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Valve's recently revealed specifications for its "Steam Machine" line of PCs designed for the living room proved to be almost the complete opposite of what we were expecting. If the prototype hardware is any indication of the firm's plans for the final product, we're not looking at a range of devices aimed at challenging the position of the next-gen consoles - for now at least. Rather, what we have here are well-specified gaming machines aimed at the PC faithful, almost certainly with premium price-tags to match.CPU-wise, Valve hasn't skimped in its prototype line-up - for the most part. We're looking at the latest Intel "Haswell" parts, specifically the 3.2GHz quad-core i5-4570 and the 3.5GHz i7-4770. These are highly capable processors, but with a price-tag to match. Compare and contrast with AMD - its current enthusiast flagship, the FX-8350, is around £80 to £100 cheaper than the 4770K, and actually matches or even beats it on highly threaded games like Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4, where it easily beats the similarly priced i5-4570.
The arrival of next-gen consoles finally gives AMD the price vs. performance win it's been looking for in gaming, but the vast majority of the Steam library will still run better on Intel processors as games tend to be optimised for two or four cores, rather than the six or eight that greatly benefits AMD. But there are other considerations beyond raw power: the fact that Intel offers cooler processors and higher performance per watt will also have factored into Valve's decision making - Intel's sheer efficiency makes it the default choice for providing capable gaming hardware in a small form factor enclosure. However, the consequence of choosing Intel over AMD is that the machines will prove more expensive to build, resulting in higher prices to consumers.
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