Anyone interested in the xi3 piston console

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sakichop

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The piston is a console pc for running steam big picture.

For $900 us you get an amd a10 3.2GHZ proc, a 128 GB SSD and 8 GB,s of ram. No mention of a video card so I can only assume it uses the integrated graphics on the CPU.

The spec's are underwhelming to say the least. You could buy a $500 laptop with better specs or build an identical pc for 400-500. ( minus the cool little case I guess)

This is not the steam box that will be made by valve it's a third party console designed to run the steam "OS". I hope valve puts together something more substantial.

They had a video showing it running tomb raider and it was stuttering quite a bit. I'm sure they will probably be optimizing it to run better before release, but is this really how they want to represent pc gaming? An overpriced and underperforming cube.

For $900 I could build a small form factor pc much more capable and hook it to my pc so I'm not sure who their target audience is. A pc game will know better than to buy it and a console gamer won't want to pay double the price of a console to play pc games of inferior hardware. I am really baffled by this.

It seems poised to make a mockery of pc gaming rather than broaden th audience of it. Worse yet is the thought that it is successful and developers start coding for these underpowered pc consoles.

So what do you guys think? Is this bad for pc gaming? Will it actually end up turning people to consoles? Is this really the evolution of pc gaming? Or am I just overreacting and make a big deal out of nothing?

Also as someone who always stays on the cutting edge of pc tech am I out of touch with what most people are gaming on? Are these spec representative of the average pc gamer?

If you don't mind post your pc spec's. I'd be curious to see what my fellow watchers are gaming on.

Mine:

I7 3770k@5 ghz
16 GB ram @1897
2 gtx titans in sli ( ordered Friday should be here tomorrow )
256GB SSD of OS
512GB SSD raid for games
1TB Raptor for games
2 TB WD black for storage
All water cooled with a homemade loop.

I know my pc is extreme and a total waste of money but building and tweaking my pc is as much of a hobby for me as gaming.
 
If you don't mind post your pc spec's. I'd be curious to see what my fellow watchers are gaming on.

Intel core 2 Duo 2.66ghz
3gb ram
GeForce 8600 GTS 512mb
Two HDDs of brands I can't remember, totaling at just over 600gb (regular, not SSD)

So yea, somewhat worse than the Piston :p
 
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I can't see much point in the thing at all. The only thing it's got is that it's TINY but who's really hurting for space so much that a laptop or small case would be too large? I suppose a fighter pilot could buy one to play games in the cockpit...??

Of course, I still don't see much point in a tablet, either.
 
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Intel core 2 Duo 2.66ghz
3gb ram
GeForce 8600 GTS 512mb
Two HDDs of brands I can't remember, totaling at just over 600gb (regular, not SSD)

So yea, somewhat worse than the Piston :p

That's actually not too bad.

My son is still running a core 2 quad but pairs it with 8GB of ram and a gtx560 and is able to run anything out now at 1600x1200.

It's not so much the low specs of the piston that offends me as much as the price they want you to pay for it.

If it were set up in a console scenario at $299 where they take a hit on the hardware but make it up in software and licensing it wouldn't seem as bad but since it will run steam big picture I assume valve will get that money and they will have to make all their profits from just the hardware.
 
I can't see much point in the thing at all. The only thing it's got is that it's TINY but who's really hurting for space so much that a laptop or small case would be too large? I suppose a fighter pilot could buy one to play games in the cockpit…??

Of course, I still don't see much point in a tablet, either.

Yeah I admit it does look cool.

5 years ago I think this would have been good. I remember wanting to make a SFF pc back then and it was very difficult and expensive to find parts. Now adays though its as easy to build SFF as it is a regular pc. So I don't see the point either.

I do however love my tablet but not for gaming. Having my calander, planner, email, Internet and all my business prints, estimates and invoices at my fingertips wherever I am is invaluable.
 
AMD Phenom II 965 @3.6Ghz
8Gb RAM
Nvidia GTX 670
Separate SSD drives for OS & gaming.

I just have little enthusiasm for keeping up with the latest and greatest tech hardware these days. Any new game with bleeding edge requirements is almost always a vapid waste of time. The only reason I recently upgraded from an ATI 5870 to the Nvidia card was to satiate my Physx curiosity. And so far I've regretted that expenditure.
 
