Steam Link Review

[nicklmg]

Amazon: http://geni.us/24Gs

NCIX; http://bit.ly/1VzLc9G

 

We're a bit late to the party on the Steam Link, but that might not be a bad thing... Are the majority of the Link's known issues a thing of the past?

 

 

[SGTR]

Forced to edit videos you say? Could be worse...

 

I think the Steam link is a bit eh tbh and valve probably should've focused a little more on their steam boxes... a media centre or gaming pc in the tv cabinet does is just plain better value in my opinion.

[Kevin_Walter]

Considering how generally poor the performance is streaming from my upstairs gaming rig to my downstairs older gaming rig, I see no reason to waste money on an expensive device that is meant solely for that. The extra netflix and stuff is nice, but you can dump 40 bucks on a Fire TV Stick if you need to fulfill that need.

 

It would be nice if they implemented more of the Steam Link features into the normal In-Home Streaming functionality though. But I guess doing that would mean Steam Link had even less of a reason to exist...

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Kevin_Walter said:

Considering how generally poor the performance is streaming from my upstairs gaming rig to my downstairs older gaming rig, I see no reason to waste money on an expensive device that is meant solely for that. The extra netflix and stuff is nice, but you can dump 40 bucks on a Fire TV Stick if you need to fulfill that need.

The problem is most likely your PC not being good enough to encode the video, or your network isn't fast and stable enough for streaming.

 

1 hour ago, Kevin_Walter said:

It would be nice if they implemented more of the Steam Link features into the normal In-Home Streaming functionality though. But I guess doing that would mean Steam Link had even less of a reason to exist...

Isn't the Steam Link just a little In-Home Streaming client? You know, for those who do not have a second PC or don't want a tower next to their TV?

[ShadowCaptain]

11 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

 

Isn't the Steam Link just a little In-Home Streaming client? You know, for those who do not have a second PC or don't want a tower next to their TV?

 

That is 100% what it is

[spellmanuk]

im waiting for it to have xbone controller support before buying as anything worth putting up with the latency for may aswell be played with a controller since my girlfriend would probably murder me if i bought one of those couch keyboard rest things 

 

vvv not a look im going for vvv

 

[Kevin_Walter]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

The problem is most likely your PC not being good enough to encode the video, or your network isn't fast and stable enough for streaming.

 

Isn't the Steam Link just a little In-Home Streaming client? You know, for those who do not have a second PC or don't want a tower next to their TV?

Neither of those. The problem is input latency. Can't stand it. Even half a second of latency throws me off so much, I just don't want to play at all. I tested with games like Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, Fallout 4, Bit.Trip Runner, and some others. Bit.Trip was frustrating, and combat was pretty challenging in Mad Max because there wasn't enough time between when the enemies started throwing a punch for you to accurately counter. SoM and FO4 were more forgiving.

 

And yeah, that's exactly what Steam Link is. Not sure how that's relevant though. Even Linus said at the beginning of the video that owning one when you already have pretty much anything available is kind of pointless. 

 

It just seems like a really niche product to me. One that relies on a feature that is still somewhat unsatisfactory in how it performs. My frustration comes from the things Steam Link can do that standard In-Home streaming can't. Such as being able to actually control the source PC (to an extent) through the remote connection. As Linus pointed out in the video, you're forced to run back and forth between rooms if you need to deal with a splash screen or if something goes wrong and you can't otherwise close a game. Though I will admit, they're not nearly as expensive as I thought they were. I was assuming they were in the neighborhood of $100+, not $50. More akin to the standard Fire TV or Apple TV.

[Damarus]

You can enable the performance overlay to see what is causing your lag. The overall latency is about 15ms for me over 5GHz with most of it in display latency, which is more than acceptable. The values also change between Software and Hardware encoding so you might want to play around with that. Lowering the resolution also helps (My TV can only do 720p).

 

I would have loved Linus to talk a bit more about how well the Link works together with the Steam Controller. It has a builtin receiver for it and they really shine together.

