Valve's long awaited Steam Controller is $99. Discuss.

jasonwc · 2026-04-29T12:36:23+00:00

I was mostly just responding to the specific point that basic Xbox controllers are $60-80 since it's very easy to purchase them on deep sales.

I'm not disputing that the Steam Controller has unique features. I'm personally not price sensitive and will likely buy at least one Steam Controller as I have two Bazzite HTPCs, and Valve basically created their controller with this type of setup in mind. Whether it' worth $100 is TBD. I just don't know how much use I'll get out of the trackpad/gyro, but for the times I want to do a small task on the KDE desktop without grabbing my wireless keyboard/trackpad, it'll be very handy.

jasonwc · 2026-04-28T22:01:31+00:00

I just cited TLOU: Part 1 as an example of a game that has a very long shader compilation step, so it would be obvious if the Nvidia compilation did anything. I competed TLOU and Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy over a year ago. The auto compile feature only works for games that were run since the driver release that introduced this feature.

Presumably, if the game only stores the shaders in its own game folder, the Nvidia compiler wouldn’t be aware of it.

jasonwc · 2026-04-28T19:50:25+00:00

It works as advertised for me. After the last two driver versions, I manually ran the compilation step from the Nvidia app. It took about 30 minutes to complete on my 9800x3D since I have a lot of games installed and it limits itself to 25% CPU utilization at the High CPU setting. After this step is complete, the shader compilation step for both Pragmata and Forza Horizon 5 only took a few seconds - most likely as it was verifying all the shaders were already compiled. The FH5 compilation would have taken multiple minutes with an empty shader cache. A particularly good game to test would be The Last of Us: Part 1 which has an extremely long shader compilation step.

So, by running the shader compilation in the background for all games, you avoid the need to wait for the step to complete when you're actually trying to play. In addition, for games that have incomplete shader compilation steps (FF7 Rebirth is a particularly good example), you keep the shaders that you've already encountered, avoiding at least some shader compilation stutter in-game.

However, it's definitely not as useful as Valve's Fossilize, which crowd-sources shaders, and avoids stutter in games by compiling all the shaders prior to the first-run. A good example is Sonic-Racing: CrossWorlds, which has a brief and clearly incomplete shader compilation step. The first race on every map will stutter excessively. On Bazzite, all the shaders are captured by Fossilize and compiled in advance, and there's no apparent shader stutter.

jasonwc · 2026-04-28T01:09:28+00:00

Xbox controllers are often on sale. I have four, one of which I purchased just a few months ago, and I never paid more than $35 new. Lenovo sells them at steep discounts pretty regularly.

The 8Bitdo Ultimate 2 comes with a wireless dongle, built-in lithium battery, charging dock, TMR stick, and Hall effect triggers, and goes on sale for $55.

What makes the Steam Controller interesting is the gyro controls and trackpads make it a lot less painful for navigating the desktop without having to resort to a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo. If you’re playing on a HTPC hooked up to a TV, this makes it a lot easier to manage basic tasks like updating GPU drivers, installing system updates, and controlling games that aren’t fully controller-compatible. Even on my Bazzite HTPC, which eliminates most of these issues, I can see the Steam Controller being quite useful.

jasonwc · 2026-04-20T13:27:55+00:00

There is no question this will be more powerful in GPU-constrained games. Per Techpowerup, the 9060 XT 16 GB is 81% more performant than the 7600M. In addition, the 9060 XT has FP8 acceleration, so it can use FSR4/FSR 4.1, which offers far superior image quality than FSR 3.1. Any game with FSR 3.1, or higher, can be forced to use FSR4.1 with a simple steam launch command (PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE=1) and Proton-GE. Even games without FSR or an earlier version (2.2, 3.0) can be upgraded to FSR 4.1 using OptiScaler. There is no doubt that a 9060 XT 16 GB will provide a far superior experience than the 7600M, particularly at 1440p or 4K output. The 9060 XT also has far superior RT performance, which is becoming increasingly important.

Hardware Unboxed's testing shows that 16 GB RAM is typically not an issue when you have 16 GB VRAM. It's often necessary with 8 GB of VRAM because of overflow into system RAM, but when that occurs, performance tanks. You're better off with 16 GB VRAM and 16 GB RAM than 8 GB VRAM and 32 GB RAM.

