Xi3 - Steam's new investment and possibly steambox.

[Blockzillahead]

Right now called the "Piston".





It's made of 3 small motherboards that can be upgraded as more things are developed later.

This thing can apparently play games like Crysis 2. It wasn't told at what settings but if it's doing it at max that's outstanding.
Apparently it can also support up to 4K resolution. Probably upscaled.


They have 3 varieties right now.

The Z3RO Pro
Dual-Core 64-bit @ 1.65GHz
4GB DDR3
16GB-1TB flash based SSD
Dual Monitor Support
15 Watt TDP

X5A Modular
Not much is said about it, probably a scaled down version of X7A
30 Watt TDP

X7A Modular
Quad-Core 64-bit @ 2.8GHz - 3.2GHz
64GB-1TB SSD
Has Radeon 7000 series GPU with 384 programmable graphics cores
Triple Monitor support
40 Watt TDP

So after they announced their thing Steam was interested in the technology behind it and went ahead to invest into it. Xi3 will not be their steambox but more like a 'prototype' or example. They want to have something more powerful.

Now people like me are skeptical about this. How can this not heat up. If my computer gets really hot playing a game, how would this keep any cooler playing the same game. It's not happening. I know the things are smaller in size but it still won't stop it from getting really hot. It doesn't make sense. Also it can cost up to $1000. I rather build a cutom PC with that money and get something better.
Also they are trying to get linux on this. Really bad choice here because of AMD's lack of support for Linux.

References;
Xi3 Main Site
Steam investment into Xi3
More about the thing
Pictures

/discuss

[Ad Bot]

[NalNalas]

Woah that's awesome

[Stocking]

Nah it's fine, they're using the Xbox 360 approach: let the first couple thousand burn up and release a cooling peripheral later. That way not only do people have to pay to replace their systems, they'll have an accessory for it that's mandatory.

[Blockzillahead]

Nah it's fine, they're using the Xbox 360 approach: let the first couple thousand burn up and release a cooling peripheral later. That way not only do people have to pay to replace their systems, they'll have an accessory for it that's mandatory.

Instead of making an accessory, Microsoft made a new version of the console with better cooling.

[NiXiLL]

It running a Linux-based OS is the best feature. :P

[Stocking]

Instead of making an accessory, Microsoft made a new version of the console with better cooling.

They did both actually. So even people who bought the accessory ended up replacing their consoles anyway.

[Blockzillahead]

They did both actually. So even people who bought the accessory ended up replacing their consoles anyway.

But buying the cooling accessory is a waste then if they bought a new console with better cooling.
Microsoft likes the money.

[Stocking]

But buying the cooling accessory is a waste then if they bought a new console with better cooling.
Microsoft likes the money.

Except the cooling peripheral came out first.

[Blockzillahead]

Except the cooling peripheral came out first.

So either way, you wasted money.

[DrenDran]

It running a Linux-based OS is the best feature. :P

Yeah.
Besides i got an amd processor and linux and im fine.

[Blockzillahead]

Yeah.
Besides i got an amd processor and linux and im fine.

It's the GPU were talking about. AMD provides little driver support for Linux.

[NiXiLL]

It's the GPU were talking about. AMD provides little driver support for Linux.

The support is pretty good, actually.
It's certainly not the best, but it's okay.

[Blockzillahead]

The support is pretty good, actually.
It's certainly not the best, but it's okay.

That's the problem. It's just okay. It needs to be much more than okay to get something like this to work.

[NiXiLL]

That's the problem. It's just okay. It needs to be much more than okay to get something like this to work.

Go contribute to their open source drivers, then. :P

[Blockzillahead]

Go contribute to their open source drivers, then. :P

AMD needs to do that. Not me bro.