[LAwLz]

59 minutes ago, Kevin_Walter said:

Neither of those. The problem is input latency. Can't stand it. Even half a second of latency throws me off so much, I just don't want to play at all. I tested with games like Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, Fallout 4, Bit.Trip Runner, and some others. Bit.Trip was frustrating, and combat was pretty challenging in Mad Max because there wasn't enough time between when the enemies started throwing a punch for you to accurately counter. SoM and FO4 were more forgiving.

If you get anywhere near half a second of input latency then it is your computer or network causing it. According to the video, the latency was about 0.06 seconds. That is not even noticeable to most people, much less game breaking. If the measurements in the video are correct then the problem is 100% on your side (either hour computer or the network). 

 

59 minutes ago, Kevin_Walter said:

And yeah, that's exactly what Steam Link is. Not sure how that's relevant though. Even Linus said at the beginning of the video that owning one when you already have pretty much anything available is kind of pointless. 

Most people don't have a HTPC. You are basically saying "getting a driver's license is pointless when you got a limousine and private chauffeur". Most people don't have it, and 50 dollars is a lot less (plus smaller, uses less power and infinitely more quiet) than getting one. 

 

1 hour ago, Kevin_Walter said:

It just seems like a really niche product to me. One that relies on a feature that is still somewhat unsatisfactory in how it performs. Though I will admit, they're not nearly as expensive as I thought they were. I was assuming they were in the neighborhood of $100+, not $50. More akin to the standard Fire TV or Apple TV.

You got it backwards. HTPCs are niche products. Barely anyone got a desktop computer in their living room. This is meant to be a mass market product for people who don't have a HTPC. 

[Kevin_Walter]

40 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

If you get anywhere near half a second of input latency then it is your computer or network causing it. According to the video, the latency was about 0.06 seconds. That is not even noticeable to most people, much less game breaking. If the measurements in the video are correct then the problem is 100% on your side (either hour computer or the network). 

 

Most people don't have a HTPC. You are basically saying "getting a driver's license is pointless when you got a limousine and private chauffeur". Most people don't have it, and 50 dollars is a lot less (plus smaller, uses less power and infinitely more quiet) than getting one. 

 

You got it backwards. HTPCs are niche products. Barely anyone got a desktop computer in their living room. This is meant to be a mass market product for people who don't have a HTPC. 

I already said it's neither my network nor my system. I've done the testing with my setup. You haven't. The streaming feature has just enough latency to throw off games that require any kind of precision. Linus even says as much in the video, recommending it only for light/casual gaming. Also, there's more to it than straight ping to the host PC.

 

As for all of that about HTPCs... I'd wager there are more people out there with HTPCs or even secondary PCs that are capable of being HTPCs than there are people who would buy this product. Its usefulness already depends on a relatively decent home network and host rig. So I think you're the one who may have it backwards... but I don't actually know for sure. I probably have about as much solid data on that subject as you do.

 

You can enable the performance overlay to see what is causing your lag. The overall latency is about 15ms for me over 5GHz with most of it in display latency, which is more than acceptable. The values also change between Software and Hardware encoding so you might want to play around with that. Lowering the resolution also helps (My TV can only do 720p).

 

I would have loved Linus to talk a bit more about how well the Link works together with the Steam Controller. It has a builtin receiver for it and they really shine together.

 

And that display latency is killer in games that require precise timing. It's like playing Rock Band without calibrating your guitar controllers.

[Damarus]

3 minutes ago, Kevin_Walter said:

And that display latency is killer in games that require precise timing. It's like playing Rock Band without calibrating your guitar controllers.

Do you know how short 15ms is? That's basically impossible to notice. Actually now that I think about it, many modern TVs have really bad reaction times. I would advise you to look into the settings of your TV, there may be some kind of gaming mode or similar things that can reduce the reaction time. I can assure you that the problem does not come from network or the Steam Link. Also Linus had the same delay problems with a retro console and his TV some time ago, which he solved by using a regular monitor iirc.

