Market penetration of multi-GPU on the PC

[XMAN26]

Kinda hard to look past the deafening silence and 99% propablility that if Fermi's hard numbers were THERE, Nvidia would have been leaking some figures to keep the high end community from defecting enmasse to AMD.

I've noticed a sea change over the last four months on the forums, particulaly related to Charlies predictions on Fermi. At first the sentiment was running heavily in favor of Nvidia and was derisive of Charlie, generally giving Nvidia the benefit of the doubt. That is now pretty much reversed and Nvidia scepticism now prevails and the fanboyism has grown sparse and mostly muted.

That added to earlier blunders puts Nvidia in the precarious position of courting a near certain PR disaster if they pre-release bogus numbers or promises for the purpose of keeping people from jumping ship and the actual numbers fall short when the card is released and any site that tried to rationalize or downplay Fermi's numbers would run into a buzzsaw - a wolfpack mentality as it were.

Nvidia simply cannot AFFORD to put out numbers or promises they aren't certain they can produce when they release the board. What counts is not what Fermi can do eventually, but what it can do when it is released. That is when it's reputation will be cemented in the publics mind and if Fermi's numbers are marginal, it's a hobsons choice, and right now the best of those choices appear to be not pre-poisoning the waters any more than has already occured, releasing the card as soon as feasible, and then letting the PR department go to work with what they have.

Picking the least bad outcome.

yes, they are leaving in droves. alot of people with sli, tri-sli, quad or even XFire setups setup are holding out for nvidia. then there is the low volume of shipped units from ATI that isnt helping. so tosay people are flocking to ATI is simply an overstatement. i'm running 2x gtx260s and a 5870 does not offer that big of a performance boost to warrant upgrading to it.

 

[Arty]

yes, they are leaving in droves. alot of people with sli, tri-sli or even quad setup are holding out for nvidia. then there is the low volume of shipped units from ATI that isnt helping. so tosay people are flocking to ATI is simply an overstatement. i'm running 2x gtx260s and a 5870 does not offer that big of a performance boost to warrant upgrading to it.

And what % of the actual market are we talking about?

 

[XMAN26]

Sorry, you forgot to mention CUDA...

Oh, btw there's a reason for only GT21x and Fermi supporting 3D Blu-Ray except marketing. it's not like if any recent GPU could render two HD streams at the same time.

PhysX is dead and gone now, CUDA can't compete with DC when it comes to games and 3DVision has always been a joke that will soon have an answer in the red camp (which will be a joke too since nothing is needed to do stereo except the avoidance of some tricks in games rendering).

PhysX is dead and gone?! Really? Cuda can't compete with DC?! Really? I'd say your wrong on both fronts. OCL still hasn't shown its head in gaming. Havok and other Physics type game apps dont do half what PhysX has been shown to do and Cuda continues to win over App companies for computing programing to increase teh speed of certain apps.

 

[Alexko]

yes, they are leaving in droves. alot of people with sli, tri-sli or even quad setup are holding out for nvidia. then there is the low volume of shipped units from ATI that isnt helping. so tosay people are flocking to ATI is simply an overstatement. i'm running 2x gtx260s and a 5870 does not offer that big of a performance boost to warrant upgrading to it.

Careful, you just wrote "a lot of people with SLI" ;-)

That said, I certainly wouldn't bury Nvidia just yet.

 

[XMAN26]

And what % of the actual market are we talking about?

I'm willing to bet the % of those who are running Sli/Tri/Quad/XFire is greater than what is thought of the total gaming market.

 

[Alexko]

I'm willing to bet the % of those who are running Sli/Tri/Quad/XFire is greater than what is thought of the total gaming market.

According to Steam it's 2.67%.

 

[XMAN26]

According to Steam it's 2.67%.

thats 2.67% of those who use steam. I'd say for every 1 who use steam, there is 2 who isn't

 

[Alexko]

thats 2.67% of those who use steam. I'd say for every 1 who use steam, there is 2 who isn't

So? It's a percentage. For every single-GPU guy who uses Steam, there are probably several who don't.

Steam may not be absolutely representative of the general gaming population, but close enough.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

thats 2.67% of those who use steam. I'd say for every 1 who use steam, there is 2 who isn't

Your logic is very poor. For every one of the 97.33% of Steam users who don't have multi-GPU setups, there are probably five other single-GPU users who don't use Steam. It's just nonsense to assume that there are lots of people who use multiple-highend GPUs. High-end GPUs are themselves in minority, let alone people who have two/three/four of them.

You seem to be happy to talk about Steam not properly counting high end multi-GPU setups, but are deliberately missing the point that there are also single-GPU users that don't use steam - and they are in the overwhelming majority just as they are in the Steam survey.

 

[XMAN26]

Your logic is very poor. For every one of the 97.33% of Steam users who don't have multi-GPU setups, there are probably five other single-GPU users who don't use Steam. It's just nonsense to assume that there are lots of people who use multiple-highend GPUs. High-end GPUs are themselves in minority, let alone people who have two/three/four of them.

You seem to be happy to talk about Steam not properly counting high end multi-GPU setups, but are deliberately missing the point that there are also single-GPU users that don't use steam - and they are in the overwhelming majority just as they are in the Steam survey.

No, my point wasn't in regaurds to the multi-gpu count but to the overall count of user of steam vs those who dont. not that for every 1 multi-gpu user who uses steam there are 2 who dont.

