This should be little-to-no surprise for the viewers of our podcast, as this story was discussed there, but Valve has confirmed AMD and Intel graphics are compatible with Steam Machines. Doug Lombardi of Valve commented by email to, apparently, multiple sources including Forbes and Maximum PC.
Last week, we posted some technical specs of our first wave of Steam Machine prototypes. Although the graphics hardware that we've selected for the first wave of prototypes is a variety of NVIDIA cards, that is not an indication that Steam Machines are NVIDIA-only. In 2014, there will be Steam Machines commercially available with graphics hardware made by AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel. Valve has worked closely together with all three of these companies on optimizing their hardware for SteamOS, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.
Ryan and the rest of the podcast crew found the whole situation, "Odd". They could not understand why AMD referred the press to Doug Lombardi rather than circulate a canned statement from him. It was also weird why NVIDIA had an exclusive on the beta program with AMD being commercially available in 2014.
As I have said in the initial post: for what seems to be deliberate non-committal to a specific hardware spec, why limit to a single graphics provider?
Huge AMD Fan here. Haven’t
Huge AMD Fan here. Haven’t bought nvidia since my 8800gtx. I would say, the superior drivers.. I’m sure they will have issues of their own with the steam OS, why introduce additional problems? Again, HUGE AMD fan here but it’s ture.
Because it’s the “first wave
Because it’s the “first wave of prototypes”, duh.
That’s what you do.
Every human endeavour starts with a clear and narrow target to maintain focus and limit complexity and is expanded afterwards.
Will the Steam Machines
Will the Steam Machines software compatibility with Steam Linux, also require that the GPU makers offer Full and continued support of OpenGL and OpenCL as well as other open graphics Drivers/software? With all this talk about Mantle And other exclusive APIs, I hope the GPU makers do not abandon the Open graphics APIs, while they adapt to Steam Linux for gaming! AMD needs to work on their drivers, and all the GPU makers need to support and maintain their drivers, including their OpenGL, OpenCL, etc. Nvidia, and AMD, would it hurt for you to, on your websites, include some form of basic GPU monitoring gadget/software, or better yet, have this GPU monitoring software pre-installed on computers that come with your discrete GPUs, especially on laptops!
Ad the first poster stated-
Ad the first poster stated- amd drivers are not to speed, they did move their linux team off to other projects.
that should change now, and the push for steam on linux could be a good choice- not many gamers are really using thier machines for much else that is windows software bound except for games- so if a platform is set in linux, and game companies start coding linux versions to support it. then people will start moving to linux.
this will cause consolidation in the linux space ( a good thing) and less dependence on windows
This is going to be fun when
This is going to be fun when the SteamOS’s Linux kernel updates and breaks various drivers.