Valve Software said Friday that it will ship its prototype Steam Machines to 300 lucky beta testers, ranging from premium boxes based on Nvidia Titan cards down to low-end Intel Core i3 machines.
But in an interesting twist, all of the Steam Machines use an Intel CPU and an Nvidia-based graphics card, not AMD's CPUs and GPUs. Valve's announcement comes as Origin PC, a boutique PC maker, also said Friday that it will shift entirely to Nvidia GPUs.
Moreover, Valve said that it plans to make the Steam Machines open and user-upgradable. So if users want to upgrade their Steam Machines, they can, Valve said.
Valve's Steam Machines were tipped off more than a week ago, when Valve announced its Steam OS, the Steam Machines, and a related Steam Controller (above). Steam OS will be Linux-based, and will run an undisclosed library of games on what Valve is billing as open hardware. The company will even provide the source CAD files for its enclosure, Valve said in a blog post. However, the company said it was not yet ready to publish pictures of the proposed box.
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