0:06 8 GB of VRAM. It's a topic uh of Steam
0:08 Machine specs that's caused a lot of
0:09 controversy and we've got a lot of
0:11 questions from supporters. Darj in
0:14 brackets Dan says, "Happy half Fortnite,
0:17 lads." Exclamation point. To what extent
0:20 do you think the Gabe Cub's exiduous 8
0:22 GB of VRAM will be facilitated by the
0:23 relatively low memory bandwidth of
0:26 Switch 2 and upcoming PlayStation
0:28 Portable? Uh I'm not sure what you mean
0:30 by that. Probably nothing at all because
0:33 this is a PCbased endeavor. Uh, do you
0:35 think Valve will have an RDNA5 Gabecube
0:37 Ultra? Maybe with a lunchbox handle
0:39 ready to go up against PS6 and Xbox
0:43 Magnus in 2027, 2028. Feels like it
0:44 would be a missed opportunity if they
0:46 did not. Such a large performance gulf
0:48 would open up. Perhaps at the end of the
0:50 day, Valve only expects it to have a halflife.
0:52 halflife. Ha.
0:54 Ha.
0:57 Okay. Um, Matt, hello gents. enjoyed
1:00 your Steam things coverage. It's a good
1:02 brand name, a good umbrella brand name there.
1:04 there.
1:06 Enjoy your Steam things coverage and so
1:08 please Valve recognize your value now
1:10 you are sovereign and invited you to
1:12 their HQ to cover these. You've
1:13 mentioned slight concerns about the 8
1:15 gigs of VRAM being a potential issue on
1:16 the Steam machine, but I'm wondering
1:18 that considering the DEX seems to be
1:21 much more VRAM efficient than a Windows
1:22 PC at the same settings, do you think
1:24 Valve are using that as a considerable
1:27 part of their cost/performance judgment?
1:28 Would that potentially mean for normal
1:30 raster graphics, it will probably not be
1:32 an issue, but for RT and upscaling that
1:34 usually require more VRAM, the system
1:36 might find itself much more constrained
1:39 there. As it looks like GDDR6 costs
1:42 around $28 per 8 GBTE, was this a
1:44 cost-saving really worth making or do
1:46 other factors like changes to system
1:48 architecture bring the cost up more
1:51 significantly? Happy independenting
1:57 excavation point. Um, Magnum Stash says,
1:58 "Can you foresee the new Steam Machine
2:00 making use of a more console-like
2:02 approach to running games to mitigate
2:04 deficiencies in VRAMm capacity? The
2:06 Steam machine is effectively a fixed
2:08 architecture like a console, albeit
2:10 without unified memory. That's kind of
2:12 like big deal. Uh, so can the guaranteed
2:14 presence of a fast SSD coupled with
2:16 perhaps one or two quote unquote Steam
2:19 Machine verified performance options
2:22 discouraging incessant tinkering be
2:25 leveraged to reduce reliance on storing
2:27 assets in VRAM? [clears throat]
2:29 So, Alex, basically sort of going back
2:31 to what you were talking about earlier
2:34 here. There's uh basically um two camps
2:37 here. Should have had more VM and don't
2:39 worry, Valve know what they're doing. Uh
2:41 Linux is more efficient. It will be
2:44 fine. Uh which part do you believe?
2:47 >> Well, I think this should have been more
2:50 VRAM is definitely the way I feel about
2:53 it. Now, when 2020 rolled around and 8
2:54 gigabytes was there, I was actually
2:57 disappointed that their 3070 only had 8
2:59 gigs uh at that point in time because I
3:03 saw its future scaling being impacted
3:05 because there are things that you cannot
3:08 scale in VRAM. They're just your GPU
3:10 needs them to be the game to have the
3:12 game render in front of you. And if a
3:14 game for example is using hardware ray
3:18 tracing and more and more games are, uh
3:20 that's the way it is. you know, you look
3:22 at your Indiana Jones, your dooms, they
3:26 all have a lot of, you know, forced RT
3:28 in them. In that case, that's me with
3:30 saying that in a in a joking way, by the
3:34 way. Um, the these are things you just
3:37 cannot scale. You can scale textures a
3:40 bit better. Uh, a lot of games don't do
3:42 it in an automated fashion, though. Most
3:44 games allow manual user control over
3:47 this and sometimes they even load up
3:51 with improper settings per default. Uh I
3:52 like earlier this year I talked about
3:55 Monster Hunter, right? Uh that is still
3:56 a thing that the game can potentially
3:58 do. Load up with the wrong texture
4:01 setting for a poor experience based upon
4:03 your output resolution. And all these
4:05 are things where basically where I'm
4:08 saying you cannot trust every game
4:11 developer to put the same amount of time
4:13 and effort into making an 8 gigabyte
4:15 experience good enough because they are
4:17 actually worried about making the
4:19 PlayStation 5 version good enough quite
4:21 often or not. And even though the
4:25 PlayStation 5 has drastically less total
4:27 RAM capacity than a Steam machine, it
4:30 has a flexibility in how it's allocated.
