Unified memory is a lot more flexible and efficient though. You don't have to have assets loaded in RAM and also VRAM for the CPU/GPU to use them. Don't forget about how much more RAM a general purpose OS like Steam OS can consume versus a gaming specific OS too. The PS5 Pro also has an extra 2GB of DDR5 system RAM too.
My old Ryzen 3700X gaming PC has 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM (RTX 2070 Super) and there isn't any game that runs better on it than my Xbox Series X. And the GPU in the Steam Machine is slightly worse than an RTX 2070 Super.
> You don't have to have assets loaded in RAM and also VRAM for the CPU/GPU to use them.
You typically don't want to do this anyway in games. You're probably doing something wrong if you're reading textures/meshes on both the CPU and GPU.
> Don't forget about how much more RAM a general purpose OS like Steam OS can consume versus a gaming specific OS too.
SteamOS is meant to be a gaming specific OS first. It has a desktop environment but none of that loads unless you switch to desktop mode. That's just taking up some disk space while you play games.
>SteamOS is meant to be a gaming specific OS first. It has a desktop environment but none of that loads unless you switch to desktop mode.
I think it's fair for some of us to consider the resource usage of a core feature and not really accept "just don't use desktop mode" as a viable suggestion. Especially if half the pitch is "it's a mobile PC." You can't use many of the features it's capable of in gaming mode.
It's not "don't use desktop mode", it's "switch back to gaming mode before playing a game".
On any 16GB machine you're going to want to close your any ram heavy apps like browsers before starting a game. Switching to gaming mode is an easy way to do that.
Which means I have to close every other piece of software/window I had open and can’t run a 2nd program while playing. A lot of people, for instance, use discord while gaming.
If you're playing games only in desktop mode then you're throwing away most of the benefits of SteamOS. You could install Steam on any Linux distro and have the same experience.
Gaming mode skips running the entire desktop environment and runs games in a minimal environment. KDE is fairly lightweight already but come on, how can it compete with something that just displays one window filling the whole screen?
Some mods are way easier to run in desktop mode, plus I can’t open a browser window or discord or anything when in gaming mode. Gaming mode is great and gets you more power but it also removes the ability to easily access things (or removes access entirely) some of us like to use while playing.
It’s fair to assess the full desktop experience, especially when it’s a core part of the device.
Easier to run or set up? I don't see how it'd be easier for anything other than setting up.
> I can’t open a browser window or discord or anything when in gaming mode
You can, actually! Just add them as non-Steam games. You can have multiple games/programs open in gaming mode and the Steam menu lets you switch between them. Or, if you want it a bit more streamlined, there are Decky Loader plugins that help with these.
My old Ryzen 3700X gaming PC has 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM (RTX 2070 Super) and there isn't any game that runs better on it than my Xbox Series X. And the GPU in the Steam Machine is slightly worse than an RTX 2070 Super.