Gaming Nvidia officially unveils Shield tablet and controller

A high quality TK1 based 8" tablet for £239,--? This has yes written all over it.

This news excites me.

 

Android is Linux based the same as Steam OS which can run your steam Games as a steambox so I should imagine coding to get around it isn't that hard

 

Can they even claim DirectX support if the DirectX is streaming from a PC ?

 

Lot of hate for what is the fastest android tablet on the market with loads of extra features for decent money. Don't really understand why?

Even if you don't want to game it's still a great device as unlike nexus 7 it does have an SD slot, can play 1080p netfix, it has a stylus, and hdmi out to watch stuff on the big screen if you wish. The fact that it's gpu is significantly more advanced then anything else on the market (including ipad air) and it can also stream games from your pc (allegedly remotely with the beta software) is just more icing on what is already a pretty well iced cake.

The only downside I can see is the basic version only has 16gb of flash which is too little.

 

Don't know about hate, but if it can run a version of Steam while I am sat in a hotel, and I can play my Steam library (not streamed via home), then I'd be happy. But I don't think that exists yet. So it's a NO from me!

 

I don't hate it, but I don't see where I'd realistically use it...

 

And there I was expecting the 800 series.

 

Gareth do you know if a Surface Pro is good at running Steam?

 

I can only speak of the Surface Pro 1 (original release) from personal experience - so it's likely that the newer models have improvements over it.

It's a nice piece of kit which has the architecture to run everything but the actual grunt to run very little that I personally would want to run. If you're looking for a mobile office solution then it's superb - but, as Gareth quite rightly states - graphics performance is a big let down, since Intel HD graphics are poor at anything demanding.

Unfortunately it's another case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". It's the wrong kit for running Steam/playing games. Half of them WON'T play (there's a reason we all use AMD/NVIDIA GPUs right?) and the other half will play, but with oodles of tasty lag and with the graphics set to super-dooper-low.

Anyway, tablets are lousy for any serious amount of gaming regardless of the platform. The screens are just too small.

 

I'll buy a bacon buttie for the first company to make a tablet (or portable screen-less device) that supports gaming with the Oculus Rift (or whichever VR thing wins through).

 

I've tried using steam on a Surface Pro 1 and a Lenovo Miix 8.
Surface Pro 1 is my sister's, so didn't have a lot of time to try out games, but it played most of what I tried just fine.
Borderlands 2 seems to play okay on the miix 8, which is surprising to me. It's one of the heaviest games I play so I don't feel limited in what can be done with the tablet.
Battery life isn't terrible either, can game wirelessly for a long time, just needs a good bluetooth controller and it would be awesome (maybe ps4 controller?)

I've also tried in-home streaming of games, I attached a keyboard and mouse to it, plays like I'm on my desktop. I'm not sure how everybody keeps having a bad experience over wireless with the streaming, because here it streams fine at 720p. Maybe people aren't using 802.11n? (I'm using a old single frequency airport expressf at 5ghz)

 

The HD5000 chip in the macbook air is a strong chip though. Anandtech did some benches on launch and it was quicker than alot of the APU stuff out there. Iris pro is even faster.

The main issue is its still restricted to top end chips from Intel that cost alot and only 3 desktop chips offer better than a hd 4600 at the moment. 4570r, 4670r and 4770r.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write out your advice on the Surface Pro!
I spent a long time this morning playing a Dead Trigger 2 and some other more basic games on my iPad Air. I would agree that tablets cannot compete with desktops, but I would not say tablets are bad at gaming. If the games are made for tablets, or enhanced for tablets, then they can often be more accessible and fun than being confined to the location of mouse and keyboard. I am certainly looking forward to seeing a tablet running Steam while I'm sat in Waitrose eating my lunch. But I guess we need game devs to do those enhancements first.