The discussion centers on the 8GB VRAM limitation of the new Steam Machine, debating whether it's a justifiable cost-saving measure or a significant bottleneck for future gaming experiences, especially concerning demanding graphical features like ray tracing and upscaling.
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8 GB of VRAM. It's a topic uh of Steam
Machine specs that's caused a lot of
controversy and we've got a lot of
questions from supporters. Darj in
brackets Dan says, "Happy half Fortnite,
lads." Exclamation point. To what extent
do you think the Gabe Cub's exiduous 8
GB of VRAM will be facilitated by the
relatively low memory bandwidth of
Switch 2 and upcoming PlayStation
Portable? Uh I'm not sure what you mean
by that. Probably nothing at all because
this is a PCbased endeavor. Uh, do you
think Valve will have an RDNA5 Gabecube
Ultra? Maybe with a lunchbox handle
ready to go up against PS6 and Xbox
Magnus in 2027, 2028. Feels like it
would be a missed opportunity if they
did not. Such a large performance gulf
would open up. Perhaps at the end of the
day, Valve only expects it to have a halflife.
halflife. Ha.
Ha.
Okay. Um, Matt, hello gents. enjoyed
your Steam things coverage. It's a good
brand name, a good umbrella brand name there.
there.
Enjoy your Steam things coverage and so
please Valve recognize your value now
you are sovereign and invited you to
their HQ to cover these. You've
mentioned slight concerns about the 8
gigs of VRAM being a potential issue on
the Steam machine, but I'm wondering
that considering the DEX seems to be
much more VRAM efficient than a Windows
PC at the same settings, do you think
Valve are using that as a considerable
part of their cost/performance judgment?
Would that potentially mean for normal
raster graphics, it will probably not be
an issue, but for RT and upscaling that
usually require more VRAM, the system
might find itself much more constrained
there. As it looks like GDDR6 costs
around $28 per 8 GBTE, was this a
cost-saving really worth making or do
other factors like changes to system
architecture bring the cost up more
significantly? Happy independenting
excavation point. Um, Magnum Stash says,
"Can you foresee the new Steam Machine
making use of a more console-like
approach to running games to mitigate
deficiencies in VRAMm capacity? The
Steam machine is effectively a fixed
architecture like a console, albeit
without unified memory. That's kind of
like big deal. Uh, so can the guaranteed
presence of a fast SSD coupled with
perhaps one or two quote unquote Steam
Machine verified performance options
discouraging incessant tinkering be
leveraged to reduce reliance on storing
assets in VRAM? [clears throat]
So, Alex, basically sort of going back
to what you were talking about earlier
here. There's uh basically um two camps
here. Should have had more VM and don't
worry, Valve know what they're doing. Uh
Linux is more efficient. It will be
fine. Uh which part do you believe?
>> Well, I think this should have been more
VRAM is definitely the way I feel about
it. Now, when 2020 rolled around and 8
gigabytes was there, I was actually
disappointed that their 3070 only had 8
gigs uh at that point in time because I
saw its future scaling being impacted
because there are things that you cannot
scale in VRAM. They're just your GPU
needs them to be the game to have the
game render in front of you. And if a
game for example is using hardware ray
tracing and more and more games are, uh
that's the way it is. you know, you look
at your Indiana Jones, your dooms, they
all have a lot of, you know, forced RT
in them. In that case, that's me with
saying that in a in a joking way, by the
way. Um, the these are things you just
cannot scale. You can scale textures a
bit better. Uh, a lot of games don't do
it in an automated fashion, though. Most
games allow manual user control over
this and sometimes they even load up
with improper settings per default. Uh I
like earlier this year I talked about
Monster Hunter, right? Uh that is still
a thing that the game can potentially
do. Load up with the wrong texture
setting for a poor experience based upon
your output resolution. And all these
are things where basically where I'm
saying you cannot trust every game
developer to put the same amount of time
and effort into making an 8 gigabyte
experience good enough because they are
actually worried about making the
PlayStation 5 version good enough quite
often or not. And even though the
PlayStation 5 has drastically less total
RAM capacity than a Steam machine, it
has a flexibility in how it's allocated.
So they obviously do use things in a
system RAM like way where only the CPU
is touching them, but they'll be able to
allocate easily 10 gigabytes, maybe even
more depending upon the game to just GPU
related tasks and they're not having to
double up with those things over a PCIe
bus streaming them from system memory uh
uh into into VRAMm.
So that's kind of although we have those
Series S versions, a lot of the times
the Series S version settings are not
available on PC games, even though I
think that's not very cool. Um, and also
you wouldn't maybe want to run those
settings cuz the games in Series S
frankly look awful sometimes. Like they
really don't look good, especially for
someone who's coming from a like me
where I've seen it running on like a
4060 and it looks a lot better. Uh, so
we don't want to necessarily target that
kind of experience. And just
holistically, I think in general, I
thought we were going to be finally
moving beyond the 8 gigabyte barrier for
GPUs because I thought potentially with
the next launch of whatever RDNA5 is, as
well as the super refresh from Nvidia,
which is MIA at the moment, I thought we
would finally be beyond the 8 GB as the
kind of low-end mainstream entry here.
