Is that part of the quote? Because I just saw “priced like an entry level PC, not like a console”, which was more ambiguous than saying “priced like a console”. One man’s entry level PC is $300, and another’s is $1000. I have a mini PC with the power of a PS4 Pro, which I’d easily consider entry level, and it cost me $530 about a year and a half ago.
It's possible I'm just interpreting the quote wrong. I figured they were making the distinction between "console" and "entry level PC" as a way to say "The price isn't set yet, but don't expect this to be $400-500"
Yeah, leaving it ambiguous like this leads to wild speculation, and I think you misquoted that with your own assumptions. You might be right, but Digital Foundry seems to think $400-$500 is possible. Given the cost of my own mini PC, which is older and requires higher margins than Valve can get away with, I would even believe $400-$500. But we just don’t know. Everyone’s best guess for the price of this thing has a low floor and a high ceiling, which will make this all really funny once we know the actual price.
It’s not particularly great hardware. It’s fine, but not great. The most obvious thing is 8GB VRAM, which is bare minimum for modern gaming really. Add in that they’re buying in bulk, that price seems reasonable.
I know they don’t have the same supply chain at all but Apple sells an entry Mac Mini for $600. That makes me feel like a similarly priced Steam Machine is possible.
Apple mini is a hard comparison to make because the cheapest mini is a loss leader. Add a bit of extra ram or extra storage, which you have to do since the base model is very limited and the only way to get it is through Apple because everything is soldered together, then it is suddenly more than a $1k PC. They make the profits up with those upgrades which are practically mandatory and grossly overpriced.
The base M4 model is 16GB ram and 256 GB of storare and it costs $600, “cheapest minipc ever with such performance”.
The 512GB storage model costs $800.
May I point out that 256GB of ssd storage does not cost $200.
The 24 GB model costs exactly $1000.
No matter how much ram prices are ramping up right now, 8GB of sodimm ram does not cost $200…yet.
Anything else above those specs throws the Mac mini into $1k+ territory. It can go all the way up to $2600.
Now, Apple rarely publishes manufacturing numbers to the public. But historically this has always been their strategy. A base product that seems too good to be true (because it is) that leaves buyers wanting a bit more. For which they get skinned alive, price wise. Of course, I can’t be 100% certain that the base Mac mini is sold at a loss. But evidence suggests the $600 mark is priced exactly to act as a loss leader.
You didn’t present one piece of evidence that $600 is a losing price point for the base model (and you even stated that explicitly). All you’ve done is shown that Apple is known for their outrageous markups; something we all can see with our own eyes.
Given they’re greedy enough to markup storage and ram so much; I’m willing to bet they won’t bother with techniques like “loss leaders”. I bet the margins are just extremely tight but that profit is above zero.
That’s just pointing out upgrades carry a large price, not that the base model is at a loss.
Which is a super common strategy in pre built, especially in systems that can’t in theory take third party upgrades. Commonly a mobile platform will charge a hundred dollar premium for like 20 dollars worth of UFS storage. At least at some points PC vendors have done DIMM SPD lockouts to force customers to first party so they can charge a significant multiple of market rate for their parts.
I doubt anything in Apple’s lineup is sold at a loss. They might tolerate slimmer margins on entry, but I just don’t think they go negative.
I’m right now in the process of building an “entry level PC” from components, here defining it as new currently produced off the rack parts, no used, no refurbished, and with a Ryzen 7500F and a Radeon RX7600 “AMD can’t decide whether their cards get an XT or not, so why should I?” I price it out right at $900. To go much below that, I’m gonna have to resort to some jank.
Dumpster dive a core i5 10400F Optiplex, stick a GTX-980 in it, install Linux Mint and you’re making 120FPS in CS:GO for the price of a foot pic.
Your entry level PC is what I would have called high end as little as four years ago. I built a machine in 2021 with a Ryzen 5 5600x and an RX 6800 XT; it still runs the latest UE5 games at high settings. I would call that above and beyond entry level.
It’s a little hard to comment on high end 4 years ago with low end now because technology marches on, but no I don’t think it would.
I also built a PC with similar specs for my cousin (we’ll call her Lila) to that in October of 2022, Ryzen 5600X/Radeon RX6800 (non-XT). Built that rig for my cousin. Socket AM4 B550 chipset, 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM. I had a budget of $1500, $500 alone went to the GPU. The 6800 was two years old at that point. Solid mid-range PC that can handle 1440p gaming with no questions asked…okay one question asked: “are you sure you want ray tracing enabled on an RDNA 2 platform?”
