Build your own Steam Box

The Benchmarks

I put the completed Steam box through a number of benchmark tests to find out how capable a gaming machine it is. Firstly, two games that provide great examples of controller-friendly gameplay, to see how that GT 430 performs in the real world.

Just Cause 2 (1370x768, High texture detail, No AA)


JC2’s juicy explosions and gorgeous island vistas offer a variety of challenges for gaming hardware, and it has three built-in benchmarks that each test different features of the game engine.

• Dark Tower: 34.48 mean FPS
  
• Desert Sunrise: 51.68 mean FPS
  
• Concrete Jungle: 30.12 mean FPS

Batman: Arkham City (1370x768, Very High detail, No AA)


The PC port of Batman: Arkham City notoriously shipped with a broken DX11 implementation that was only partially fixed by a subsequent patch. So, while the GT430 does theoretically support DX11, these figures were obtained by running the in-game benchmark in DX9 mode.

• Min: 30
  
• Max: 59
  
• Avg: 47

The Steam box has performed pretty well where it’s intended to, then: these tests were run at the native resolution of my TV, without anti-aliasing, and those framerates are perfectly playable. Anecdotally, I can also tell you that both games play fine on the box with these settings and remain so even with a little light anti-aliasing enabled to reduce jagged edges. Those with full HD (1080p) televisions might need to dial down the detail to maintain a smooth framerate, however.

3DMark

Now, let’s put the hardware through some more demanding tests, courtesy of Futuremark’s 3DMark benchmark suites. These results were obtained using the “performance” preset settings in the two latest versions of 3Dmark: Vantage and 11.

Vantage

• Total: 4022
  
• Graphics score: 3198
  
• CPU: 17704

2011

• Total: 973
  
• GFX: 850
  
• CPU: 5807

If you’d like some idea of how these scores compare to other hardware, Futuremark offer a searchable online database of benchmark results and league tables of scores for individual CPUs and GPUs.

These are predictably underwhelming scores for a low-powered gaming system. Equally unsurprisingly, it’s the GT430 dragging the score down: the i5-2400 scores pretty well. This box won’t be making Alienware quake in their boots anytime soon, but when it can play anything ported from consoles and Steam’s huge catalogue of indie games, who cares?