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.

▲

Rohansi a day ago | parent [-]

> 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.

▲

Forgeties79 6 hours ago | parent [-]

>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.

	▲	bryanlarsen 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	justinsaccount 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> You can't use many of the features it's capable of in gaming mode It is trivial to switch between gaming mode and desktop mode. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.