Valve has officially opened pre-orders for the Steam Frame VR headset, nearly a year after its initial announcement. The device is designed to function both as a standalone unit and as a wireless streaming headset for PC gaming.
The hardware is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen3 (8650) chipset. To manage performance, Valve implemented a cooling system and utilized the SteamOS platform, incorporating a Proton compatibility layer to support game emulation on the ARM-based architecture.
The headset features eye-tracking cameras that enable foveated streaming. This technology prioritizes bandwidth and encoding bitrate for the user's focal point, allocating significantly fewer resources to peripheral areas to optimize visual quality and network performance.
For wireless connectivity, the device uses a dedicated Wi-Fi 6E USB adapter operating on the 6GHz band. It includes a failover mechanism that maintains data streams across multiple links, alongside a re-projection system to handle momentary latency spikes.
Pricing for the Steam Frame starts at $1,059 for the 256GB model, while the 1TB version is priced at $1,299. Valve attributes these costs to rising global prices for memory, storage chips, motherboards, copper, and logistics.