[Kevin_Walter]

33 minutes ago, Damarus said:

Do you know how short 15ms is? That's basically impossible to notice. Actually now that I think about it, many modern TVs have really bad reaction times. I would advise you to look into the settings of your TV, there may be some kind of gaming mode or similar things that can reduce the reaction time. I can assure you that the problem does not come from network or the Steam Link. Also Linus had the same delay problems with a retro console and his TV some time ago, which he solved by using a regular monitor iirc.

I've done testing with both the living room tv and the monitor connected to that desktop. The results are the same, and there's no noticeable latency on either when playing games from that desktop instead of streaming them.

 

Spoiler

 

All I'm saying is that there's just enough latency to throw off timing in games that require precise timing. Which happens to be quite a lot of games, actually. Shooters require precision, some more than others. Action games (like aforementioned Mad Max) require precision during combat to counter and respond to enemy attacks. And rhythm games obviously leave extremely small amounts of room for error.

 

When you calibrate an "instrument" in Rock Band, as an example, you may only have 20 or 30ms of latency in your display, but it's still enough to throw off the accuracy of your notes and cause frequent misses, which is why that calibration tool exists.

 

No such tool exists for streaming games from one device to another. You just have to deal with the latency. If you don't notice it, awesome. Some are more sensitive to it than others. My sister has a plasma screen that her kids play CoD on all the time. The input latency is unbearable for me, but they have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

In-home streaming is a novel idea for sure, but it still needs refined, and I don't see the point in wasting money specifically on something that is consistently going to provide a non-optimal experience. But of course, that's just my opinion. People can spend their money however they wish. (normally goes without saying, but...)

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Kevin_Walter said:

-snip-

That screenshots shows a 20ms display latency for in-home streaming. That is very, very low. There is no way you can mistake 20ms for half a second. There must be something wrong with your setup if you get anywhere near half a second delay. According to the screenshot there is a 0.02 second delay, not 0.5 second.

For comparison, blinking blocks your vision for about 0.2 seconds. That is 10 times longer than the delay added by in-home streaming.

 

At a 20ms delay you shouldn't even have any problems playing Guitar Hero, which has around a 100ms error window.

 

I can see why you wouldn't want to play for example CS:GO competitively using in-home streaming, but I find it very hard to believe that it would be game breaking at a 20ms latency, unless there was something wrong with the setup.

[Kevin_Walter]

33 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

That screenshots shows a 20ms display latency for in-home streaming. That is very, very low. There is no way you can mistake 20ms for half a second. There must be something wrong with your setup if you get anywhere near half a second delay. According to the screenshot there is a 0.02 second delay, not 0.5 second.

For comparison, blinking blocks your vision for about 0.2 seconds. That is 10 times longer than the delay added by in-home streaming.

 

At a 20ms delay you shouldn't even have any problems playing Guitar Hero, which has around a 100ms error window.

 

I can see why you wouldn't want to play for example CS:GO competitively using in-home streaming, but I find it very hard to believe that it would be game breaking at a 20ms latency, unless there was something wrong with the setup.

If you think it's a fair point that you wouldn't want to play CSGO with in-home streaming, then you must admit that the latency is noticeable. Otherwise, you're not applying your own beliefs consistently across all variables. The latency is either noticeable or it's not. If it isn't noticeable, then CSGO would be a perfectly acceptable title to play with in-home streaming, the same as any other.

[Erajorma]

I wrote this same comment to youtube comments but I think I might get more intelligent answer here.

 

Xbox 360 wireless controller or PS4 controller for steam link? Which one is better?

 

I know that PS4 controller can connect directly to steam link via bluetooth. To use 360 controller you need to connect usb dongle(same as PC) to the steam link.

 

Which one works better? Any button layout difficulties with PS4 controller?

[LAwLz]

23 minutes ago, Kevin_Walter said:

If you think it's a fair point that you wouldn't want to play CSGO with in-home streaming, then you must admit that the latency is noticeable. Otherwise, you're not applying your own beliefs consistently across all variables. The latency is either noticeable or it's not. If it isn't noticeable, then CSGO would be a perfectly acceptable title to play with in-home streaming, the same as any other.

