SteamOS sees performance drop against Windows for gaming.
Steam has been the reigning champion when it comes to gamers and their gaming needs. They have had all the latest games available on the Steam store. Gamers can access their games from all over the world. They've given great discounts on games when it sales were on and Greenlight (for budding game developers) has had its share of success too. So what are we to expect when Steam wants to take it a step further with an entire operating system (OS) dedicated to gaming first and everything else later?
There are new SteamOS dedicated devices on the market and each device is meant to be kind of a PC-gaming console hybrid hooked up to the biggest game distribution service on the planet. Alienware, Syber and Zotac are currently the three manufacturers selling SteamOS machines. The Zotac steam machine looks the most impressive to us. Most notable about the offering from Zotac are the 4 HDMI ports and a Wi-Fi antenna to make sure it catches your Wi-Fi in your house. In terms of appearance, both the Syber and the Alienware are better looking devices that are sure to have any gamer visiting your house oohing and aahing for a few minutes. All the devices come bundled with a Steam controller to give you the feel of a console in your hands.
Unfortunately, these SteamOS devices aren't available in India but we should see it happening soon. Steam has already taken the first step in getting itself acquainted with an India market by introducing the Indian rupee as a currency we can pay in now. The prices of some games have also been altered to make them more accessible to the Indian market but apparently this hasn't happened for all games. Still, it's another step forward for gamers in India. Soon, we should see Steam machines hitting our shores but will it overpower the market leaders?
SteamOS is nothing without something to compare it to and Windows 10 is perfect for comparison because it's the latest version of Windows and most people who are into serious gaming use Windows when gaming on PCs. Let's get into the face-off, it's Steam OS vs. Windows 10.
In order to test performance out on both systems, the rig used had 8 GB of RAM running at 1600 MHZ, the GPU used was the Zotac Geforce GTX660 (2GB) w/ GeForce Game Ready Driver v. 358.91 and the processor used was the dual-core Intel® Pentium® Processor G3220 (3M Cache, 3.00 GHz). This isn't really a top-of-the-line system but it's enough to handle games from 2014 like Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux. Both operating systems were installed to run from different hard drives and use the same GPU. This minimizes OS interference in a dual boot setup.
Since SteamOS runs on Linux, it isn't easy to find a benchmark testing program that can accurately test both Linux and Windows on the same parameters. However, Geekbench does have the functionality to pull it off. As seen on the Ars Tehnica website, the performance on the SteamOS can't compare with the performance of Windows. The drop in performance is most notable when the settings are maxed out. In Ultra settings, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor running on a display resolution of 1792 x 1120 held an atrocious average of 14.6 fps as compared to the stable and playable 34.5 fps on Windows.
This might be because most games are developed for use with DirectX which is made by Microsoft. SteamOS uses Linux and is more suited to the OpenGL platform. While Steam is popular as a distribution platform for games, we haven't seen many developers keeping SteamOS in mind as well as Windows. Until then, we will have to wait till game developers figure out how to optimize their games for SteamOS and Windows.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-steam-machine/pd
http://www.sybergaming.com/products/steam-machine.aspx
https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/nen-steam-machine
http://store.steampowered.com/inr
http://in.ign.com/pc/82747/news/steam-introduces-indian-currency-to-its-online-sto
http://www.amazon.in/Zotac-Geforce-GDDR5-Graphic-Card/dp/B009AEL3JO
http://ark.intel.com/products/77773/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/ars-benchmarks-show-significant-performance-hit-for-steamos-gaming/
Hi, I just posted this here because this is the first article I've written on a freelance basis and to avoid getting screwed over, I wanted to publish it here first. After I get paid, I'll take it down with no worries. The site I wrote this for is called www.gamesandtechnology.in so wish me luck.
Steam has been the reigning champion when it comes to gamers and their gaming needs. They have had all the latest games available on the Steam store. Gamers can access their games from all over the world. They've given great discounts on games when it sales were on and Greenlight (for budding game developers) has had its share of success too. So what are we to expect when Steam wants to take it a step further with an entire operating system (OS) dedicated to gaming first and everything else later?
There are new SteamOS dedicated devices on the market and each device is meant to be kind of a PC-gaming console hybrid hooked up to the biggest game distribution service on the planet. Alienware, Syber and Zotac are currently the three manufacturers selling SteamOS machines. The Zotac steam machine looks the most impressive to us. Most notable about the offering from Zotac are the 4 HDMI ports and a Wi-Fi antenna to make sure it catches your Wi-Fi in your house. In terms of appearance, both the Syber and the Alienware are better looking devices that are sure to have any gamer visiting your house oohing and aahing for a few minutes. All the devices come bundled with a Steam controller to give you the feel of a console in your hands.
Unfortunately, these SteamOS devices aren't available in India but we should see it happening soon. Steam has already taken the first step in getting itself acquainted with an India market by introducing the Indian rupee as a currency we can pay in now. The prices of some games have also been altered to make them more accessible to the Indian market but apparently this hasn't happened for all games. Still, it's another step forward for gamers in India. Soon, we should see Steam machines hitting our shores but will it overpower the market leaders?
SteamOS is nothing without something to compare it to and Windows 10 is perfect for comparison because it's the latest version of Windows and most people who are into serious gaming use Windows when gaming on PCs. Let's get into the face-off, it's Steam OS vs. Windows 10.
In order to test performance out on both systems, the rig used had 8 GB of RAM running at 1600 MHZ, the GPU used was the Zotac Geforce GTX660 (2GB) w/ GeForce Game Ready Driver v. 358.91 and the processor used was the dual-core Intel® Pentium® Processor G3220 (3M Cache, 3.00 GHz). This isn't really a top-of-the-line system but it's enough to handle games from 2014 like Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux. Both operating systems were installed to run from different hard drives and use the same GPU. This minimizes OS interference in a dual boot setup.
Since SteamOS runs on Linux, it isn't easy to find a benchmark testing program that can accurately test both Linux and Windows on the same parameters. However, Geekbench does have the functionality to pull it off. As seen on the Ars Tehnica website, the performance on the SteamOS can't compare with the performance of Windows. The drop in performance is most notable when the settings are maxed out. In Ultra settings, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor running on a display resolution of 1792 x 1120 held an atrocious average of 14.6 fps as compared to the stable and playable 34.5 fps on Windows.
This might be because most games are developed for use with DirectX which is made by Microsoft. SteamOS uses Linux and is more suited to the OpenGL platform. While Steam is popular as a distribution platform for games, we haven't seen many developers keeping SteamOS in mind as well as Windows. Until then, we will have to wait till game developers figure out how to optimize their games for SteamOS and Windows.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-steam-machine/pd
http://www.sybergaming.com/products/steam-machine.aspx
https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/nen-steam-machine
http://store.steampowered.com/inr
http://in.ign.com/pc/82747/news/steam-introduces-indian-currency-to-its-online-sto
http://www.amazon.in/Zotac-Geforce-GDDR5-Graphic-Card/dp/B009AEL3JO
http://ark.intel.com/products/77773/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/ars-benchmarks-show-significant-performance-hit-for-steamos-gaming/
Hi, I just posted this here because this is the first article I've written on a freelance basis and to avoid getting screwed over, I wanted to publish it here first. After I get paid, I'll take it down with no worries. The site I wrote this for is called www.gamesandtechnology.in so wish me luck.
