Whatever you think about the Steam Machine, the fact is it's launching into a brutal market for anyone trying to sell a gaming product. So brutal, in fact, that Valve has been unable to source the 8GB SODIMMs that it originally planned to use in pairs in the system. As a fallback, Valve has had to ship at least some portion of Steam Machines with a single 16GB SODIMM instead of two 8GB modules. This, obviously, won't activate the back half of the Hawk Point 2 processor's memory controller, leaving the system with just a 64-bit memory interface like an OG Pentium from 1993. Much has been made of this decision, with some in the media and gaming communities even insisting that Valve must walk back performance claims it previously made due to the system's new single-channel memory configuration. However, there's nuance here that bears more investigation...



Link: hothardware