Microsoft impresses as imperfect Windows 11 shines inside Valve's Steam Machine

Windows 11 matches and sometimes even outperforms SteamOS on Valve's new Steam Machine.

After the launch of the Steam Machine recently, Valve published official Windows 11 drivers for the device. However, it had cautioned against installing Microsoft's OS on the device despite agreeing that it's perfectly capable of running any desktop OS, including Windows 11.

Despite that caution, it looks like users who will install Windows 11 on Valve's new system can be in for a pleasant surprise, at least in terms of performance.

YouTuber ETA Prime recently compared Windows 11 on the Steam Machine against the default SteamOS, and the results were impressive for sure. In fact, Windows managed to outdo SteamOS in some situations as well, sometimes by pretty large margins.

As a refresher, the Steam Machine runs on an AMD Custom 6-core 12-thread CPU "1772" that packs two Zen 4 and four Zen 4c cores. The performance is similar to an AMD Ryzen 5600 non-X.

As you can see in the image above, the 5600X is around 14% ahead of the Steam Machine's AMD 1772 CPU in the Cinebench 2024 multi-core test, which implies the non-X model will be more on par. Meanwhile, the GPU on this thing should be right around the Radeon 6600 XT, or the GeForce RTX 3060.

Three games were run in total, starting with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which we know from our own testing is quite CPU-heavy. Here, both Windows 11 and SteamOS were pretty much on par with little to separate them. Although technically, one could say Windows 11 was overall better as it was faster at both 1080p (which is more CPU-heavy) and 4K (which is more GPU-bound).

Next, we had Cyberpunk 2077, again a test that is quite heavy on both CPU and GPU, especially the latter. Interestingly, here, while Windows 11 was significantly better at 4K, the more graphics-heavy test, SteamOS was similarly better at both 1080p and 1440p. Thus it seems Windows 11 is the better OS at GPU utilization, at least in the case of this game.

Finally, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered was up on the bench, and again it was a close call, though Windows 11, technically, came out on top as it showed a 7% lead at 4K. Overall, it definitely looks like Windows 11 is just better at GPU utilization, as all three benchmarks seem to favour Microsoft's desktop OS at 4K.

This is great to see, especially considering the Windows drivers are expected to not be in their most optimal state on a Steam Machine. All things considered, especially looking at Microsoft's effort to improve performance elsewhere, it's probably fair to say that Windows 11 may be a great gaming OS after all, at least on the Steam Machine.

Credit where it is due, SteamOS should be praised as well as it is able to keep up or be very close to Windows 11 in most of these situations.

Source and images: ETA Prime (YouTube)

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Posted Friday 17 July 2026 at 7:23 am AEST (my time).

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