It's not black and white like that. It isn't "it is noticeable and therefore unplayable" or "it isn't noticeable and therefore it is the best thing ever". There are many shades of gray between the two. Some games are more forgiving with latency as well. I could play Hearthstone with a 1 second delay. I could not play Quake 3 with a 1 second delay. It's not rocket science.

I can however say that I could play any game (including Rock Band, Quake 3, Guitar Hero, Mad Max, and so on) with a 20ms delay. 20ms is pretty much unnoticeable even in games where it matters a lot. The reason why I said you might not want to use it for playing CS:GO competitively is because in that game you want every advantage you can get, no matter how small it is. Shaving off a couple of ms here and there might add up to a noticeable amount as well (like changing your monitor, mouse, keyboard and remove in-home streaming might together make a noticeable difference).

 

I did some Googling and apparently there are a lot of people having issues with input delays in Mad Max. I saw in another comment of yours that you like playing games with an Xbox controller. I wouldn't be surprised if the Xbox controller (without glitches like it seems to have in Mad Max) adds 10-15ms of input lag.

 

 

TL;DR: If in-home streaming only adds 20ms then it is not an issue for gaming*.

*Unless you are super serious, playing a game which is very latency sensitive and is trying to shave off as many ms as possible from your latency chain which may also include changing out your monitor, mouse and keyboard for ones with particularly low latency.

[The100]

[REDACTED]

Edited November 22, 2018 by The100

[Murdoch]

To weigh in on this, I've been using Steam In-home Streaming since it came out. And the lag is exceptionally low (both on my gigabit network, and my AC Wifi). At the start of the beta they used CPU h.264 encoding and it was pretty crap tbh, but since they leveraged the on-board h.264 encoders like those on any newish GPU, it fucking flies.

 

I've been hugely impressed by how well implemented it is. And how little impact the lag has. And yes, we're talking about 15-20ms extra.

[LewisBloom]

I have my development/gaming rig in my home office so this is perfect for me and the video has now made me realise how easier it'd be than moving the laptop around so much and limiting us to games the laptop can run.

 

Ive already got great experience using the inbuilt steam function of streaming games from desktop to laptop via logging both into steam and it works great even (even over wireless i might add) for things like GTA V so looking forward to this now. Plus it'll fit nicely out of view behind the TV.

 

Ive also just confirmed it works great with xbox controllers which is ideal too for me and mrs evening gaming once the kids go to bed.

 

cheers,

Lewis

[Centurius]

11 hours ago, Kevin_Walter said:

Considering how generally poor the performance is streaming from my upstairs gaming rig to my downstairs older gaming rig, I see no reason to waste money on an expensive device that is meant solely for that. The extra netflix and stuff is nice, but you can dump 40 bucks on a Fire TV Stick if you need to fulfill that need.

 

It would be nice if they implemented more of the Steam Link features into the normal In-Home Streaming functionality though. But I guess doing that would mean Steam Link had even less of a reason to exist...

It's a $50 device.

[Dariru]

 

6 hours ago, Kevin_Walter said:

I've done testing with both the living room tv and the monitor connected to that desktop. The results are the same, and there's no noticeable latency on either when playing games from that desktop instead of streaming them.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

All I'm saying is that there's just enough latency to throw off timing in games that require precise timing. Which happens to be quite a lot of games, actually. Shooters require precision, some more than others. Action games (like aforementioned Mad Max) require precision during combat to counter and respond to enemy attacks. And rhythm games obviously leave extremely small amounts of room for error.

 

When you calibrate an "instrument" in Rock Band, as an example, you may only have 20 or 30ms of latency in your display, but it's still enough to throw off the accuracy of your notes and cause frequent misses, which is why that calibration tool exists.

 

No such tool exists for streaming games from one device to another. You just have to deal with the latency. If you don't notice it, awesome. Some are more sensitive to it than others. My sister has a plasma screen that her kids play CoD on all the time. The input latency is unbearable for me, but they have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

In-home streaming is a novel idea for sure, but it still needs refined, and I don't see the point in wasting money specifically on something that is consistently going to provide a non-optimal experience. But of course, that's just my opinion. People can spend their money however they wish. (normally goes without saying, but...)

