"Graphics cards sales down more than 12%"

[3dilettante]

Someone could be smart and defer doing the survey and even do it on another person's ultra-high end rig using their steam password . Or just throw some stuff that they have lying around into the rig and turn up the AA etc to unplayable settings , Valve would be none the wiser .


Well until they see a 128 mb FX5200 running at 1600X1200 with 6XAA , 16XAF and all of the possible goodies turned on .

How many people would care enough about a stupid survey to bother with all that, two?

 

[Cowboy X]

How many people would care enough about a stupid survey to bother with all that, two?

The number who would stoop to such may surprise you .

 

[trinibwoy]

The number who would stoop to such may surprise you .

Yeah maybe 3 or 4. What you've described is a lot of effort for absolutely no gain.

I'm not too surprised with the slow down in GPU sales.

• Two major console launches
• Few compelling titles
• DX10 "wait-and-see" mode in full effect

 

[Maintank]

The number who would stoop to such may surprise you .

Doubtful it is more than a handful. Most Steam surveys have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of submissions. Even if a few hundred bothered with such a convoluted plan, it would probably amount to needle in a haystack.

 

[CaptainGinger]

There seems to be some people in the R600 thread who find the steam survey unbelievable on account that its possible to falsify the information that is sent in. I question wether the numbers of people who might be interested in doing that would be significant in a survey of this size but everyone is entitled to thier own opinion. In the end wether these figures are absolutly accurate or not they are the best we have access too.

Looking at the survey right now it has 734435 Unique Samples.

I am always shocked (continually) how poor the average PC gamers hardware is. The listed GPUs cover a little over 10% of the market in the survey of users with Steam.

I think lots of people who are interested in this 3d stuff find it hard to believe everyone isn't playing on the latest and greatest kit. Just take a look at all the reviews and coverage of SLI and Crossfire. How many people have such systems? Less than 1.5% of those surveyed according to steam, with the vast majority of those being SLI based. As a gamer though its nice to see that two thirds of those surveyed default to DirectX 9 Shader Model 2 Path on Source or higher (though I doubt they are all playable). Hopefully this will help push things forward a little.

Those are fairly ugly high-end numbers for AMD right there. 2.5-1 for GF7900 vs X1900? Ouch.

Its not getting any better with more results in either, current results...

NVIDIA GeForce 7600 : 29,030
ATI Radeon X1600 : 14,421
ATI Radeon X1650 : 1,273

NVIDIA GeForce 7900 : 22,064
ATI Radeon X1900 : 8,960

NVIDIA GeForce 7950 : 7,585
ATI Radeon X1950 : 3,510

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 : 3,040

The x1950 pro looks like a great card to me and yet the figures here are dissapointing. Its puzzling, obviously my opinion is in the minority here.

 

[Skrying]

Here's a question:

What all falls under X1950? The Pro? The XT? The XTX?

What all falls under 7900? GS? GT? GTX?

The 7950? GT? GX2?

The results are really interesting in just how badly ATi cards are doing. It honestly makes no sense other than Nvidia's just absolutely killer marketing when compared to ATi. The fact that there's no sign at all of this changing and yes it does look very bad for ATi. This is two generations in a row now that they've been beaten rather handily.

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

The results are really interesting in just how badly ATi cards are doing. It honestly makes no sense other than Nvidia's just absolutely killer marketing when compared to ATi. The fact that there's no sign at all of this changing and yes it does look very bad for ATi. This is two generations in a row now that they've been beaten rather handily.

I think the simple answer is the mind share that is built up with being first to market and the fact that Nvidia tends to feed the retail channel better than ATI does. All those sales clerks at Best Buy, Circuit City (insert EU retail store names here) when asked "who is the best" or "who is the fastest" or "what is the newest generation" have been getting steered to the Nvidia cards. Nvidia has been first for 2 generations in a row now and have that blue sky honeymoon period all to themselves for months to build up mind share and market share. Couple that with OEM high end machines at Dell, HP etc. and you see Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia in both desktop and mobile.

These people who are exposed to this dominance by Nvidia while shopping at retail or etail tell their friends who tell their friends and some of them buy what is "hot" according to their friends or friendly sales clerk. It is something that gains momentum on its own and turns a snowball into an avalanche after a time. The ONLY way to counter this is to roll your own snowball down the hill first!!

While the vaunted marketing department at Nvidia is routinely cited as the big difference between ATI and Nvidia, I somewhat disagree with this. There is no question that the TWIMTBP partnership with top game devs and other marketing initiatives help, but it is the top management at Nvidia that should get the praise here. They set deadlines for new architectures, they develop products for "hot" segments, they are first to market on the newest and greatest features (SM 3.0, DX 10, Dual DVI, SLI, etc.) and they have executed flawlessly since NV30. The marketing department can't make these things happen...they can only exploit the advantage given to them by top Nvidia brass who delivers products to the market on time with compelling features in the most sought after segment(s).

*EDIT I had "HDMI" instead of "DVI"

 

[Otto Dafe]

I have to agree with ^. I did end up going with an x1900 this round, but I was actually looking for any excuse to go NV, as I thought they demonstrated superior planning, engineering, and execution this gen(and prolly last, though I wasn't really shopping. Indeed, I almost bought a 7600GT just because it's such an awesome contender in terms of performance/price/watt. But ultimately I had to have more power, and NV had nothing on a x1900xt for $250. It eats a 100 watts and weighs more than my mainboard, but oh well.