You could go higher. 32 or even 64GB of RAM, a 5800X3D CPU, a Radeon 6950XT or RTX-3090 would provide much more solid 4k gaming with significantly better ray tracing…for a couple more grand.
The machine I built last year, a Ryzen 7700X/Radeon 7900GRE for myself. I spent $2000, I got socket AM5, 32GB DDR5-6000, a 16 thread CPU, and the third-to-highest GPU in the range. This thing does 1440p ultrawide or reaches into 4k with aplomb and ray tracing is worth turning on. You can still go up from here; the 7900XT and XTX are even more powerful and again Nvidia offers even higher, and there’s several CPU SKUs above me. Mine is a mid-to-high end PC, I expect it to be relevant for 5 more years, then I’ll buy a Ryzen 11800X3D on clearance for it.
Meanwhile, the PC I’m building now is for a 12 year old (Lila’s daughter, let’s call her Maggy). 16GB of DDR5-5600, a spec’d down 6-core without integrated graphics, the pack-in Wraith Stealth cooler, and a x600 tier GPU for a solid 1080p experience, more than enough for the hand-me-down 1080p60 monitor she’s gonna get with it. This computer is the same generation as mine, but less than half the price at $900 and change. And I honestly struggle to build much lower than that without resorting to used parts, new old stock, or jank.
High end would be the high end of the market components, right? So RTX 5090 ($2k+) or RX 9070 ($700+). High end CPU would be Ryzen 7 9800X3D for $400. Add a motherboard and copious RAM and you’re looking at $2k+ for all AMD, $3-5k for Nvidia.
Mid tier would be somewhere in the middle, so cut those numbers in half ($1-1.5k). Low end is what you can get away with, so cut the mod tier in half again, though going below $700 would be hard for anything but the most casual of games.
Personally I don’t think I would say that most people would consider a $1,000 PC to be entry level. To me entry level means something that a kid could save up their pocket money for in a reasonable amount of time maybe with a paper route to supplement. I’d say entry level ends at about $700 just to throw a number out there. For $1,000 you could get a PS5 and a PSVR2
But it’s also a handheld console so that doesn’t really track.
An entry level gaming PC doesn’t have to have a battery and it doesn’t have to have a screen which are big expenses. You can’t just take the price of the steam deck and multiply it because so much time has passed between the releases of the two products and they’re not equivalent anyway. It’s an apples to oranges comparison.
Damn all the negative bullshit is a real shame. I shared the info about this ROM hack with extra veracity in my circles in response to that, and now 3 new people who love being represented by those cool flags are happily trying it out. I’ll try myself later in the week, it looks really cool. Thanks for sharing it here.
I have just finished leveling up druid to 80 on my AzerothCore single-player modded server. Was a fun ride. Never played druid before. Wanna do other classes that I never played such as: hunter, rouge, warrior, shaman, DK. But that is much later.
Yesterday jumped back in Psychonauts 2. I’ve already finished this game 4 times to 100%. This is my 5th 100% run and only yesterday I went though 1/3 of the game collecting as much stuff as I could and listening to all dialogues as I can. Fun game! Also, impressed how it runs 80-144fps 1080p max settings on Bazzite. My hardware is not the greatest but somehow it seems Bazzite runs it better than Windows.
I wonder if GPU/motherboard manufacturers are not leaving money on the table by not selling an all-in-one gaming motherboard like the one in the Steam Machine.
Built-in GPU and VRAM with the CPU, RAM and cooling optional.
Why would anyone who’s in the market for a by-itself motherboard ever want something you can get as a modular piece as a built-in to another expensive piece?
Besides, if you want everything soldered on you can just buy a laptop motherboard.
For the same reason there’s other options. Having options alone is more than enough reason.
A motherboard with a built-in GPU has obvious price, cooling design and size advantages.
The only things I suggest to be soldered are the GPU and the VRAM since GPUs are extremely sensitive to their memory setup. CPUs can use off-the-shelf stuff without issue.
For the same reason that people are interested in the steam machine. It’s nice to be able to just throw some money at people and get a complete product. I can see businesses getting these things if they need a moderately powerful GPU for business reasons. Unless valve go utterly mad on the pricing here, it’s going to be much better value for money than a Mac mini, and it’ll have better compatibility with existing software as well.
On the steam hardware page it says the CPU and GPU are discrete although also “semi-custom” which I think means it’s not Gigabyte and has some cooling features that are tailored to the form factor.
Built-in GPU and VRAM with the CPU, RAM and cooling optional.
I don’t think that’d be a wise idea. After watching Valve interviews, it’s clear that they designed the entire system around a specific max TDP. Apparently they figured out the TDP, picked a fan to move it, then designed the rest of the cooling system based on that.
