The Steam Machine has been in the spotlight since its launch. Indeed, Valve’s console comes with a high price tag given its hardware, particularly due to the cost of memory. As we’ve seen, some stores are offering alternative, higher-performance configurations at the same price. Now, we’re learning that the company is backtracking on its machine’s performance claims by updating the product listing—specifically regarding its performance promises!
Steam Machine: Valve Removes the “4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR” Claim!
It’s now “up to 4K gaming with FSR 4.1”:
Simply put, Valve has revised the performance claims for its console on the product page. Until now, the company had promised 4K gaming at 60 FPS, all achieved through upscaling—specifically via FSR in this case, since the console runs on an AMD GPU. However, initial tests have shown that the console can sometimes struggle even at 1080p, failing to reach 60 frames per second in certain games with graphics set to Ultra. Naturally, under these conditions, promising 60 FPS gameplay in UHD seems downright optimistic coming from a small RDNA 3GPU with only 28compute units—the equivalent of an RX 7600.
Given this, Valve’s approach is understandable. The company would rather avoid a lawsuit for making overly optimistic in-game performance claims. However, this marks yet another area where the company is backtracking, in addition to pricing.
A PS5-style situation?
Ultimately, the company finds itself in the same situation as Sony did when it announced the PS5. If you recall, Sony had mentioned 8Kgaming. Of course, that didn’t end up happening, especially since there are very few 8K monitor owners—particularly given the high prices.