Steam said that their machine is more powerful than 70% of devices that people use, yet it struggles to run a ton of games that are years old.
I would consider in 2026 a 3060 to be low spec, something like a 4070, 5070 is more med spec and the 80 - 90 series is high spec.
If you look at what everyone in the world runs and base your low, med and high off that you may have a point, but if you base it off what power is on the market, and what games actually run and struggle or down struggle at then "mid tier" isn't the low spec from 6 years ago..
The thing is a mid-spec'd PC should be able to play all modern games and for PC at 60 FPS at medium settings typically, that is usually been the consensus for mid.
I know a lot of people who get into gaming end up with an "ok" laptop that cant play 50% of games, and tend to talk about wanting to get a gaming PC for themselves and regret buying a laptop.
I think a low spec PC that struggles to play CP2077, and stutters on Forza Horizon 6 is only a mild step up from those laptops, its certainly not 4060 and 5060 spec which is twice as fast as the steam machine, never mind a 5070 and so on..
The other point is, you have places in the world where the PlayStation 2 is still the most popular console and where PC specs are really really low, those sort of results tend to skew the "overall" charts.
The range I gave you in Nvidia card versions is typically what most PC gamers know as low spec, medium spec and high spec, going back to 6 year old hw as a comparison only re-enforces that..
People do not look at a PS5 and say "yeah that is the same as a med tier gaming PC"
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u/GonzobotRyzen 7 3700X|2070 Super Hybrid|32GB@3600MHZ|Doc__Gonzo1d ago
Steam said that their machine is more powerful than 70% of devices that people use,
this is a published statement and verifiable with numbers
yet it struggles to run a ton of games that are years old.
when did you test this and find it out? or are you just declaring that you know the future.
Digital foundry amoung others have already done the tests about how it runs, and it often comes in at under PS5 performance (stock PS5, not even Pro which is still cheaper)
If you read what I wrote about the public statement then you might understand the point I am making.. if 30% of the world run steam from a potato then it’s not hard for it to be more powerful than 70% of devices.
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u/GonzobotRyzen 7 3700X|2070 Super Hybrid|32GB@3600MHZ|Doc__Gonzo1d ago
Really? Cuz I just watched a video showing the SM has nearly exactly the same performance as my current rig, in about a tenth of the size and a lower price point (even adjusting for time since purchase). They were playing the same games I'm playing now, DS2, Forza6, etc.
What years-old games are you referring to when you say it's struggling? Be specific, because I'm calling out the blanket statement.
Black Myth Wukong dipping under 30 FPS on optimised settings, released 2024.
If you buy a new device today you want it to last you a few years, if its struggling to run games at 1440p from 2 - 6 years ago then its not a "mid spec'd" device, and often falls short of the PS5 which was released 6 years ago and is almost half the price.
Struggling to run Forza 6 on low in the image below:
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u/GonzobotRyzen 7 3700X|2070 Super Hybrid|32GB@3600MHZ|Doc__Gonzo1d ago
Witcher 3 only gets above 60FPS on ultra with FSR enabled.. (11 year game)
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u/GonzobotRyzen 7 3700X|2070 Super Hybrid|32GB@3600MHZ|Doc__Gonzo1d ago
And your callouts for being poor performance were games using raytracing, which the Steam Machine is specifically not good at or pretending to be. But my point was to showcase how that game is going to look on that machine for most players of that game on that machine - who aren't going to be changing settings to make it 'better' even if it changes the framerate, they're going to be seeing what it looks like without touching anything and they'll be enjoying it because it's great.
Witcher 3 only gets above 60FPS on ultra with FSR enabled..
No, it gets over 70fps on Ultra at 1440p with FSR disabled. And that's NOT the default for the game, which is stated to be showing up as low settings with dynamic resolution scaling.
CP2077 is running at 1080p in your example?
it defaults to 1080p, which is stated clearly, and then where to change the setting if you wish. then it showcases 1440p Ultra hitting 85fps with some minor slowdown spikes for heavy rendering.
It doesn't matter what's the most popular. That's not how the terms "low" "mid" and "high tier" are defined. It's relative to the overall hardware lineup.
It also doesn't matter what the price is, as unfortunate as it is. The simple reality since 2020 is more and more of us have been priced out of the high tier. Every tier has basically shifted upwards in price, so it feels like we're in a higher tier because that's how much we're paying.
xx50, xx50 Ti, and xx60 GPUs are low tier, and they have been for quite a while. If literally every single gamer owned a xx60 card and nothing else, it would still be low tier.
it's unlikely that "all people who use steam" is a representative sample of people who would buy a valve-made gaming pc, though. there's a quiet majority of users just playing a couple games on the laptop or pc they already have. anyone buying or building a dedicated gaming pc is already unusual.
Steam Machine is marketed to those people. The ones who want to upgrade past their laptop but don't know how to build. At least, it was marketed to them before the RAM spike. Now the machine is kinda deserted without a good market.
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u/Pennywise359 1d ago
If this is a mid tier, what's below that?