I think you’re misunderstanding my point about FSR. Unless I’m mistaken, everywhere I’ve looked into it says the base model PS5 does not have built in FSR of any sort (though individual game developers/studios can write their own implementation of FSR and there’s apparently a few games that did just that, but the majority of PS5 games don’t)

The PS5 Pro has PSSR, a custom implementation of AMD’s FSR that they co-developed with AMD

The Steam Machine has some version of AMD’s FSR (unknown if it’s 3 or 4 or again, some custom co-developed implementation, etc)

Intel calls their version of it XeSS, and NVIDIA’s is DLSS

Regarding folks complaining about AI, etc, they were primarily making noise about Frame Generation, which is just one piece of FSR and not supported in every/earlier versions of FSR. Upcaling is/was the main feature of that technology, but both it and Frame Generation can have a big impact

From a quick search:

What FSR does

• Upscaling: Renders games at a lower resolution and then uses algorithms to intelligently scale the image up to a higher resolution, improving performance with minimal impact on image quality.

• Frame Generation: Inserts new frames between rendered frames to create a higher perceived frame rate, resulting in smoother gameplay. This is part of the FSR 3 technology

Key versions and features

• FSR 1: The original spatial upscaling solution.

• FSR 2: A temporal upscaling solution that uses data from previous frames for improved image quality.

• FSR 3: Adds Frame Generation to the temporal upscaling, boosting frame rates significantly.

• FSR Redstone: The latest generation of AMD’s technology, built for its new RX 9000 series GPUs. It includes:

• • FSR Upscaling: A new machine learning-based upscaling algorithm.
• • FSR Frame Generation: AI-powered frame generation.
• • FSR Ray Regeneration: Rebuilds ray-traced detail from sparse samples using machine learning.
• • FSR Radiance Caching: Improves lighting performance.

My main point is that I’m of the opinion (please don’t crucify me lol, I will always admit when I’m wrong once we have actual data/benchmarks) that the Steam Machine will easily match the base PS5, and likely land somewhere between it and the PS5 Pro

For what it’s worth, and as I know tone is hard to convey through text, I think you make some good points and while I’m excited about the possibilities, I’m not some hardcore Valve fanboy and am open to new information/perspective changing my opinion. I appreciate the discussion :)

Edit: One other thing I don’t think many folks have considered yet is the work Valve has put into Steam OS itself and how it may compare to running the same games under Windows. It’s possible they may be able to eek out a few more FPS, making the hardware perform a bit better. I could be reaching with this one, but we’ll just have to see

You’re right, though games are also “media” 😋

A computer hooked up to a TV is considered a media center PC, or an HTPC, not a console

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_theater_PC

You’re forgetting the the original/base PS5 doesn’t have FSR (or PSSR), but the Steam Machine will

Thanks, I hadn’t seen that.

Still though, Zen 2 “up to” 3.5GHz on the PS5 (non-Pro) vs Zen 4 “up to” 4.8GHz; RDNA 2 with 36 CUs at 2.23 GHz vs RDNA 3 with 28 CUs at 2.45GHz

Yeah the PS5 has more memory available to the GPU, but it’s shared and the Steam Machine has more total memory

Also, everyone seems to be forgetting the “semi custom” bit, which while it’s less than half the PS5 Pro’s CUs, I’d be willing to wager that it’ll beat the base PS5

I’m betting they price it under $500 for the 512GB version (complete guess here, don’t crucify me lol)

This isn’t as powerful as a PS5

Source?

I haven’t yet seen actual full specs, do we have details on those or just general info?

Can you even buy a current gen console for that? Genuinely asking, I don’t own any console systems but thought they were in the $5-600 range now (excluding the Switch)?