It looks like a console

iBuyPower showed off a prototype for its first Steam Machine, which will be out next year for $499. The sexy white box will have a multicore AMD CPU, an AMD Radeon R9 270 graphics card, a 500GB hard drive, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SteamOS, and a Steam Controller.

Don't run at me with torches ablaze, but it looks like this early Steam Machine will outperform the new consoles, at least from a raw power perspective. TFLOPS is a way to calculate how fast a computer is, and according to Anandtech the PlayStation 4 has 1.84 TFLOPS, the Xbox One has 1.23 TFLOPS, and The Tech Report has the R9 270, a $180 GPU, at 2.4 TFLOPS. With similar AMD multicore CPUs, the edge will go to the system with the better graphic processing and speed.

This is a lower price with better hardware than most people were expecting. Valve's own prototypes are all above this price point, so it's nice to see that the first third-party system will be very affordable. We'll learn more about the hardware of this box, and other Steam Machines, at CES in January.

iBuyPower's Steam Machine offers PC specs for the price of a new Xbox [The Verge]

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