But with Valve putting out this device,
we actually see another continuation of
the 8 gigabyte barrier into the
foreseeable future. And I presume this
will sell at least to a good degree. So
that means we have more GPUs out there
that can only address that amount of
VRAM. And I actually don't see that as a
positive because I have yet to be fully
convinced that developers are good
enough and have the resources to
dedicate to make those 8 GB experiences
universally great without requiring tink
tinkering. And that's a thing 8
gigabytes doesn't shield you from poor
development whereas 12 could easily do
that in comparison. Uh so I find those
are all very negative aspects of the
device and I don't think uh a lot of
Linux uh lower levelness here will be
the saving thing because
texture allocation isn't that fine grain
for that many games. It really isn't.
It's usually either it's like the game
works well on eight or it only works
well on like 10 and above. It's it's not
like there's this gradation of oh you
had 300 megabytes more you can now run
the game way better. It usually isn't
that way. It's usually the allocations
are much larger than that because the
textures when you start getting into
because they scale textures by 2K 2K 4K
4K or 3K 3K it's like the the
threedimensional value there is so much
higher to say the least and how it
scales. So, it it's it's not a great
position to be in, I actually think, for
this device, and it's my most
disappointing aspect of it.
>> Yeah, I'm kind of resigned to the fact
now that 8 gigabytes is is not going
away in the way that 6 gig did.
>> Yeah, such a shame, man.
>> Uh I'm kind of resigned to that at this
point. And it's it is a bit sad, but you
know, ultimately it does seem to be a
value uh situation. what Valve was
saying about affordability is exactly
what Nvidia and AMD were saying about
their um 8 gigabyte offerings with the
5060 and the 9060. Um, and it's a bit
sad, but you know, we're kind of on this
situation where, well, the vast majority
of the library will work fine, right?
But looking forward, it's kind of like
you just don't know what you're going to
get with an 8 GB card whenever a new AAA
game arrives. And it's becoming
increasingly uh problematic.
And um the solution does seem to be well
you know first port of call is to reduce
your um your texture quality sometimes
quite significantly. Um the other thing
is if this device is aiming to open up
the total addressible market you know um
to bring in more mainstream casual
players. Do they actually know about
this situation? Do they know that they
could potentially get a much better if
uglier experience by lowering the
texture setting? Um, that's that's a big
question. What do you think, Oliver?
Yeah, that last question is interesting
because it does require a certain level
of savvy understanding and not just
understanding of like how things work
gener generally but understanding of
games specifically how games
specifically load up VRM how games
specifically load up memory in order to
make those optimization decision
decisions and like in a lot of cases I
wouldn't trust myself necessarily to
make the right calls out of the box at
least not without like some VRAM
capacity uh notification in the system
in in the menu for the game. And to
expect that out of like the standard
user who's trying to mitigate the fact
that they really just didn't ship enough
VRM with this device, I think that's an
unreasonable expectation. But there
could be some elements to this device
that help it a little bit. You know,
there could be some Vulcan
optimizations, especially for RT. You
know, Gamecope, I think, can scan
directly out to the display to reduce
its memory footprint, things like that.
Um, but again, in a world in which like
you're you're fragrated in terms of the
memory that's being used in games, is
that going to be sufficient? Like Alex
said, maybe it's not. But I also think
like you you got a single performance
target. Devs could optimize a bit more
for 8 GB of VRAM. Maybe they could offer
some like Steam Machine specific
settings or at least good Steam Machine
default settings. Well, we'll have to
see how that goes. I I guess it's like
TBD on a lot of that stuff. And again, I
I also think it's worth rephrasing that
like restating rather that in a lot of
AAA games, this is not going to be that
much of an issue. And in the vast
majority of like, you know, your
standard esport titles, your GTA 5s,
your Fortnites, this is not going to be
a real issue. So, it really is kind of
like this cloistered world of AAA that
we're talking about, like the high end
of AAA that's a serious concern. So, I
guess we'll see how significant of an
issue it is in the final device. Um, but
I think it's just an unnecessary
annoyance and a necessary hindrance that
didn't need to be there on day one. And
then as time goes on, when we're talking
about 2027, 2028 or firmly into the next
generation of console hardware,
is that really going to be a spec that's
going to look good at that point? I I
don't really think so.
>> Right. That is the interesting point.
Right. This is coming in 2026. there's
every chance that towards the end of
2027 we could see Xbox, we could see the
new PlayStation. They will be based on
um architectures a couple of generations
beyond what we're seeing here. And what
we're seeing here is only like a sort of
very small step change over what we saw
with the 2020 consoles. So from that
respect, it does sit in a somewhat
awkward place in terms of um future
proofing. But you know, again, it's all
going to come down to that pricing, I
think. And uh we just don't know what
that is at the moment. That's the the
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