In recent years we have seen how the evolution of systems has allowed a big step forward in the way of playing, but there was a time when Steam decided to release its own operating system so that people could create machines for this purpose. Nail Steam The machine was a device designed primarily for playing with the system operational of Valveand we could call it the predecessor of Steam Deck, although it is clear that in terms of performance they have nothing to do with each other.
In 2013, miniature computers began to be sold, including the system operational of Steam, allowing everyone to obtain a mini PC specially designed to play from this platform. Today we can continue to build these devices called Steam Machines, but a Youtuber managed to save a prototype of what was one of the first, testing its performance with some of the most current titles.
The first Mini gaming PCs
Generally speaking, we could know these devices as the first miniature computers used exclusively for gaming, since their purpose was to be able to play directly without a computer. SO it took away too many resources like Windows. In this way, some companies launched into a market that today we can describe as a failure, because even in their time they did not have much success, although within the framework of the evolution of the devices which integrate SteamOSone could say that it was a step towards the creation of what we currently call the Steam Bridge.
The prototype that Youtuber Bringus Studios was able to save is not only a device that already had lower performance than others at its time, but also integrated Windows instead of the system operational of Steam. This obviously gave it much lower performance, considering that it is also a miniature computer that included an AMD processor in the era of 2010-2013, which we can call the dark years of this company, and that their processors were not only inferior to Intel’s, they also overheated much more.
The performance of a steam engine today
The technical specifications of this prototype are, as you would expect, quite weak compared to what we currently have, but it is still capable of running some games relatively “well” after this device’s launch, such as Doom (2016), at 480p with 40 FPS on average. Meanwhile, older titles like Half-Life 2 can run smoothly, at a stable 60 FPS… but with an average CPU temperature of 80 degrees, although in other titles like Portal 2 it is not not capable of exceeding 30 FPS on average.
Even though it’s a failed prototype, this device is currently capable of running both Windows 10 and Windows 11, which is already a merit considering it doesn’t have the specs to run any of these two. SO. On the other hand, this Steam Machine, this is in fact the test version which was used to develop the Xi3 Piston mini PC, a computer which cost $1,000 at the time and included an AMD Trinity APU with 8 GB of RAM.
