News Connector that works with both DisplayPort and HDMI port found on Piston Xi3, the failed Steam Machine

[Admin]

Further examination of what would have been one of the first "Steam Machines" reveals a unique hybrid video port.

Connector that works with both DisplayPort and HDMI port found on Piston Xi3, the failed Steam Machine : Read more

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I think it should have long since been a standardized port for use on laptops, although HDMI has since gained many of DisplayPort's advantages over the years.

 

[setx]

HDMI forum likely would never license such abomination (by their stance). They have zero benefit from that.

 

[bit_user]

HDMI and DP output work fine off this specific port and fit snugly as if they're both intended for it.

It seems to me that the real unicorn is the connector, itself.

As for the video signal, DisplayPort Dual-Mode (DP++) specifies a port that can switch signalling between DisplayPort and HDMI. It seems most cheap DP -> HDMI adapters are nothing but wires, with no active components. However, they would only work on such Dual-Mode ports, which Wikipedia says is actually the norm (even for ports without the logo).

DisplayPort - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Considering the modern status quo of GPUs with 3:1 DP: HDMI and monitors that (for some reason) are often the opposite configuration, more motherboards and GPUs could benefit from adopting this combined connector.

I don't deal with a lot of gaming boards, but on the mini-PCs and commodity boards I've seen, HDMI seems more prevalent.

It does bug me that gaming monitors seem more biased towards HDMI, especially since VRR support on HDMI was lacking for so long. However, I guess the mix of ports is probably with an eye towards gamers maybe wanting to plug in their consoles, which are HDMI-only.

 

[cryoburner]

Piston Xi3, the failed Steam Machine

This article says it like there were Steam Machines that did not fail. Valve's entire Steam Machine platform was a failure that never took off. Most models of Steam Machines were dumped by their manufacturers within their first year on the market since hardly anyone wanted them. And that's if the manufacturers decided to even go through with plans to release them at all. Valve's official launch of Steam Machines and the Steam Controller was pushed back until 2 years after the Xi3 Piston came out, so it's no wonder that company chose to release the hardware running Windows instead. And even after the official launch, SteamOS was still arguably not ready for prime time, and many games did not run on it.

 

[bit_user]

This article says it like there were Steam Machines that did not fail. Valve's entire Steam Machine platform was a failure that never took off. Most models of Steam Machines were dumped by their manufacturers within their first year on the market since hardly anyone wanted them.

This made me think back to how they sat in the market, back then. At the time, I think mini PCs weren't really a common thing. Sure, NUCs had already come out, by then, but I think they didn't really start to get very good before Broadwell.

Now, as we see machines like Macs that can pack some potent horsepower into such a package, and as Lunar Lake looks set to boost Intel's iGPU performance by several times, I wonder if this might be the decade when mini-PCs gain a degree of respectability as a gaming platform.

IMO, mini-PCs do a reasonable job of splitting the difference between consoles and full-blown desktops. One of the main disadvantages vs. consoles is just that they don't give game developers a standard hardware target to optimize for. Performance-wise, I could imagine a top-spec Lunar Lake NUC possibly getting into the realm of PS5 performance. I think some Mac Mini's are already there (although those versions definitely cost much more than a PS5).