Having only a 20 ms delay is actually very respectable. The input lag that you would experience from using the steam link would likely rely more on the display you are using unless your display is rated excellent on http://www.displaylag.com. Unless you're playing a fighting game and doing frame perfect inputs, you are probably fine as I don't think there are many shooters or even rhythm games (or any at all) that require an accuracy of 1.8125 frames (assuming a 9 ms input lag display at 60 fps).

[zENjA]

How about to combine the steam link with multi gaming system like 2/4/8 to 32 (if 2-4 player on one) gamers one Systems that stands in the server room. Like That:

+---------------------------------+
|        Gaming Rig               |
|        8 GPUs                   |
|                                 |
|  ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++  Net   |
|  ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++   +    |
|                            |    |
+---------------------------------+
                             |
                             |
                             |
              +--------------+
  +---+----+--+Switch        |
  |   |    |  +---+---+---+--+-+
  |   |    |  |   |   |   |    |
  |   |   ++  |   |   |   |    |
 +-+ +-+ +-| +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +--+
 +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +--+


                           ^ ^ ^ ^
                           + + + +
                 4 Players at one System each

 

[yumri]

7 hours ago, zENjA said:

How about to combine the steam link with multi gaming system like 2/4/8 to 32 (if 2-4 player on one) gamers one Systems that stands in the server room. Like That:

+---------------------------------+
|        Gaming Rig               |
|        8 GPUs                   |
|                                 |
|  ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++  Net   |
|  ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++   +    |
|                            |    |
+---------------------------------+
                             |
                             |
                             |
              +--------------+
  +---+----+--+Switch        |
  |   |    |  +---+---+---+--+-+
  |   |    |  |   |   |   |    |
  |   |   ++  |   |   |   |    |
 +-+ +-+ +-| +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +--+
 +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +--+


                           ^ ^ ^ ^
                           + + + +
                 4 Players at one System each

 

For a business yes but also i cannot see anything below that being useful in that layout because of price of just running it.

to have 4 players on the gaming rig the gaming rig will have to have either 1 a very powerful GPU setup for them to use or 2 the gaming rig is a GPU server with independent VMs each running an instance of steam. The one of a GPU server makes more sense as it will allow for a 4th VM to be what the player sees when he or she turns on their link. The gaming server of course will cost alot as 4 gaming cards do. 

Because of the heat it will make i cannot see make outside of a server case or liquid cooling that will cool it properly.  For CPUs it will have to be a server motherboard purely for the RAM they will need. assuming normal recommended specs being 4GB and 6GB on newer games the guests will get around 6GB to run both the windows system and the game they are given to play. The networking will be easier if they go with a dual 1Gbps aggravated link instead of a single network link due to how it works inside the system. 

A minimum of a $4,000 USD range gaming computer to run it is alot when you consider you most likely will not be running games on the host computer at all. IF you do want to then the range goes up to around $5,000 USD because of the extra video card. 

The price is so much higher as the price of an extra windows license is included.

[Commander Llama]

Thanks for the review! I've been considering getting a Link to play low latency games in the comfort of my living room. The hardware seems quite solid... Multiple reviews have cautioned against the use of the wireless. I've been torn between going with something simple like the Link versus having an old PC boot in Big Picture. My real problem, either way, is it's 120ft from router to TV with 4 walls in between...

[LewisBloom]

1 hour ago, Commander Llama said:

Thanks for the review! I've been considering getting a Link to play low latency games in the comfort of my living room. The hardware seems quite solid... Multiple reviews have cautioned against the use of the wireless. I've been torn between going with something simple like the Link versus having an old PC boot in Big Picture. My real problem, either way, is it's 120ft from router to TV with 4 walls in between...

If you have the right ring then maybe look into network over Power. My own home office where i work everyday is at the back of the home up a floor with the router at the front downstairs. Ive used power sockets for my network for a few years now and had no issues, in fact I am still surprised at why this technology is still so rarely spoken off as in my case at least its been a transformation over using slower wifi kit.