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Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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The point of shitty old processors was to get them cheap. Now that RAM and storage are the biggest factors, they could have gone with newer processors and not be significantly more expensive but significantly more performant.
Shitty, old processors? In which way?
Zen 4 is literally just a single generation behind current latest gen architecture. And you're way off on the pricing too - Zen5 APUs are essentially the AI 300/400 lineup, of which the higher end models still cost well over what Valve would find affordable. Meanwhile the GPU Valve chose to be integrated into the SM is 30-40% more performant than the 890M bundled with the Ryzen AI 370 (the only affordable kinda-high-end Zen5 APU).
So no, it's neither old nor shitty.
The entire cooling system is designed around those processors. Changing them would delay the Steam Machine by multiple years. Also, those processors may be old (or more accurately, based on an older architecture), but they’re certainly not shitty.
Sure. Fans work totally different when there's a slightly newer processor.
Wasn't that assumption part of why the i9 MacBooks a few generations back had massive heating issues?
The fans and heatsinks weren't enough to cool the i9, even though they were fine with the i7, so performance would quickly go into the floor when they started throttling.
I used to have a near maxed out 2019 i9 mbp. The 2020 base model m1 blew it out of the water performance-wise.
Granted, a big part of that was the apple silicon, but the i9 was supposed to be a powerhouse. It just wound up spending most of its time thermally throttled.