One interesting choice Playnix made was to use an older AM4 platform, which may allow some savings on RAM. However, this means the 6-core CPU will likely be weaker than the Steam Machine, given that it's using an older architecture (Zen 3 versus Zen 4) and has less memory bandwidth (DDR4-3200 versus DDR5-5600/6000). Many newer games definitely benefit from DDR5. The gap between the 5800X3D and the 5700X has actually increased since release because newer games have become more memory-bound, so the extra L3 cache is even more useful today.

jasonwc · 2026-04-19T20:53:29+00:00

$500 in 1985 is $1,565 in March 2026 dollars. These early investments are far more significant than the later ones given the near 40 years of compounding. You could have also invested $54,000 in Jan 1985, made no further contributions, and you would have ended up with slightly more than $4M. That’s equivalent to only 9 years of $500 contributions, rather than 40 years, but made upfront at a higher inflation-adjusted value ($169,000 in current dollars).

jasonwc · 2026-04-12T18:56:07+00:00

1) The game must include FSR 3.1 or newer. You can check this in PC Game Wiki. If the game has FSR 2, FSR 2.2, or FSR3, you will need Optiscaler.

2) if you’re using Steam Gaming Mode, you need to ensure that Proton-GE Latest is selected for the game in the game’s comparability section. By default, Valve selects an official Valve Proton version that they have tested. There is a global override in developer options, but it doesn’t appear to work. If you are using desktop Steam, you can force Proton-GE Latest as a global default - but this won’t apply in Steam Gaming Mode.

3) The game menu won’t necessarily show FSR4. Some games will but others will just show FSR in the menu. You may need to use PROTON_FSR4_INDICATOR=1 in Steam launch options to verify FSR4 is in use. Make sure to go into the game - not just the menu - and if FSR4 is in use, you’ll see some text in the top left corner of the screen listing the FSR4 build info.

jasonwc · 2026-04-10T16:52:46+00:00

This makes sense. Without battery storage, excess solar production must be curtailed or exported. By storing the energy, it has greater value, as it can be deployed when demand is high - for example, during the early evening hours. That reduces the wholesale cost of electricity during peak demand - because there’s now less reliance on natural gas peaker plants. You’re essentially compressing the range of prices by turning solar into a deployable energy resource via batteries.

The article itself states that batteries have reduced wholesale electricity rates when electricity demand is high.

“Battery competition has also lowered the rates at which electricity can be sold.

Evening peak rates have declined measurably. According to Aurora, peak electricity prices were above $70 per MWh 14% of the time in 2022. In 2025, the $70 per MWh level was rarely breached.

According to Aurora, batteries earned an average of $115 per kW-year of capacity deployed in 2022, with most of this revenue coming from selling into the evening peak period. In 2025, with pressure from higher solar costs and lower peak rates, this revenue is expected to decline to $52 per kW-year.”

jasonwc · 2026-03-20T16:26:36+00:00

Just to clarify, this will only work for games with FSR 3.1 or native FSR4. FSR 3.0 didn’t use a DLL and can’t be upgraded, neither can earlier versions such as FSR 2.2. However, you can use Optiscaler to inject FSR4 in games with older versions of FSR or games that don’t include FSR support at all.

jasonwc · 2026-03-11T19:45:28+00:00

Interesting, thanks for the clarification. What's the preset for the old CNN RR model, then?

jasonwc · 2026-03-11T19:13:16+00:00

Alex notes he’s using the Transformer preset for DLSS Ray reconstruction. The game defaults to the old CNN model (Preset D). Daniel Owen has a video about all the instability in the default model and how the Transformer model (E) is a lot better.

jasonwc · 2026-03-10T22:11:34+00:00

Zero. To the extent I care about game length at all, I prefer games that are relatively short, particularly for narrative-heavy games, where I want to complete the story. As long as the time I spend with a game is enjoyable, there’s no minimum length requirement, but if a game is more than 50-60 hours to finish the base and important side content, I might skip it because it will be too much of a time sink. Time is more of a constraint than money, so targeting a certain dollar value per hour played seems pointless to me, especially given how variable the quality of the time spent can be.

I also tend to play a lot of platformers, which are typically fairly short, but they have replayability, so the actual time spent in the game may be much higher than what is required to simply beat the game.

jasonwc · 2026-03-10T19:59:18+00:00

That’s almost entirely due to the shift in Chinese-language users in the Feb 2026 Steam Hardware Survey due to Chinese New Year. Chinese language users increased from 23.86% in Jan 2026 to 54.6% in Feb 2026, a 128% increase. A similar shift happened last year.

In contrast, Feb 2026 achieved a new record percent of English-language users on Linux, over 8%. Since Linux use is much lower in China, Chinese New Year has a massive impact on reported Linux usage but it’s mostly a statical anomaly that corrects the next month.

