First Impressions: Bioshock Infinite

Specs

Gaming PC (Stream Source)

HTPC (Stream Destination)

Connectivity

Gameplay

First Impression Rating

Thanks for checking this out! Below are my first impressions of Steam In-Home Streaming using two PCs and Bioshock Infinite.Windows 8.1, Intel i7 950 @ 3.07 GHz, AMD HD Radeon 7950, 32GB RAMWindows 7 SP1, Intel i3 with Integrated Intel HD4000 Graphics, 4GB RAMBoth PCs are connected to the same Netgear 1Gbps switch. Both PCs access the internet through an Apple Airport Express connected to the same switch which creates abridge to an Apple Time Capsule (the network's edge device/router).When I started the game for the first time, the stream would not start. After checking the source PC I saw a message from Steam telling me my graphics drivers were out of date. I double-checked and found that they were indeed up-to-date and asked Steam not to remind me about this again. Subsequent launches worked without a hitch but I should have been able to interact with/be warned about this prompt from the HTPC.Bioshock Infinite was able to recognize the wireless XBOX 360 Controller connected to my HTPC which was a great start (compared to my previous test using Dishonored which did not take controller input.) There was virtually no input lag using the controller or a keyboard/mouse.I had never run Bioshock before so my graphics settings and resolution were not optimal. Switching the resolution from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 while streaming caused the game to crash. Any other graphical quality changes did not seem to affect the game. I changed all graphics to "Ultra" quality.After loading up Clash in the Clouds I started a relatively lag free, graphically pleasing experience that felt as if the game was installed locally.It wasn't until 5-10 minutes of gameplay that I started to see video stuttering on the HTPC. I was able to see both the source and destination PCs at the same time and observed no stuttering at all on the source (which looked as if it was about 50-60 fps while the HTPC was dropping to about 20 fps). Although setting the graphics from 'Ultra' to 'Medium' improved FPS on the gaming PC, it did nothing to help the framerate on the HTPC where I was playing.Video: 5/10Audio: 10/10Input: 9/10Overall: 8/10Honestly, just the ability to stay logged in to two PCs at the same time makes this whole streaming feature worth it to me but the ability to finally play GPU intensive games on my cheap HTPC is something I've been lusting at forever. So far the quality isn't perfect but it is what I would have expected from the first day of beta and I'm looking forward to see Valve improve the already stunning results that I'm getting.All praise gaben.