Valve Steam Machine Benchmarks Show Near Twice The Uplift Over Steam Deck & Comparable To Ryzen 5 5600X at 30W

New benchmarks of Valve's Steam Machine show performance comparable to a 6-core AMD Ryzen CPU from 2020, but could be decent if priced right.

Valve Said That Steam Machine Would Offer Equal or Better Performance Than 70% of PCs, But Its CPU Is Only Comparable to 2020's 6-Core Ryzen

Two new benchmarks of the Steam Machine by Valve have appeared online. These benchmarks give us a taste of what to expect in terms of CPU performance from the upcoming system, which aims to be a mainstream gaming option powered by the SteamOS.

The idea of Steam Machines goes back to 2013, when Valve first started discussing the project after the release of its SteamOS. Back then, the Steam Machine project was going to be open to PC vendors, but with the latest iteration, Valve has taken matters into its own hands as it doubles down on products that are made by the company itself, such as Steam Deck handhelds.

With the latest iteration, a lot has changed. Rather than letting OEMs decide separate specs for their Steam Machine PCs, Valve announced a set list of specifications that will be offered under one price tag, which Valve claims to be competitive versus building a PC of the same spec.

The core specs include a 6-Core AMD CPU based on the Zen 4 architecture, & a discrete semi-custom GPU with 28 compute units. The system will pack up to 16 GB of DDR5 & 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. Whether the system offers a unified memory approach remains to be seen, but AMD's architecture does support UMA nicely.

Valve Steam Machine Benchmarks - Not Much Has Changed

Now coming to the benchmarks, the performance in Geekbench 6 hasn't changed much since the last time Valve's Steam Machine "Fremont" was listed on the benchmark database. The CPU still has 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, clocks up to 4.86 GHz, and offers 30 MB of L3 cache. These are some solid clocks for a chip that is tuned at just 30W. The CPU is listed as "AMD Custom CPU 1772".

The single-core scores reach up to 2334 points, slightly lower than the previous results, while the multi-core score is listed at 7392 points. If you're moving from a Steam Deck to a Steam Machine, you can expect almost a doubling of the performance in the CPU department alone.

But if we take the comparisons against AMD's Ryzen CPUs, the Ryzen 5 5600X, based on the Zen 3 architecture, is able to beat it, and the Zen 4-based Ryzen 5 7600X sits well ahead. That's due to the higher TDP of the Ryzen Desktop chips, which are rated at 65W+. Still impressive for a chip that's running at half the TDP.

In our previous post, we also mentioned how the single-core score is nearly double that of the Sony PS5.

For Valve, the pricing of the Steam Machine will be the most important and the deciding factor whether these gaming systems will be viable in a PC market that is facing severe DRAM shortages and price hikes across multiple components. The rumored pricing for Valve's Steam Machine is said to be around $900-$1000. The 28 CU GPU should do well, but if the system is to tackle consoles, then a better price needs to be decided.

News Source: @Olrak29_

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