If you start swapping out different CPU’s that’ll change the TDP and very quickly become a problem. Plus, the CPU is soldered to the board. Having a socket to allow for swapping would require a redesign of the cooling to account for the increased height
I just started solo playing Toon Town Rewritten this weekend. Not a big social person, but still love the fighting cogs and mini games. Don’t remember how long I even played it back in the day, but I’m giving it a shot and nkt regretting it so far.
Maze Mice and Slay The Spire are just about the only other games I’ve been really focusing on outside of PvZ Reflourished on my phone.
But I’m sure you are, that’s why you dislike seeing representation and would rather they stay quiet and keep to themselves. After all, every form of showing public support MUST be dishonest or behind ulterior motives… yes, yes…
and every cunt with a “he/him” or “she/her” in twitter bio that doesnt need it.
🙄
Prounon stolen valor isn’t a thing. And yelling at folk trying to gatekeep it as such is far more harmful to our community than any amount of “virtue signaling” from those you deem unworthy.
Then you create something and don’t put the colours in. Like, the fuck is you’re point man?
That’s no Netflix shit, where they had a board meeting and decided the product needs more gay. That is a non commercial rom hack, where the creator decided to put the rainbow flag in it. If I wanted to create a hack myself, where the whole screen is just the rainbow flag and every NPC just says ‘Trans rights are human rights’, I’m allowed to do it. I don’t, because I myself dislike the whole pride ‘You are special’ feel good rainbowflag galore shit, I just want to be able to hold the hand of my boyfriend in public, but for some folks, it gives them strength in hard times, and that is a net positive in my book.
Imagine sending someone hatemail because they like rocky road while your favorite is salted caramel. Who cares whats in their bowl? Why care? Eat your own fucking ice cream, losers.
Reach is my favorite Halo game. To be completely honest, I always wanted more from the story telling in most Halo games, as you’re usually just a one man army with nobody else to care about. Sure, maybe there’s some high stakes overarching story, and you often have some regular soldiers helping you out, but it’s not something I ever really think about during a mission. I’m just here to shoot aliens, and my allies are meat shields who will not be missed. Which is fine, but when I played Reach for the first time and watched characters I came to like actually die, I loved it. It’s funny too, because in the lore Master Chief is a competent commander that prefers fighting with a squad, while Noble Six is a total lone wolf that always fights alone, and yet their games play opposite that.
I didn’t want him taking the sniper so i threw myself off the ledge to stop him from getting it.
I love this. Every time I play Halo with somebody, this type of shit goes down. Somebody does something and then suddenly it’s just a free for all, and by the end of it, we’re more worried about fucking the other person over than whatever we originally wanted to do.
If talking just general favorites, i’d have to say Reach is tied with 3 for me. 3 just feels like a general all around good experience. Reach is so fucking good though. Like you said, we come to care for the characters. It kind of does this tightrope act of Hope and Hopelessness, and at the very end it gives a little hope while making a sacrifice.
I love that Noble 6 is your multiplayer character too, it really serves to make it feel a lot more personal which helps to aid the themes. You’re not Master Chief with a history and Epic feats, you’re just… you (or a stand in of some sort). It’s not Noble 6 getting close to everyone, it’s you getting close. It’s not noble 6 making the sacrifice for the pillar of autumn to escape, it’s you. At least in a philosophical sense, or at least that’s how i always viewed it. Even my spartan is a reflection of myself in a way (For example the tiger themed paint job is because i think Tigers are the coolest big cat).
by the end of it, we’re more worried about fucking the other person over than whatever we originally wanted to do
Also, yeah. I agree with that. Halo does a good job making you and your buddy’s fuck eachother over and become the enemy. It’s admirable that it can juggle both that and the good story telling.
she pinned an elite into a wall with a Banshee and fired on them for a solid minute
In the original Halo on Xbox, I found out that if you keep meleeing a dead elite, the blood splatter keeps getting reapplied to the ground around it, and the existing splatter never despawns. Do this for a minute and you can bring the frame rate of the game down to a single-digit-number.
To the game’s credit, it doesn’t crash or stop responding, it just keeps skipping frames to make up for the excessive graphics processor use. And if you turn away from the blood, the frame rate returns to normal. But your “paint job” remains in memory as long as you are on that level. As soon as you look at it again, the frame rate drops again.
When we played CE i’d see how much of the wall i could paint with the enemies blood like some sadistic game of Splatoon. I was playing on MCC so i never ran into the Frame drop, but i recently got an OG copy of CE, so if i can find an OG xbox i might test this
bin.pol.social
Aktywne