Xi3′s Piston “not a Steam box,” branded as a $1,000 console

As teased before the weekend, Xi3 has announced more details about its ‘Piston’ project. You may recall this device being revealed at the CES 2013 trade show back in January. This is however not a Steambox but a "PISTON Console".

[Zeref]

lol "thousand dollar console"

people are complaining about the X1 being $500, just $100 more than the PS4. and also PS3 being $600. How are they ever going to sell this? xD

[guitarded77]

Yeah, I think most people looking for a PC will just prefer to custom build at that price. There will be a market, but it will be a small market.

[0ut1awed]

Yea exactly. You can build a PC that is more powerful than this for half the price. It would also not be proprietary like one of these Pistons so any future upgrades would be a snap. Not to say you can't upgrade with the Piston but you have buy presetup "daughterboards" from Xi3. So you rely completely on them for upgrades and the hardware will probably be just as lackluster and overpriced as the base model is.

This thing is for nobody unless you really need a PC to fit in a couple inches of space.

[BattleAxe]

Anyone who buys one of these will end being 'piston broke'.

[Eonjay]

You rang? Oh, its time to get technical again. Sorry in advance:

This is an unspeakable rip off. It has 128GB SSD drive which isn't that expensive. It has 8 GB of cheap DDR3 ram which couldn't possible justify the price. The 3.2GHz quad core CPU is decent, but nothing elaborately special. Finally (and this is the most important part), it has 384 programmable graphics cores. This is a stupid way of saying CUDA cores (if you speak Nvidia) or stream processors for the rest of us.

We don't know the speed of the GPU so its impossible to calculate the throuput in GFlop - Yes I said GFlops, because this thing is weak. It can't have more than 6 CUs as the math clearly indicates meaning that at 800MHz (GPU clock) it would have half the power of an Xbox One and 1/3 the power of a PS4.

And yet its 2x the price of a Xbox One... this is a joke.

Good Day.

[JsonHenry]

For that much I'll stick to building my own. If the hardware was sub-retail price I of course would have no problem buying one.

[ShinMaster]

PS3 was $500. The premium sku was $600. But it was new tech at the time.

This, I don't know how they're going to sell. 384 shader cores for this, while PS4 has 1152.
$1000 for non-upgradable proprietary hardware with integrated graphics? lololol

[starchild]

Obviously this is for people who care A LOT about the form factor.

[DeadlyFire]

hmmm......I fail to see how graphics are effecting price.

PS4 - 1.84 Tflops - $400 - 8 GB RAM -HDD 500 GB
1BX - 1.31 Tflops - $500 - 8 GB RAM -HDD 500 GB
Piston - 768 Gigaflops - $1000 - 8 GB RAM -HDD 128 GB
WiiU - 400 or 500 Gigaflops - $300 - 2 GB RAM -No HDD

Piston does have heavy CPU cores compared to PS4/1BX though. Not sure how that changes its situation. Also upgradeable. Price point matters to some though. Years down the road when upgrades come along when its at a decent price point where you can upgrade beyond current gen specs of PS4/1BX then it could really shift a positive number of units.

I am sure at some point when the micro components in it have big price drops then it will be decent. You could build a more powerful computer for 1000 bucks.

[Xsilver]

$1000 dollar console How about......................... .....................NO its not even unique it has 360 designed controller i mean come on at least be original.

[ninjahunter]

I can get better laptop performance for cheaper than that.
Which completely destroys the purpose of having suck a portable system.

[ExPresident]

LMAO. Move along everyone, move along.

[Tundra]

The amount of power you can get for building your own pc with a budget of a grand is unreal. This is a rip-off.

[Scrumptious]

"It doesn’t seem powerful enough to justify a cost of $1,000 USD. But it IS a remarkable feat of engineering in terms of how small it is"

That about sums it up. Don't see this box being a success as people want performance for that amount of money not just small size.

[Bolts]

The worst thing about this how they refuse to release actual GPU specs. Something tells me this thing will be under powered and over priced.

No thanks, I'll build my own Steam Machine when the time comes, it won't fit into a nice square box but it'll be cheaper and more more powerful.