4:32 So they obviously do use things in a
4:34 system RAM like way where only the CPU
4:36 is touching them, but they'll be able to
4:39 allocate easily 10 gigabytes, maybe even
4:42 more depending upon the game to just GPU
4:44 related tasks and they're not having to
4:47 double up with those things over a PCIe
4:50 bus streaming them from system memory uh
4:53 uh into into VRAMm.
4:56 So that's kind of although we have those
4:59 Series S versions, a lot of the times
5:00 the Series S version settings are not
5:02 available on PC games, even though I
5:06 think that's not very cool. Um, and also
5:07 you wouldn't maybe want to run those
5:08 settings cuz the games in Series S
5:10 frankly look awful sometimes. Like they
5:12 really don't look good, especially for
5:14 someone who's coming from a like me
5:16 where I've seen it running on like a
5:19 4060 and it looks a lot better. Uh, so
5:21 we don't want to necessarily target that
5:23 kind of experience. And just
5:25 holistically, I think in general, I
5:27 thought we were going to be finally
5:29 moving beyond the 8 gigabyte barrier for
5:32 GPUs because I thought potentially with
5:36 the next launch of whatever RDNA5 is, as
5:39 well as the super refresh from Nvidia,
5:41 which is MIA at the moment, I thought we
5:45 would finally be beyond the 8 GB as the
5:48 kind of low-end mainstream entry here.
5:49 But with Valve putting out this device,
5:51 we actually see another continuation of
5:53 the 8 gigabyte barrier into the
5:55 foreseeable future. And I presume this
5:58 will sell at least to a good degree. So
6:00 that means we have more GPUs out there
6:02 that can only address that amount of
6:04 VRAM. And I actually don't see that as a
6:06 positive because I have yet to be fully
6:07 convinced that developers are good
6:09 enough and have the resources to
6:12 dedicate to make those 8 GB experiences
6:14 universally great without requiring tink
6:17 tinkering. And that's a thing 8
6:19 gigabytes doesn't shield you from poor
6:22 development whereas 12 could easily do
6:25 that in comparison. Uh so I find those
6:27 are all very negative aspects of the
6:30 device and I don't think uh a lot of
6:33 Linux uh lower levelness here will be
6:35 the saving thing because
6:37 texture allocation isn't that fine grain
6:39 for that many games. It really isn't.
6:42 It's usually either it's like the game
6:45 works well on eight or it only works
6:47 well on like 10 and above. It's it's not
6:49 like there's this gradation of oh you
6:51 had 300 megabytes more you can now run
6:53 the game way better. It usually isn't
6:55 that way. It's usually the allocations
6:57 are much larger than that because the
6:58 textures when you start getting into
7:01 because they scale textures by 2K 2K 4K
7:04 4K or 3K 3K it's like the the
7:06 threedimensional value there is so much
7:08 higher to say the least and how it
7:10 scales. So, it it's it's not a great
7:12 position to be in, I actually think, for
7:13 this device, and it's my most
7:15 disappointing aspect of it.
7:18 >> Yeah, I'm kind of resigned to the fact
7:20 now that 8 gigabytes is is not going
7:23 away in the way that 6 gig did.
7:25 >> Yeah, such a shame, man.
