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@themightyant Yup! Absolutely - this is probably why Nvidia aren't selling it as a PhysX-style thing that benefits from a second card, and why this is just a mod that someone has made as an experiment. But it's interesting!

@MattGPT I don't think we've done latency testing specifically, but the cost is around 8-12ms of rendering time so frame-rates tend to just about halve - with a corresponding increase in latency. It seems like, under Nvidia-intended conditions, it's essentially a flat cost that applies to the final rendered frame, so I'm not sure what performance improvements by developers are possible - but Nvidia themselves are able to find perf improvements and have hinted at a future 7x speed-up vs the initial showing.

@Pesky_wabbit John seemed to have a good time in his retro testing, but yeah there's a definite limit to the tech.

@Nuwa Having bigger pixels for my old, tired eyes is no bad thing Plus, it means you can lean back and play console games!

@TheBrainninja Hahaha. It looks less sketchy when it's not fully extended to get a photo! And the monitor weighs less than 8kg without the stand, amazingly, which is less than the 9kg quoted ability of the monitor arm (the same Ollin I've had for a while - https://fave.co/4gAC8zs)

@stoper Nice, those look so good. Did you ever run into an issue where 21:9 was supported but 32:9 wasn't? Or is it generally the case that games that support one support both?

@stoper I haven't tried one in ages! Maybe Samsung will be nice enough to send me their latest 32:9 giant. What model are you using?

@Rhalgr Great question.

@adorablebob Already available in the US, "coming soon" to the UK - will update with a UK link when it's live, likely September.

@Granadico Ha. Have stolen your joke, thank you!

@JJtheTexan Fair enough, I'm probably thinking with my SEO brain too much - it's generally good to match what people are typing, but I take the point. Will amend!

@MartinAshford Modern Warfare 4? It ought to with those specs.

@filreed Sadly OOS now it looks like, but if it was available I hope someone grabbed one!

@Obsidian76 yeah that's fine, just a little long-winded - hence "decimated" ;p

I appreciate the grammar chat!

@Obsidian76 Would it be better if I said it was "animated on twos"? I generally prefer decimated as a descriptor because it offers the possibility of 60/30 and 60/15 and 120/15 rather than saying "it's only ever half-rate".

@Obsidian76 You're a prescriptivist I see!

@TheBrainninja I honestly think that's fair - older games feel so much more readable to me! There's certainly a balance to be struck, and I don't think modern graphics necessarily need to suffer in this way.

@Wba84 For Steam Machine circa performance, 8GB is manageable. Assuming we're going AMD current-gen for the Linux support, the next tier up is the 9070 GRE at £500 or full-fat 9070 at £550 💀 I guess the 7700 XT is also there, but £438 for worse RT perf and more power is hard to swallow!

@PolArbequina Yeah, fair. I've been fairly lucky - I've had multiple OSes on the same drive for the last four or five years and only had one borked boot loader, which was fixable with some Googling, but it is definitely some extra grief. With SSD prices what they are though, it's a bit harder to justify the multiple drives!

@Eruanno fully agree! I don't mind 30fps cutscenes in 30fps game, but the whiplash from gameplay to cutscenes is really annoying.

@Hustler_One I'll see if we can do a quick check for Direct - but most likely the changes won't be significant enough for us to have much (if anything) to report!

@Titntin Yeah but nostalgia innit? I used to have a mini PC with a handle and I did use it quite frequently for taking it to LAN parties and moving it between the living room and my office!

@Jimbojones @Obsidian76 I've only used Heroic on my Steam Deck a while ago, so apologies if things have moved on, but it was a little more janky than GOG is on Windows, some features weren't present/working (eg cloud save sync) and the program in general required a lot of fiddling to get it working how I wanted.

@MartinAshford Haha, the mouse mat has to be prioritised. Thankfully, another mouse I tested recently came with about 100 little dot skates, so I think a transplant is in order! Thanks for the kind words.