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AMD Phenom II 965 @3.6Ghz
8Gb RAM
Nvidia GTX 670
Separate SSD drives for OS & gaming.

I just have little enthusiasm for keeping up with the latest and greatest tech hardware these days. Any new game with bleeding edge requirements is almost always a vapid waste of time. The only reason I recently upgraded from an ATI 5870 to the Nvidia card was to satiate my Physx curiosity. And so far I've regretted that expenditure.

That's still a quality setup though. I too fell victim to the PhysX curiosity. The few things they did in the batman series was pretty cool but its definitely not utilized enough to make it a determining factor in choosing nvidia over amd.
 
A German computing magazine has a guide on how to build one's own own "Steam Box".
Out of ordinary computer components.
 
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Not interested, but I don't think existing PC users are the target audience. Maybe for people with very small living rooms? I dunno. My full size desktop sits just fine by my sofa.

Current specs (bought in mid-2011):
i7 2600k 3.2Ghz OC'ed to 4.2 Ghz
8 Gb RAM
Nvidia GTX 580

Still runs almost everything fine at 1920x1080 - just playing Max Payne 3 now and the only things I needed to drop down a notch from the highest settings are shadows & AA.

PS sakichop - I'd like a Titan but not at the price!
 
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I agree that the Piston does not have much going for besides an attractive form factor.
That said I can't help but smile that while you think the Piston is overpriced (rightfully so) you are still willing to buy two video cards which costs around $999 each. Well, at least you know it is overkill getting these for gaming :)

I currently have 2x580 in SLI and previously had a Quad-SLI setup with two 9800GX2 so I know all about buying expensive video cards.

I have been considering getting a Titan but even though I play around with CUDA, I still think they are a too expensive. I would need more monitors at higher resolutions than full HD to justify it really.
 
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I've got four gaming rigs at the moment, 2x desktop and 2x laptop (I travel a lot due to work). I don't remember the exact specs, but this should be fairly accurate:

Desktop 1:
- CPU: i7-2600K
- Graphics: GTX 680
- Memory: 16 GB

Desktop 2:
- CPU: i7-920
- Graphics: ATI 5870 (used to be 2x5870 in crossfire, but I was unhappy with it)
- Memory: 6 GB

Laptop 1:
- CPU: i7-3720QM
- Graphics: GTX 680M
- Memory: 16 GB

Laptop 2:
- CPU: i7-Q720
- Graphics: ATI 5870
- Memory: 6 GB

As well as a bunch of raptor discs and SSDs. There's also a hybrid disc or two (SSD + regular disc, uses an algorithm to increase performance), but I don't remember the specs. I've got 2x IPS panel monitors + a bunch of TN panels for all this, but I'm thinking about getting another one with IPS. I really do prefer IPS over TN by quite a margin.

As you can see from the specs, I tend to buy laptop + desktop in certain generations, usually when it makes sense to do so. ATI 5870 and GTX 680 are both examples of cards that dominated the market with enough performance to last quite some time. I don't see much of a reason to go for the stuff in between, and if you pay attention to the development of graphics cards, it's usually fairly straight forward to see which will end up being the best buy within X months.

And no, I don't have any interest in any console at this point. The only advantage of new consoles is the fact that next-gen games will be able to take advantage of stronger hardware, meaning you don't need tiny zones etc due to lack of memory (I dislike loading in and out of rooms etc).
 
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I agree that the Piston does not have much going for besides an attractive form factor.
That said I can't help but smile that while you think the Piston is overpriced (rightfully so) you are still willing to buy two video cards which costs around $999 each. Well, at least you know it is overkill getting these for gaming :)

That's funny, I never once considered that.:lol:

I guess in my defense I'm pay for top of the line performance with the titans, which definitely is not the case with the piston.

Also believe it or not I do need the sli titans for some games in 3d surround but yes for everything else it's overkill.

In tomb raider I get 79 fps average with everything maxed including the hair thing. That's at 5760x1080 though. I haven't tried it with 3d yet.
 
It seems like you can't get much more high-end that what you have. I have been thinking about 3D surround but I'm not convinced that the bezels won't annoy me.
Speaking of Tomb Raider, didn't it also perform poorly on NVIDIA hardware or did they fix this?
 
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