 

[Karoshi]

thats 2.67% of those who use steam. I'd say for every 1 who use steam, there is 2 who isn't

I'd say P(multi-GPU-user-uses-steam) > P(single-GPU-user-uses-steam)
=>
percentage of SLI users < 2.67%

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

No, my point wasn't in regaurds to the multi-gpu count but to the overall count of user of steam vs those who dont. not that for every 1 multi-gpu user who uses steam there are 2 who dont.

But that same idea is true of single GPU setups. Steam is just a subset of users that can be extrapolated to the larger gaming community - single GPU or multi GPU. A tiny fraction of Steam users are multi-GPU, and a tiny fraction of the general gaming population are multi-GPU users too.

Unless you can produce more accurate numbers than Steam which is an actual user survey, then those are the ones we have to go by. You're just guessing if you're simply denying that only 3 percent of games are multi-GPU setups because you don't like the numbers.

 

[spigzone]

thats 2.67% of those who use steam. I'd say for every 1 who use steam, there is 2 who isn't

Why would you even throw up an obvious p.o.o.y.a. number like that?

Besides, isn't it logical Steam users would be more likely to be sli/xfire users than the general gaming community?

 

[chavvdarrr]

perhaps what he meant was that if there are 1000 people with sli/quad according to Steam, thet total number of sli/quad users is 2000?
I have no idea how many people are using steam...

 

[Rebel44]

perhaps what he meant was that if there are 1000 people with sli/quad according to Steam, thet total number of sli/quad users is 2000?
I have no idea how many people are using steam...

They have little over 29 million accounts
if you substract those who we banned for some reason, those who have more than 1 account and those who just stopped playing I expect 15-20 million current users.
Right now 2 600 000 users are logged into Steam
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

 

[XMAN26]

Why would you even throw up an obvious p.o.o.y.a. number like that?

Besides, isn't it logical Steam users would be more likely to be sli/xfire users than the general gaming community?

Not really, considering you can have someone using steam with Intel intergratd graphics playing CS more than not the case tho. It would be nice if Steam had a way to determin OEM vs Custom build machines and post that info in a pie chart aswell.

Now someone commented on there being 29M accounts for Steam, I'd say that is a far cry from the total number of gamers in the world today, let alone the US and Europe where I believe Steam gathers is tallies from.

But given 29M account, and a 2.67% total Multi-GPU count, that makes for 774300 machines running Multi GPUs. Now this is given there are no multi account user, again unlikely. but with out knowing the makeup of every machine out, its impossible to say how many Multi-GPU platforms there are, but as I said, I'm willing to bet it is greater than 2.67% that steam shows as Nvidia has sold Millions of SLi capable boards and Intel/AMD has sold Millions of XFire capable boards.

 

[Alexko]

Not really, considering you can have someone using steam with Intel intergratd graphics playing CS more than not the case tho. It would be nice if Steam had a way to determin OEM vs Custom build machines and post that info in a pie chart aswell.

Now someone commented on there being 29M accounts for Steam, I'd say that is a far cry from the total number of gamers in the world today, let alone the US and Europe where I believe Steam gathers is tallies from.

But given 29M account, and a 2.67% total Multi-GPU count, that makes for 774300 machines running Multi GPUs. Now this is given there are no multi account user, again unlikely. but with out knowing the makeup of every machine out, its impossible to say how many Multi-GPU platforms there are, but as I said, I'm willing to bet it is greater than 2.67% that steam shows as Nvidia has sold Millions of SLi capable boards and Intel/AMD has sold Millions of XFire capable boards.

So you think multi-GPU platforms account for significantly more than 2.67% of all PCs based solely on the fact that "millions" of SLI/XFire motherboards have been sold? But just because your motherboard is SLI or XFire capable doesn't mean you'll get a second graphics card, assuming you even have one at all. Plus, Steam's population sample is about 0.43% of the world population yet you think it's too small to give us a reliable estimate of the PC gaming population?

 

[Florin]

I'd say P(multi-GPU-user-uses-steam) > P(single-GPU-user-uses-steam)
=>
percentage of SLI users < 2.67%

Yeah if anything I'd guess the kinds of power users who would go for multiGPU are more likely to be OVERrepresented on Steam. Not that I really have anything to substantiate that.

 

[Grall]

Xman, weren't you banned for your flagrant nvidia fanboyism not too long ago? And yet, here you are again, up to your same old antics.

Please, understand that your video card does not love you back for all the devotion you're showing it. You're not doing yourself any favors here either I might add.

Steam's survey is quite representative of the overall PC gaming community. As participating in the survey is optional it won't have 29 million samples, but it still number in many millions. Easily more than enough.

Your posts are full of wishful thinking weasel words to describe how you want reality to look like, but reality is, SLI configurations is a minute part of the market. Most motherboards don't even have two (or more) PCIe slots.

 

[Mize]

This is a stupid thread. For one, no amount of debate changes the under or over representation of multi-gpu systems on Steam. Steam's % is whatever it is relative to the total. Like debating Pi.

That said, how anyone can guess that an online supplier of games that caters to hardcore gamers in the highest-wealth regions of the world can under-represent the uber-expensive, multi-gpu segment is beyond me. I guess it's more like for every 1 SLI user that does use steam there is 0.01 users that don't, LOL. Either way, it's not worth debating.