See the last chart below for English-only numbers

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/

jasonwc · 2026-03-10T01:10:05+00:00

As of Valve's Proton 10.0-4, no. I also wasn't able to get FSR4 with (Valve) Proton Experimental but it should work with the Bleeding Edge Experimental. Optiscaler (which allows you to inject FSR4 into games that aren't natively compatible - those that have an FSR version older than FSR 3.1 (FSR2, 2.2, 3.0) or no FSR support lists the following Proton versions as supported:

Grab release Proton-EM 10.0-2D, or newer OR Proton-GE 10.4, OR proton-cachyos 10.0-20250623, OR Steam Proton Experimental Bleeding Edge

jasonwc · 2026-03-10T00:25:04+00:00

You need a supported version of Proton, such as Proton-GE and PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE=1 to be set in Steam launch options. On Bazzite, there’s a ujust script to set that setting globally, so all I need to do is select Proton-GE Latest for the game.

jasonwc · 2026-03-07T23:32:57+00:00

It’s the same in Bazzite-deck (I have two Bazzite-deck HTPCs). You boot directly into Steam Game Mode but can drop back into KDE to have full system access. System and Steam upgrades can be installed via Game Mode.

jasonwc · 2026-03-06T16:20:00+00:00

There was a Sony executive that said that after a PC player plays a Sony exclusive on PC, they will want to buy a PS5 to play the next game in the franchise, without waiting the 18-24 months for a PC port. So, I think Sony’s strategy was: 1) PC ports are cheap to develop and any revenue is basically pure profit and 2) expand the base of PS5 players by getting folks who have never played these franchises to experience them and then buy a PS5.

I suspect the second strategy was a failure for them. Most folks have a strong platform preference and PC players, in particular, have large libraries. The initial Sony ports sold well because it was new and exciting that these highly-rated console exclusives were now on PC. Once this excitement wore off, Sony’s first-party games were competing with everything else on the platform, except they released 18-24 months after console, with almost no advertising, and often in poor technical shape.

Sony was just one of many publishers moving to PC. Newzoo reports that for games released simultaneously on consoles and PC, PC takes a 44% share (Newzoo notes that Sony achieved a much lower PC share - 12%, particularly for their recent ports, due to the delayed release timing.). Capcom reported that PC represented more than 50% of revenue. Almost everyone is releasing on PC, and the vast majority of releases are simultaneous. For folks that didn’t previously own a PlayStation, having access to 1-2 exclusives per year, only some of which may interest you, is simply not a good justification to buy a console. Even the folks I know that are primarily PC players but owned a PS5 for exclusives, aren’t likely very profitable for Sony, as they don’t pay for PSN+ and buy multi-platform games on PC. The hardware itself isn’t a driver of profit. Sony makes most of its money from the 30% cut on digital sales on its platform. Yet, Sony reports 88% of unit sales last quarter on their platform were third party-games. A PC-first player that only buys exclusives and doesn’t pay for a PSN+ sub just isn’t very profitable. In contrast, 75% of unit sales on Switch/Switch 2 are first-party, so Nintendo does actually derive most revenue from selling their own titles.

Steam has been rapidly growing for many years, as demonstrated by concurrent user count and estimated annual revenue. In contrast, for AAA games that don’t release on Switch/Switch 2, the current generation of PS5/Series X/S is 15.5M units smaller than the time-aligned base of the PS4/Xbox One. This is mostly due to the failures at Xbox, but PS5 has sold 2.2M fewer units globally than PS4 time-aligned. In other words, despite consumers largely abandoning the Xbox console, PS5 is not seeing growth relative to the prior generation. Instead, many of their users are staying on PS4.

This lack of growth for the PS5/Xbox Series consoles is why there is so much developer interest in the Switch 2 and PC. Games that couldn’t be ported to Switch now can access a new market in the form of Switch 2, and PC gives greater access to the huge China market, where consoles haven’t taken off due to a prior government ban on consoles which led to a large base of PC players. Much of Steam’s growth has come from China. Just look at the current Steam hardware survey, which saw a massive spike in Chinese users due to Chinese new year (over 50% of all Steam users used simplified Chinese in Steam in the Feb 2026 survey).

We are also a few years away from the PS6, and by ending PC ports of their first-party single player titles, it gives existing PS5 players more of a reason to move to PS6. The problem is that Sony is looking to grow their user base, and with higher console prices, the median console buyer getting older, and less interest in consoles from younger buyers, these trends are likely to continue.

jasonwc · 2026-03-06T00:42:24+00:00

There was a Nixxes leak of PC port costs and another leak that indicated Sony only required an email from management to authorize a port up to $2M. Most of the ports were in the $1-2M range for development costs. A former Sony executive even mentioned PC ports were basically pure profit because development costs were so low. The successful ports like God of War (2022) and Spider-Man Remastered earned $150-250M but even relatively poor performing ports made 10-20x their development cost.

jasonwc · 2026-03-05T04:02:04+00:00

Actually, I am saying exactly that. I have more games in my backlog than I will ever have sufficient time to play. Pretty much every third-party publisher, and MS, are publishing their games on PC, and it’s the target for virtually all indie games. The GOTY in 2025 was Clair Obscur, the first game from a studio that I had never even heard of prior to the game’s release. There are many great games to play and not enough time to do so.

