Zotac Steam Machine ZBOX NEN SN970 Review

Benchmarks – Company of Heroes

Company of Heroes 2 has never been a game which has benchmarked well, even on Windows it is almost impossible to get this game to run at a steady 60FPS almost regardless of your hardware configuration. 

The Linux version of this game does not run well, but given that this game lacks controller support this game isn’t exactly what a Steam Machine was intended to play. Every other game that we have played on SteamOS gave us a much better experience, so we peg out problems on the game itself, rather than SteamOS or the Steam Machine itself. 

Benchmarks – Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor is easily one of the best Lord of the Rings themed games to date, merging great Batman Arkham style combat with the games unique and satisfying Nemesis system. 

On the PS4 this game ran at 1080p at 30FPS, which is something that this Steam Machine is able to best at even Ultra game settings, achieving an average framerate of almost 42 FPS. We do have the option to lower the settings down to achieve a higher average framerate if the player wishes.

While playing the game was very smooth, delivering an experience which was not just very playable but visually satisfying too.

Cranking the game up to 4K we were sadly not able to make the game run at over 60FPS consistently, but given the GPU which is used in this PC we don’t exactly see this as an issue, after all the GTX 960 is a GPU for 1080p gaming, not 4K.