA games being released soon or early in the near year. But yeah, NO fallout4....
Xelancer Nov 11, 2015
Sure, a freshly installed Windows (usually means pirated too) running an older game may have a small performance advantage over the same game that's then be retroactively "ported" to run Linux, the trouble is your average Windows computer you buy from the shop is HARDLY freshly installed. Besides the "rows" - literally - of tray applications (half of which are installed by the manufacturer) and other TSR services - including your anti-virus software etc, never mind the overall hit your Windows computer takes after you install the office suite (or heaven forbid - Visual studio) and most others drags your gaming performance to hell. All my mates reinstall Windows 3 times per year and their games play like junk on HW pricier than I have...

I think the biggest advantage SteamOS offers the average customers is the lightweight Linux kernel without having to know anything about our beloved open-source OS. Spec-for-spec the Steam Machines seem to be quite comparable price-wise to their PC equivalents, I would even call them cheap when you consider how expensive some branded PCs are. I am excited about a Steam Machines, and I have a PS4 too for those far more pricey games from the Sony Playstation Store, I buy 5 games on Steam/Linux for every 1 I buy on the PS4 simply on price!

In the end more competition means customers win, gamers win!
sonic Nov 11, 2015
I dont thik that GPU they use will have full Vulkan support, NVidia have some problems with asynchronous shaders.
lvlark Nov 11, 2015
Nice to see, although the first ~18 minutes was basically about the hardware and the controller and wasn't very insightful. It did give a nice peek into Alienware's philosophy regarding Steam Machines though.
The latter part, where he talked a bit about what's coming software-wise was nice. Sounds like things will keep moving forward!
tuubi Nov 11, 2015
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Quoting: sonicI dont thik that GPU they use will have full Vulkan support, NVidia have some problems with asynchronous shaders.
For most use cases this won't matter.
SystemShock Nov 11, 2015
[quote=Guest]
QuoteWell, there is some notable examples of bad performing ports (yes, I have Dying Light) but I don't think that most of them are really slower than on Windows. Using the performance of those bad ports to define the whole platform would be really unfair.

I totally agree with you. Most Ports are running very well on Linux especially with Nvidia-Cards and the drivers are getting better and better on the Nvidia and AMD side.

If you are interested in some comparisons between Linux and Windows Gaming-Machines i can recommend you this Youtube Channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/PenguinRecordings

This Guy has some really good comparisons in his portfolio. :-)
Cybolic Nov 11, 2015
QuoteThe one thing that made me really chuckle, was talk about performance. According to the Alienware rep there's no performance "degradation" on SteamOS. We all know most ports perform worse than they do on Windows, so it's marketing speak at its finest. Again, Vulkan is going to certainly help, as will Alienware/Valve and others talking directly to Nvidia/AMD/Intel to improve their drivers for OpenGL too.
To be fair, he does seem to mean performance degradation at the driver level, which seems correct.
musojon74 Nov 11, 2015
The price sucks. Seriously they are asking the same for the base model as the alpha with full windows license? They want it to fail I guess. Shame. I have an alpha i5 and it's nice. ( I only paid 529 )
Mountain Man Nov 11, 2015
Quoting: XelancerSure, a freshly installed Windows (usually means pirated too) running an older game may have a small performance advantage over the same game that's then be retroactively "ported" to run Linux, the trouble is your average Windows computer you buy from the shop is HARDLY freshly installed. Besides the "rows" - literally - of tray applications (half of which are installed by the manufacturer) and other TSR services - including your anti-virus software etc, never mind the overall hit your Windows computer takes after you install the office suite (or heaven forbid - Visual studio) and most others drags your gaming performance to hell. All my mates reinstall Windows 3 times per year and their games play like junk on HW pricier than I have...
That's a great point. Linux can as lean and mean as you want in order to maximize performance. I saw a noticeable performance boost recently when I ditched KDE for Xfce.
Mountain Man Nov 11, 2015
Quoting: lvlarkNice to see, although the first ~18 minutes was basically about the hardware and the controller and wasn't very insightful. It did give a nice peek into Alienware's philosophy regarding Steam Machines though.
The latter part, where he talked a bit about what's coming software-wise was nice. Sounds like things will keep moving forward!
"Slow and steady wins the race" seems to be Valve's philosophy. It's easy to forget that Steam had a slow start amidst plenty of competition, and it took several years for it to become the dominant platform it is today.
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