[DeadlyFire]

They have released the specs AMD Trinity@ 3.2 Ghz = 736 Gigaflops in its base form up to 779 Gigaflops at most with Richland APUs I believe. Its AMD Kaveri that will push APUs into the positive light with 1 Tflop and up in 2014.

http://www.amd.com/us/Docum...

Its less powerful than either of the consoles GPU wise. Compute on the other hand it could have more of thanks to a heavier CPU, but we could be looking at AMD Mobile Trinity. CPU cores are still bigger than Jaguar.

Oh nevermind AMD 7000 class GPU is also in the system or is it? AMD 7000D Embedded on AMD Trinity they are talking about is possible. If so then its still only 736 Gigaflops or so. If its in addition to then its possibly much more than that.

[Fishy Fingers]

I've always wanted to pay a huge premium for a PC I could pick up I'm my hand. Oh, no I haven't.

[JuniorCE]

Fail...

[cyguration]

You stole the word right out from under my fingers.

[JuniorCE]

LoL

[yellowgerbil]

1000$ and no games. Will be the hit of the holidays for sure

[lilbroRx]

PS4 is no longer the strongest console. It hasn't even been released yet and its claim has already been destroyed.

This is why its stupid to try to go for specs with a console. That's not what console were meant for.

I may actually by one of these since I like the idea of having the strongest console on the planet.

[thebudgetgamer]

Are you being for real right now?

[Pintheshadows]

A fool and his money are soon parted.

[Relientk77]

I think saying that they ripped off the Xbox 360 controller is an understatement lol

[Pintheshadows]

It looks like they just replaced the buttons. I think they will get in trouble for that with MS if i'm honest.

And they were already in trouble trying to charge $1000 for this. I could buy a £500 laptop that would run rings around it and still be nice and portable, and it has a screen.

[GentlemenRUs]

Ouya v2.0!

[Ipunchbabiesforfun]

Is this a joke? This is a god awful product.

"Consoles aren't upgradeable. Like it or not, the vast majority of computer owners don’t know how to update or upgrade their machines by themselves. That means if they want a better computer gaming experience, they have to pay someone else to do it for them or go off and buy a brand new machine. With the PISTON Console (PC), this will not be the case."

"Derp Derp derp. Plugging in this new GPU in the the slot described by the manual is SOOOOOOO difficult"

If you can't figure out how to plug in a GPU or change out a Mobo/CPU you shouldn't be PC gaming in the first place.

"Simply connect an external USB DVD/CD-player to your PISTON and play to your heart’s content."

Oh how convenient! BUY a peripheral to play your games already owned! $1000 isn't enough for them to throw in a $18 DVD drive.

"Simply put, the PISTON Console can replace a lot, starting with every closed gaming console on the planet. One of the main problems with gaming systems from the Big 3 manufacturers is that they are each closed systems, which means people can only play a game developed for a Wii on a Wii"

Oh yeah, great logic. "Only play a game developed for wii" kinda like buying a "piston" and only being able to "play a game developed for PC on a Piston" Again, awesome logic! It replaces your consoles by giving you the means to PLAY NONE OF THE GAMES THEY OFFER THAT ARE EXCLUSIVE! Who wrote this? that's the stupidest reason I've ever seen...

"supports 4K resolution"

Yeah so does my PC lmao, doesn't mean my SLI 560ti's can render it...

I can't stop laughing at how idiotic this is! This is comparable to a HD 7560 integrated AMD chip. Really? for $1000

Took me 10 minutes:

I5 3470
AMD Sapphire 7970 3GB
AS Rock 1155 Mobo PCI-e 3.0
1TB WD HDD
128GB SSD
Corsair Vengeance 8GB
Windows 7
650 Watt Corsair PSU
ATX Full tower case with 5 fans
DVD drive

$1,070.91

Oh and 3 free games from AMD, good games too.

So you can have a PC too that easily has 2 times the graphics power as that bunk ass system they're offering and an actual HDD, not just an SSD.

[jeffgoldwin]

Steam OS has a small chance to make a tiny dent in next-gen console sales, but not this underpowered Xi3. Also that small form that sits under your pc desk and never to be glanced at anyway.

[parentoftheyear]

Lmfaooooo