Hi everyone and a "warm" welcome (from the point of view of the UK heat wave) to the latest weekly update post from Digital Foundry. I'm not going to lie, I'm a bit tired after over a week of early mornings and late-ish nights working on the DF Steam Machine review. It's at this point where I'd just like to remind everyone that practically every DF solo video is put together entirely by the staff member presenting it. No labs team, no benchmark crews, no video editors or writers. The exception, I guess, is PC performance reviews - but that's only because Alex isn't around right now! I'm literally just the front man on those thanks to Rayan stepping up. Either way, from all the "guys in their bedrooms", we just want to thank you all for supporting the team!
Wondering about the image above? A few members of the Discord will recognise it as the AMD BC-250 mining board, heat sink removed. Essentially, it's an almost entirely complete PlayStation 5 system built around the same SoC. Once sold for making money out of electricity, their eventual lack of efficiency reduced them to e-waste status - until the community got hold of them. PS5 Linux is a thing, but it's only a thing because BC-250 Linux came first.
You don't get the Sony SSD (you'll need your own m.2 for that), but I'm going to be looking into the viability of this system as a Steam Machine alternative. My projects take a while owing to my diverse responsibilities but in theory, I should be able to just repeat the existing tests I've done on this system. A PS5-based Steam Machine is a fun idea, especially when (in the UK at least), you can buy a complete system for under £420.
So that's something to look forwards to - I'm just VERY curious about how it can hold up with only 16GB of memory. In the meantime, here's what we're all up to.
Rich (ie me) will also try to find time to look at FSR 4.1 - that came out of nowhere! - on RDNA 3 cards, but I'm very very keen on my next project based on hardware balance. I talked about this in last week's update!
Not much news on the John front. It's still all about Star Fox reviewing for Switch 2, talking ultrawide gaming in a smaller scale MSI sponsored video we're doing and then returning to Batman Arkham Knight for retro fun!
Tom is working on some embargoed content. A trip abroad was required. Details were procured. He saw things. Can't say much more about it, but it's a variation on a theme of #content we've done in the past. It's not hardware and it's not a brand new game you've not seen before, just to temper expectations.
Oliver continues to power DF's Direct and Q+A output and is still working on the iPhone 17 Pro vs Switch 2 video, PS4 vs PS5 is still in the offing and will be doing his best to help me out on the FSR 4.1 video.
No updates from Alex but I'm going to talk with him soon and will see how he's getting on. I really don't want him to be preoccupied with work at all. We all love him and want him to focus on recovery!
Hats off to Will for helping me out on the Steam Machine content. We had the opportunity to interview Valve, he came up with most of the questions and it's greatly embellished our website!
So that's where we're at for now. Any #content questions, suggestions or... anything? Feel free to fill the void in the comments box that is - inevitably - below.