Windows 11 Splits Frame Rate Wins With SteamOS on Valve’s Steam Machine

Windows 11 beat SteamOS by 22.1 percent in one benchmark and lost to it by six frames per second in another, after YouTuber ETA Prime installed Microsoft’s operating system on Valve’s new Steam Machine this week. The console, which starts at $1,049, only got official Windows drivers in early July. The frame rate gaps are tiny. The catch buried in Valve’s own support page is not.

Valve Turns Its Living Room Console Into a Windows PC

ETA Prime, a hardware YouTuber who has tracked the Steam Machine since it shipped, ran Windows 11 on a unit already upgraded from its stock 16GB of memory to 64GB of DDR5-5600 in dual channel, a change he documented in an earlier video on the same hardware. Installing Microsoft’s operating system went smoothly, and the graphics, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and video playback all worked once Valve’s drivers were loaded.

Windows identified the console’s custom processor as an AMD 1772, a six-core, twelve-thread chip mixing two full Zen 4 cores with four smaller Zen 4c cores that boosts up to 4.8GHz. The 8GB graphics chip, a semi-custom RDNA 3 part with 28 compute units, showed up in both Task Manager and AMD’s own Adrenalin software as a Radeon RX 7600. Valve’s official listing for the $1,049 base model still describes the box as a full PC, not a sealed appliance, which is exactly the argument Windows on the Steam Machine is testing.

Where Windows 11 Actually Wins

The lopsided result came in Geekbench 6, where Windows led SteamOS by just 3.3 percent in the single core test but by a full 22.1 percent in multi-core, the largest gap ETA Prime recorded anywhere. That number needs an asterisk. SteamOS was benchmarked in its desktop mode, which does not draw on the same CPU scheduling behavior the console uses when actually running games.

In Cinebench 2024, the Steam Machine’s chip scored 99 points single-core and 554 multi-core, running 5.3 percent faster than a desktop Ryzen 5 5600X in single-core work but 14.1 percent slower in multi-core. Windows also took the graphics-heavy 4K test in Cyberpunk 2077 and most of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, plus Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered by as much as 7.1 percent in one pass, according to TechPowerUp’s breakdown of the same footage.

SteamOS Keeps Its Grip at 1080p and 1440p

Zoom out past the synthetic scores and the gaming results settle into a near draw, tipping toward whichever resolution a game leans on hardest.

Cyberpunk 2077 produced the widest percentage swings, yet the actual gap never passed six frames per second. At 4K, where both operating systems dropped into single-digit-to-twenty territory and neither was truly playable, a two-frame edge for Windows reads as an 11 percent lead on paper. Shadow of the Tomb Raider barely moved between the two systems at any resolution tested. The console’s other core specs help explain why the numbers cluster so tightly.

• CPU – custom six-core, twelve-thread AMD chip built from Zen 4 and Zen 4c cores, boosting to 4.8GHz
• GPU – semi-custom RDNA 3 design, 28 compute units, 8GB of GDDR6 memory
• Storage and price – $1,049 for 512GB without a controller, up to $1,428 for 2TB bundled with one
• Performance target – roughly six times the Steam Deck, aimed at 4K gaming with upscaling

Those are the specs both operating systems are working with, which is part of why neither one pulls away for long.

Why Won’t Valve Let You Dual Boot?

There is no dual-boot option. Installing Windows means wiping SteamOS off the drive entirely, and getting back requires reinstalling SteamOS from Valve’s recovery image from scratch. Valve’s support page frames the whole exercise as an open invitation rather than a supported path.

Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

That line sits on Valve’s own product page for the console. It is generous in spirit and light on follow-through. Valve’s drivers cover graphics, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the SD card reader, leaving everything else to Microsoft’s built-in driver library, and the Wi-Fi driver itself only loads after Windows is already running, so setup requires an Ethernet cable plugged in just to get past product activation.

What We Know

• No dual boot exists today. Choosing Windows means erasing SteamOS first.
• Recovery is manual. Restoring SteamOS requires Valve’s official recovery image and a fresh install.
• Driver coverage is partial. Valve ships graphics, wireless and storage drivers; the rest runs on generic Windows support.

What’s Unconfirmed

• No date for the SteamOS reinstall wizard Valve says is coming once it’s complete.
• Whether VRAM management fixes a Valve engineer described have shipped in the SteamOS build ETA Prime actually tested.

For most owners, that combination makes Windows a project for people who need a specific app or an anti-cheat system SteamOS still blocks, not a default upgrade.

A Decade After the First Steam Machine Flopped

Valve tried this once before. The original Steam Machine program launched in 2015 at $449 and collapsed within a couple of years, done in by thin game support and a Linux layer that could not yet run most of the Steam catalog. This version was announced in November 2025 alongside a redesigned Steam Controller and a standalone headset called Steam Frame, then it slipped from an early 2026 target into a June 29, 2026 release after an industry-wide memory and storage shortage forced Valve to rework its pricing.

That same shortage pushed Steam Deck prices up more than 40 percent earlier in 2026, so the Steam Machine landing at nearly triple its predecessor’s starting price fits a pattern rather than breaking one. Valve’s June price reveal for the console confirmed the final tiers only after months of delay, and this time Valve is building and selling the hardware itself instead of licensing specs to outside manufacturers the way it did in 2015.

Eight Gigabytes of VRAM Sets the Real Ceiling

The closeness of these results has a specific cause, and it is not the operating system. SteamOS previously held a lead of up to 30 percent over Windows on gaming handhelds with unified memory, but that advantage shrank or vanished once testing moved to desktop-class cards carrying less than 12GB of dedicated VRAM, exactly the bracket the Steam Machine’s 8GB GPU sits in. A Valve engineer named Griffais has described VRAM management improvements aimed at exactly this kind of hardware, and whether those fixes had already landed in the SteamOS build ETA Prime tested is still an open question.

If they had not, today’s near-tie could look very different once heavier, newer games start leaning harder on graphics memory instead of raw compute. The next round of benchmarks worth watching will not be average frame rates in well-optimized titles. They will be memory-hungry, open-world games at higher settings, run against a SteamOS build Valve has explicitly confirmed.

The Same Fight Is Already Playing Out on Handhelds

Windows has been chasing SteamOS on portable hardware for two years without closing the gap, which is what makes the Steam Machine numbers notable. On battery-powered handhelds, SteamOS’s efficiency advantage has been large enough that manufacturers keep hunting for ways around it, including a new Intel Arc chip built to challenge AMD’s grip on Windows handhelds. On a plugged-in living room console with a dedicated cooler, that gap mostly disappears, and Windows even edges ahead in a couple of titles.

Owners who want true dual booting instead of a one-way wipe already have a template elsewhere in Valve’s own lineup. Windows Central has documented a tested dual-boot workaround for the Steam Deck using a shrunk partition and a boot manager, built entirely by the community because Valve has never shipped that option natively there either.

Valve says a proper SteamOS reinstall wizard is coming once it is finished, with no date attached. Until it ships, putting Windows on a Steam Machine stays a full commitment, not a dual-boot experiment.