Posts Tagged Under: Steam

What Logical Increments Tier is Required to Run the Most Popular Steam Games?

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(Information on Steam’s top games were gathered for this article from Steam Charts)

Back in January 2020, I crafted a neat little piece discussing the Logical Increments tier needed to enjoy each of the top games on Steam at the time. Fast forward to now, and oh, how the scene has shifted! Back around that period, we were seeing trade tariffs causing a good bump in prices for PC hardware​. As we ventured into late 2020, high demand meant the cost of PC parts kept climbing, and 2021 brought even higher prices—especially for graphics cards due to a cryptocurrency boom. Oh, and let’s not forget, the world was just getting acquainted with Covid-19, adding a whole new level of complexity to tech market dynamics through supply chain issues.

Now, at the tail end of 2023, with prices and availability having normalized in some (though not all) component categories, and just a week left until Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s about time we take a fresh look at what Logical Increments PC building tier you’d need to dive into the most popular Steam games today. Let’s see what changed in the last few years, and whether that ol’ system still has some life in it, or whether it might be worth a little upgrade. Stick around as we unpack the current gaming demands and discuss today’s tech landscape.

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ROG Ally vs. Steam Deck – Hardware Comparison


ASUS announced a potent Steam Deck competitor May 11th and released the spec sheets for two models that vary in more ways than the different Steam Deck options from Valve. We’ll be looking at the official tech specs for each device and comparing them side by side. There’s some juicy differences ahead, so let’s get started!

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The Best Operating System for Your Gaming PC

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You just finished your brand-new gaming PC build and saw it POST. Now is the time to install an operating system. But which one should you pick? What is best for you?

There is a large variety of operating systems you can pick from, yet only a few are really suitable for gaming. The three that I consider most suitable and that I am going to compare here are Windows 10, Linux (in the form of Ubuntu), and SteamOS.

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Steam Deck Specifications – Comparing Valve’s Deck to PC Gaming Hardware

Steam Deck Performance

Valve has released the Steam Deck specifications, and they have spawned a storm of excitement. Essentially, the Steam Deck is a handheld gaming PC built around SteamOS. The Steam Deck is poised to be a fairly unique product, looking like a hybrid of a handheld console like the Switch and a conventional desktop PC (like the ones found in our main chart). Indeed, Valve’s Deck is being marketed as a “Gaming PC” with the intention of providing all the features that framing entails, for everyone from tech enthusiasts to gamers.

It’ll have a native SteamOS interface with (mostly) complete support for your pre-existing Steam library (limited to games that have either been ported to Linux or which can be run with Proton and Steam Play), and it’ll also have the ability to replace SteamOS with another option, such as Windows, in order to run just about any other title you can think of.

The Steam Deck specifications and features allow you to run anything and everything on it—and its the combination of that openness; controls including a touchscreen, capacitive pads, and back-grip buttons; the ability to ‘dock’ it to play on a TV or monitor; and a priority placed on ergonomics that (altogether) makes the device more interesting than something like a Nintendo Switch or a GPD Win3. There are just so many features all at once!

As for the hardware itself, Valve has released a very comprehensive spec sheet on the Steam Deck website. We’ll know exactly how this hardware will perform in games once the first units make it into the hands of reviewers, but until then we can take a close look at the provided specs and discuss how they stack up against current desktop hardware!

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The Steam Deck vs Valve’s Top 10 Games

 

How well does Valve’s new Steam Deck hold up against Steam’s own library?

The announcement of the Steam Deck in July 2021 introduced Valve’s latest excursion into the complex world of gaming hardware. No doubt inspired by Nintendo’s success with the Switch console, the Steam Deck aims to let you take your entire Steam library wherever you go. Well, most of your library, anyway (more on that soon enough). But how will the Steam Deck handle Steam’s current most popular games? Will they run like a well-oiled machine, or break down faster than a 3DS running Crysis?

Let’s look at Steam’s current top 10 games on Steam Charts, and do a little predicting! We’ll be looking at the 10 Steam games with the highest player counts in August 2021.

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Our Top 60 Games in the Steam Winter Sale 2015

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When doth cometh the Lord GabeN, bearing gifts? Every yuletide, of course!

Every year, Steam has several sales, usually coinciding with the various holidays. Two days ago, Steam’s Winter sales started, bringing down the prices of over 10,000 different games.

Some people would say that 10,000 is a large number of games, and we would agree. We have combed through the sales, and picked out about 60 titles that we liked the most. We split the recommendations in bigger and smaller titles. Since there are so many games on sale, we only looked at games with discounts of 50% or more.

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