7:26 >> Uh I'm kind of resigned to that at this
7:29 point. And it's it is a bit sad, but you
7:31 know, ultimately it does seem to be a
7:34 value uh situation. what Valve was
7:36 saying about affordability is exactly
7:38 what Nvidia and AMD were saying about
7:41 their um 8 gigabyte offerings with the
7:45 5060 and the 9060. Um, and it's a bit
7:47 sad, but you know, we're kind of on this
7:50 situation where, well, the vast majority
7:52 of the library will work fine, right?
7:54 But looking forward, it's kind of like
7:55 you just don't know what you're going to
7:58 get with an 8 GB card whenever a new AAA
8:00 game arrives. And it's becoming
8:04 increasingly uh problematic.
8:06 And um the solution does seem to be well
8:09 you know first port of call is to reduce
8:12 your um your texture quality sometimes
8:14 quite significantly. Um the other thing
8:18 is if this device is aiming to open up
8:22 the total addressible market you know um
8:24 to bring in more mainstream casual
8:26 players. Do they actually know about
8:28 this situation? Do they know that they
8:31 could potentially get a much better if
8:34 uglier experience by lowering the
8:37 texture setting? Um, that's that's a big
8:38 question. What do you think, Oliver?
8:39 Yeah, that last question is interesting
8:42 because it does require a certain level
8:45 of savvy understanding and not just
8:47 understanding of like how things work
8:49 gener generally but understanding of
8:51 games specifically how games
8:53 specifically load up VRM how games
8:56 specifically load up memory in order to
8:57 make those optimization decision
9:00 decisions and like in a lot of cases I
9:01 wouldn't trust myself necessarily to
9:03 make the right calls out of the box at
9:04 least not without like some VRAM
9:07 capacity uh notification in the system
9:10 in in the menu for the game. And to
9:11 expect that out of like the standard
9:13 user who's trying to mitigate the fact
9:15 that they really just didn't ship enough
9:17 VRM with this device, I think that's an
9:19 unreasonable expectation. But there
9:21 could be some elements to this device
9:22 that help it a little bit. You know,
9:24 there could be some Vulcan
9:26 optimizations, especially for RT. You
9:28 know, Gamecope, I think, can scan
9:30 directly out to the display to reduce
9:32 its memory footprint, things like that.
9:36 Um, but again, in a world in which like
9:38 you're you're fragrated in terms of the
9:40 memory that's being used in games, is
9:41 that going to be sufficient? Like Alex
9:43 said, maybe it's not. But I also think
9:45 like you you got a single performance
9:47 target. Devs could optimize a bit more
9:50 for 8 GB of VRAM. Maybe they could offer
9:52 some like Steam Machine specific
9:54 settings or at least good Steam Machine
9:56 default settings. Well, we'll have to
9:58 see how that goes. I I guess it's like
10:00 TBD on a lot of that stuff. And again, I
10:02 I also think it's worth rephrasing that
10:05 like restating rather that in a lot of
10:06 AAA games, this is not going to be that
10:08 much of an issue. And in the vast
10:10 majority of like, you know, your
10:12 standard esport titles, your GTA 5s,
10:15 your Fortnites, this is not going to be
10:17 a real issue. So, it really is kind of
10:19 like this cloistered world of AAA that
10:21 we're talking about, like the high end
10:23 of AAA that's a serious concern. So, I
10:25 guess we'll see how significant of an
10:27 issue it is in the final device. Um, but
10:29 I think it's just an unnecessary
10:32 annoyance and a necessary hindrance that
10:33 didn't need to be there on day one. And
10:36 then as time goes on, when we're talking
10:39 about 2027, 2028 or firmly into the next
10:42 generation of console hardware,
10:44 is that really going to be a spec that's
10:46 going to look good at that point? I I
10:47 don't really think so.
10:49 >> Right. That is the interesting point.
10:51 Right. This is coming in 2026. there's
10:53 every chance that towards the end of
10:56 2027 we could see Xbox, we could see the
10:59 new PlayStation. They will be based on
11:01 um architectures a couple of generations
11:03 beyond what we're seeing here. And what
11:05 we're seeing here is only like a sort of
11:07 very small step change over what we saw
11:10 with the 2020 consoles. So from that
11:11 respect, it does sit in a somewhat
11:14 awkward place in terms of um future
11:17 proofing. But you know, again, it's all
11:18 going to come down to that pricing, I
11:20 think. And uh we just don't know what
11:22 that is at the moment. That's the the
