New More Detailed Valve Hardware Survey

[SugarCoat]

More Detailed Hardware Survey (Valve)

They've added some new things such as monitor size and aspect ratio, as well as what bus people are running graphics cards in (AGP vs PCI-E) and Crossfire/SLI detection, what drivers people are using dating back quite a few months, primary resolution, amount of V-Ram, shader path support, MSAA support, multi-monitor resolution etc...there are alot of charts. The biggest thing that stuck out at me was the Crossfire users to SLI users, as well as physical processor count

As of writing this 2.54% are using multi-core systems, .78% are using some form of multi-GPU setup out of all users, of which Crossfire is making up 1.81% of all the multi-GPU systems recognized, SLI has the other 98 or so percent. Results can be found here:

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

 

[digitalwanderer]

Makes me feel a lot better about being on a 17" CRT gaming at 1024x768, I'm not the weirdo minority so many here make me out to be apparently.

 

[Entropy]

Intersting data, as always.
Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Snyder]

Hm, some of these numbers seem strange to me.
E.g.:
Monitors - the majority of 4:3 users uses 16" monitors? 16"?!
Memory - only 3.9% have 1GB RAM? Hard to believe...

 

[pascal]

The average user has:
single authenticAMD cpu at 2.0 Ghz to 2.29 Ghz (fast cpus!)
512MB of ram
Realtek AC97 Audio
geforce 6600 agp with 128mb
16" crt at 1024x768x32x60
80GB hdd (with 10~20GB free)
win xp sp2 (english)
2mbps internet connection

Thanks for the link.

 

[hughJ]

88.98% are CRT users, and 58.29% use 60hz - ugh. Looks like a lot of people not knowing about refresh rate locks, or not knowing about refresh rates at all.

 

[Geo]

Makes me feel a lot better about being on a 17" CRT gaming at 1024x768, I'm not the weirdo minority so many here make me out to be apparently.

But cross-ref that to the cards pushing those pixels. Using a 6600GT, 9600Pro, or FX5200 are you?

Those numbers are meaningless to me unless you can correlate monitor choices to higher end systems, mid-range systems, low-end systems. . .

 

[digitalwanderer]

/me kicks Geo in the nuts for pointing out my error and I continue with my feelings of monitor inadequacy.

Oh, and I found it real interesting that the average user will have a 50/50 chance of being either PCIe or AGP.

 

[Geo]

/me kicks Geo in the nuts for pointing out my error and I continue with my feelings of monitor inadequacy.

Oh, and I found it real interesting that the average user will have a 50/50 chance of being either PCIe or AGP.

17" crt is a fine upper mainstream monitor! For, umm, 1997!

/me runs really really fast.

 

[digitalwanderer]

17" crt is a fine upper mainstream monitor! For, umm, 1997!

 

[SugarCoat]

88.98% are CRT users, and 58.29% use 60hz - ugh. Looks like a lot of people not knowing about refresh rate locks, or not knowing about refresh rates at all.

if i remember correctly v-sync is on by default when you first install. Despite the huge debates that have been sparked, i'm sure people are perfectly comfortable playing with it locked. I do because im on an LCD and simply dont want image tearing. I never use to use it when i had a CRT but if i ever went back i think i problably would now because of how badly the FPS can fluctuate in some servers. If i keep HDR off it can bounce from 120 to 20-25 or vise-versa just by turning a corner.

 

[digitalwanderer]

if i remember correctly v-sync is on by default when you first install. Despite the huge debates that have been sparked, i'm sure people are perfectly comfortable playing with it locked. I do because im on an LCD and simply dont want image tearing. I never use to use it when i had a CRT but if i ever went back i think i problably would now because of how badly the FPS can fluctuate in some servers. If i keep HDR off it can bounce from 120 to 20-25 or vise-versa just by turning a corner.

vsync ≠ refresh rate

 

[soylent]

0.02% of users are running win98? And most of those aren't running second edition?

0.23% of users have less than 128 MB RAM and most of they don't run win 98/me?

Nearly 6%(!!!) of people using 16bpp desktops?!?!

 

[Neeyik]

Hm, some of these numbers seem strange to me.
E.g.:
Monitors - the majority of 4:3 users uses 16" monitors? 16"?!

If half the data sample is using 15" and the other half is using 17", then the average will calculate to 16.

 

[trinibwoy]

If half the data sample is using 15" and the other half is using 17", then the average will calculate to 16.

De que estas hablando?

 

[Neeyik]

I don't know any Spanish but having looked at the actual Valve survey data now, I suspect you're questioning what's going on in my head! I had simply assumed that the survey quoted average figures based on arithmetic means and then rounded the figure to a whole number...that's obviously not the case though...

15"	29,594	13.44 %
16"	76,243	34.63 %
17"	50,147	22.78 %
18"	22,476	10.21 %
19"	24,021	10.91 %
20"	3,971	1.80 %

I would guess, off the top of my head, that the 16" figures come from monitors giving their viewable size value, rather than actual screen size - if so that would mean the bulk of users taking the survey are using 17" monitors.

 

[SugarCoat]

think you're over complicating a bit. 17" means 17 inches viewable from corner to opposite corner, 16" is 16", 15" is 15 and so on. So 76k users are using monitors with a 16 inch viewable size....no software or display measures the frame, its always the actual viewable size.

 

[Ken2012]

Interesting, one HL2 player uses HDTV

HDTV 1 0.00 %