Pre-orders available now
Alienware’s Steam Machines are now available for pre-order, and come in tow with a Steam Controller, Steam OS, and a fourth-generation Intel Core processor. Unfortunately, the other specs aren’t that great, at least when compared to most recommended specifications for the latest games.
These Steam Machines come in three preconfigured flavors: Intel Core i3 with 4GB of RAM for $449.99; Intel Core i5 with 8GB of RAM for $649.99; and Intel Core i7 with 8GB of Ram for $749.99.
The highly anticipated Fallout 4‘s recommended PC specs are pretty doable by modern-day standards, only requiring a decent processor and 8GB of RAM, but Alienware’s specs fall short of the graphical requirements, having only 2GB of GDDR5 video RAM.
When comparing the Alienware Steam Machines to the upcoming hardware hog Star Wars Battlefront, things look a bit more dire: Battlefront‘s recommended PC specs ask for 16GB of RAM and 4GB of GDDR5, both well above the maximum specs offered by Alienware.
That being said, the systems have a custom-built Nvidia GeForce GTX GPU with 2GB of GDDR5, of which no benchmarks are currently available that I’m aware of. The wizards at Nvidia are pretty damned good at what they do, but I doubt they can make 2GB of GDDR5 work as well as 4GB.
To be fair, neither Fallout 4 or Star Wars Battlefront are confirmed to be in development for SteamOS, which is the case for a lot of big titles this year as SteamOS is a modified version of Linux. Perhaps people are willing to sink $750 into a machine that plays Team Fortress 2 and Portal really, really well, but with those specs, I’d just suggest building a gaming PC and getting a $50 Steam Link.
