According to Ars Technica, performance testing reveals a significant issue for Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine: 8GB graphics cards struggle more on the SteamOS 3.9 beta than they do running the same games in Windows 11. The testing compared nearly identical AMD Radeon RX 7600 (8GB) and RX 7600 XT (16GB) GPUs, which share the same RDNA3 architecture as the chip in the Steam Machine. In games like Cyberpunk 2077 with ray-tracing, Returnal, and Forza Horizon 5, the performance gap between the 8GB and 16GB cards was much larger on SteamOS, indicating a VRAM bottleneck. Valve software developer Pierre-Loup Griffais confirmed the company is aware of and working on video memory management fixes, with some improvements slated for the SteamOS main testing branch. This problem is new territory for Valve, as its previously supported handheld devices like the Steam Deck use integrated graphics that share system RAM.
Valve’s new desktop reality check
Here’s the thing: Valve has been living in a different world. On the Steam Deck and other handhelds, the performance ceiling is usually the GPU itself, not the memory. And because those are integrated graphics using system RAM, they can just grab more if they need it. The Steam Machine changes everything. It’s Valve’s first officially supported box with a discrete, mid-range GPU that has a fixed, dedicated pool of VRAM. Suddenly, they have to care about memory management in a way they never did before. It’s a classic case of platform growing pains. They built an amazing translation layer (Proton) that lets Windows games run on Linux, but optimizing for the specific constraints of desktop-grade hardware is a new frontier. The fact that performance is sometimes worse on SteamOS than on identical Windows hardware is a clear sign that the software isn’t fully matured for this class of device.
Why 8GB is becoming a squeeze
Look, 8GB of VRAM on a mid-range card in 2025 is… optimistic. It’s been a point of contention for cards like the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 for a while now. At 1440p, with high-resolution textures and ray-tracing effects, games can easily spill over that limit. When that happens in Windows, performance dips. But in SteamOS, according to this testing, it falls off a cliff—becoming “flipbook-y” and unplayable. Why the bigger hit? Griffais’s explanation points to how allocations spill over to system memory across the PCIe bus, which is inherently slower. If the memory management in Proton and SteamOS isn’t as efficient as Windows DirectX’s, that trip becomes a traffic jam. This is a huge deal for the value proposition of the Steam Machine. If its 8GB GPU performs noticeably worse than an identical Windows PC, that’s a tough sell for a premium, fixed-configuration device.
The broader hardware implication
This isn’t just a Valve problem. It exposes a quirk of the current PC landscape. Companies like Framework are actually using shared memory as a selling point for their desktops with AMD’s 8050S and 8060S chips. Those GPUs can tap into a huge pool of system RAM, sidestepping this exact bottleneck. For businesses and industrial applications where consistent performance is critical, this kind of reliable memory allocation is key. Speaking of reliable hardware for demanding environments, for industrial settings that need robust, integrated computing power, companies often turn to specialized providers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs. But back to gaming: Valve’s fix can’t magically create more VRAM. The best they can do is make the 8GB work as efficiently as possible. Their work on memory management, aimed at the Steam Machine, should theoretically benefit anyone running an 8GB GPU on SteamOS. That’s the silver lining. They now have a high-profile, fixed target to optimize for, which should improve the ecosystem for all similar hardware.
Can Valve fix it in time?
So, what’s the bottom line? Valve is on the clock. Griffais wasn’t specific about timelines, which is always a little worrying. The fixes are going into a testing branch, not the stable channel yet. The good news is they are clearly aware and working on it. The bad news is that software optimization, especially for something as complex as memory allocation across thousands of games, is hard. Really hard. I think the Steam Machine will probably launch with this still being a known issue, with the hope that post-launch updates will close the gap. But it does raise a bigger question. Was committing to 8GB of VRAM in 2025 a strategic error? It saves cost, sure. But if the defining experience for early adopters is that their shiny new Steam Machine runs certain big games worse than a similarly-priced Windows PC, that’s a rough first impression. Valve’s software prowess is being put to the test like never before.