@Ed64 Honestly, it's the most comfortable chair I've ever used - and I've tested probably about a dozen long-term at this stage? I feel like I'm less likely to slouch while sitting in it, and I like that it fits under a desk because the back is low and the arms drop all the way down. And I feel like it's still in great condition five years after the review!

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-01-21-herman-miller-x-logitech-g-embody-gaming-chair-nevi-desk-ollin-arm-review

@sits It's pretty flexible, so it should get better if the chair is sitting flush against your back rather than being straight up/down

@Frosh okay, I respect the mindset.

@Frosh ¿por qué no los dos?

@orionpsg1 Yeah, fair enough - I've definitely had that before with older Windows/Linux versions, but thankfully not in the past few years. Also, thanks for reminding me that we're well into the second half of the year 💀

@GCGorusu Nice! I've only used Bazzite on a handheld, but I was very impressed with it there too. Might need to do a proper Bazzite vs CachyOS vs SteamOS article at some stage!

@Claw Nice, have fun! The one thing I'd say in addition is that you may have to pay import duty on stuff, I believe on goods over £135, so worth keeping that in mind.

@Max_the_German I can only guess that the latest-gen manufacturing processes are being maximised by the AI industry, so older stuff like Zen 4 is easier to produce (at sane prices or at all) than Zen 5 or Zen 6. And, if you assume that a certain percentage of parts intended to be 7800X3D processors fall below AMD's standards, eventually you have enough CPUs to rebrand as a whole new SKU with lower specs. I assume that we haven't yet reached that stage with the newer 9800X3D!

@Claw Rich and I order stuff from there all the time! You still need to have an idea of what you're looking for and it is possible to get tricked into buying a knock-off, but ultimately it's just a Western front-end for Taobao which is like Chinese Ebay/Amazon. A lot of Western companies just buy stuff from Taobao or AliExpress and then resell it with English language packaging, so the prices do tend to be a lot better for stuff that is made in China... and amazingly, CPUs do tend to be legitimate if they're from highly-rated sellers like the one I linked.

@MartinAshford The next mouse I'm testing is the G305 X Superlight if you're interested

@Someguyperson It's Logitech's own tactile mechanical switches, though I can't find an actual name anywhere - not "Romer-G tactile" and not "GX Brown" as they're white coloured. They're not a million miles away from Browns, but with a higher actuation force (55g vs 45g).

@Pesky_wabbit Not all ultrawides have a curve - and not all 2D pixel art games are limited to 4:3 I agree that 16:9 is definitely easier for emulation, though the niche use-cases John shows in the video are pretty cool.

@Vyns Update from the OP on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/steammachine/comments/1ulzo6a/comment/ovcsfkc/

Reply from Valve on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/steammachine/comments/1ulzo6a/comment/ovedotl/

Our updated article: please scroll up 😅

@StooMonster I did it!

@themightyant Probably makes a bit more sense for a living room PC than a handheld? But yeah, it's a good point!

@themightyant I very much doubt this is a deliberate "let's force people to use SteamOS" when "single boot is easier to get working" also explains the situation, Occam's Razor and all that

@themightyant Pretty much literally yeah: https://ibb.co/k6J6V9kN

@themightyant Not necessarily, given the gulf in power available to each system, and particularly given that it manages to have better image quality with a much lower internal res But yeah, obviously "better than PS4" is far from the highest quality bar!

@themightyant Have removed for now then I think the last few games I've bought on PS5 have all been £59.99 options, which is probably why I had that price in my head! Clearly too tired, thanks!

@Someguyperson @k1x- @MittenFacedLass Serves me right for doing this after being up for nearly 24 hours! Fixed now, I think.

@Tobility Good things come to those that wait..?

I was so hopeful for this one, but left feeling fairly disappointed!

@darthvirgin It's just a bit of fun, it's obviously not a proper trailer

@Max_the_German You're quite right, Max the German!

@themightyant I can only assume this is with a certain time period of expected price rises baked in...

@themightyant Fair. I should probably amend it, thanks!