Anecdotally: I have a 7-8 year old CPU (Q6600) with a 4 year old GPU (GTX 460 SE). I'm running Tropico 5, Civ 5, CS:GO, XCom, TF2 - all great. The only game I've had even slight problems with is Borderlands 2 and I'd probably have needed to turn down the settings in Windows anyway.
The problem here isn't SteamOS, it's AMD and their crappy drivers. If you're on Nvidia, everything is good. This isn't exactly a new phenomenon either, I've bought only Nvidia for the last 8 years specifically because this is a known issue on Linux.
The problem here isn't SteamOS, it's AMD and their crappy drivers. If you're on Nvidia, everything is good. This isn't exactly a new phenomenon either, I've bought only Nvidia for the last 8 years specifically because this is a known issue on Linux.