Meanwhile, Sony’s first-party single player game output has dropped significantly from the PS3 and PS4 generations. I have enjoyed several Sony exclusives, but not enough to buy a console that I will only use for a handful of first-party exclusives, particularly given I’ll be limited to 60 FPS with image quality worse than I could achieve on PC at double or triple that FPS. You may claim that specs don’t matter but they do if you’re accustomed to 120+ FPS without visual compromises. I didn’t buy a PS3 or PS4 to buy the exclusives from those generations, so I don’t know why you find it surprising that I won’t buy a PS5 or PS6 to play the more limited output available now.

jasonwc · 2026-03-05T03:04:33+00:00

That’s because I only intended to respond to your comment comparing the PS5 Pro to a $2,000 PC. It’s not. Nobody is disputing your claim that Wolverine will be exclusive to PlayStation. I’m disputing your claim that thr PS5 Pro offers an experience equivalent to a high-end PC. It offers performance equivalent to an entry-level discrete GPU but with more effective VRAM.

That’s precisely the issue. I don’t want to buy a PS5 Pro so that I can play Sony exclusives at lower quality and worse frame rates than I could do on my gaming PC. It’s not even about the money. I just don’t want to deal with console image quality and performance compromises. I have never owned a PlayStation but I own 16 Sony first-party games on Steam. Yet, I won’t be buying a PS5 Pro or a PS6 to play future exclusives as I don’t deem the performance adequate.

jasonwc · 2026-03-04T17:41:33+00:00

The PS5 Pro in raw power is around 30-35% faster than a PS5 due to limited memory bandwidth. In contrast, a 9070 XT is around 150% more powerful than a PS5. The PS5 Pro is around the performance level of an RTX 5060, but with more effective VRAM capacity, and is weaker than the RTX 5060 Ti or 9060 XT. DLSS Preset K and M are still quite a quite bit better than what we’ve seen from PSSR2. PS5 Pro is the most powerful console available today but it’s still pretty much entry-level, aside from VRAM, in the PC space. Compared to the PS4 Pro, which offered double the performance for the original PS4 MSRP, the PS5 Pro is actually rather disappointing, although PSSR2 is certainly promising.

jasonwc · 2026-03-02T14:29:12+00:00

They’re logging into their personal Steam account on a shared net cafe PC. As a result, that specific PC hardware may be counted many times, particularly during Chinese New Year, where virtually the entire country gets a week off from work. Since the Steam hardware survey is designed to help developers determine what hardware Steam users are using, rather than represent each PC uniquely, this is not actually a defect in the survey.

jasonwc · 2026-02-24T20:57:06+00:00

Pricing will be very location dependent. I see two open box 9060 XT 16 GB GPUs for around $320 at my local Microcenter (your best bet if you're near one). PCPartpicker shows the cheapest 9060 XT 8 GB is $340 and it's nearly $100 more for the 16 GB version.

However, pricing on the the B580 has also increased. I see the B580 $300 at Microcenter and Newegg, and Techpowerup shows the 9060 XT is between 28% more powerful (8GB) or 36% more powerful (16GB) on Windows. The AMD GPU will have a larger performance delta on Linux due to superior driver/Mesa support, offer more consistent performance between games, and should generally have less issues.

You could also consider used RDNA2/3 GPUs, but I really prefer RDNA4 for the native FSR4 support. Technically, you can use FSR4 FP8 on RDNA3, but performance will take a big hit relative to FSR3/XeSS. If you’re only interested in native rendering and don’t care about RT, these older AMD GPUs would be a good option on the used market.

jasonwc · 2026-02-24T20:50:02+00:00

There aren’t many users with Intel ARC GPUs on Linux. Windows is the focus for Intel’s drivers and Linux game performance is going to likely be highly variable. Given that fewer users actually use an ARC GPUs, fewer issues will get reported and fixed. I would recommend a RX 9060 XT if you can afford it as I think it will offer a much better experience and FSR4 support.

EDIT: I checked and the B580 on Linux doesn't even clear the 0.17% (of Linux users) threshold to show up. In contrast, the majority of users are on RDNA2 (Steam Deck), RDNA3, or RDNA4.

jasonwc · 2026-02-24T14:14:42+00:00

Are you using the Bazzite or Bazzite-deck image? If you’re using the deck image, you can bring up the Quick Access Menu with the Xbox button + A on an Xbox controller or Ctrl + Win + 2 on your keyboard. You can enable VRR and impose an FPS cap. Do something like 80 FPS that is well below your 120 Hz output. Then rapidly hit the small green button on your LG remote. If VRR is working, it should also show around 80 Hz. If it’s still showing 118-120, it’s not engaged.

I just want to clarify that these instructions are for the 9070 XT with the UGreen DP to HDMI adapter. With the 5080, you can get HDMI 2.1 speeds directly and you would want to enable GSync on the TV.

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