Slashdot Mirror
Steam Hardware Survey Results
richie2000 writes "Valve asked Steam users for their hardware specs and more than half a million responded. Check out the survey results. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is that OpenGL beats Direct3D by a healthy margin."
Yeah, I noticed the disrepancy, but then remembered that the only game that's available on Steam in HalfLife1 right now. When that was written weren't we on DirectX 3? (I'd have to check the box at home.)
And, even more 'condemning' of this stat is that HL was based on Quake1(and a bit of 2) code, which was OpenGL ONLY, it didn't have a DirectX option.
Anyway...it's one for the stat books, but I really don't think it means anything, given the context.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
The survey has bad phrasing.
If I have 1GB of RAM, do I select "512MB to 1GB" or do I select "1GB to 1.5GB"?
A shame, because it looked like a decent number of respondents and it would be valuable for game makers to use to gauge what platforms they should target.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
What's even more interesting is that the CPUs are split almost 50-50 between Intel and AMD.
Unfortunately, the major computer vendors are not offering many choices in the way of AMD processors.
It seems to me that the mainstream PC vendors better jump on the AMD bandwagon or else more and more users are going to be building their own, cheaper and faster.
that there is no Linux or Mac gaming market!
I mean, look at it, they have Windows, Windows, and more Windows! Obviously, only Windows users buy games!
[end sarcasm]
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I was sort of surprised to see so many Radeon 9800s myself... of course, I was more suprised at the number of GeForce4 MXs (-_-;) Seriously though, I hope most of these people play stuff other than HL and its mods... I was getting 90 fps using a Voodoo2 for HL..
What shocked *me* was all those high-powered video cards--and they're starving their machines of memory. Almost *20%* fell into "128 Mb to 256 Mb" (which I don't think *includes* 256 Meg, so most of these guys are 128)? Oy. I only have a Radeon 9200 in my machine...but I have a Gig of memory, and it's worth it.
Chris Mattern
Your hardware is surveyed and submited after running the 3d test within CS:Source, after you've set up all your control/video/sound options. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that OpenGL is the default setting, and I'm sure that a large number of people get a game and click "New Game" right away without even bothering to check the settings, so they get the default setting of OpenGL submitted as their survey. I always like to at least check over the settings before I run a game for the first time. Even if they're all right, I like to make sure....cause I'm a nerd.
This sig is in another castle.
Look at the "CPU ID" list - ValveIsGreat?
True, it is only one entry, but is this a remnant of test data, or has somebody hacked Steam?
And speaking of "hacking" - has anybody run Steam under Wine? I know I completed both OpFor and BlueShift under Wine. How would that confuse things?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Writeup:
...more than half a million responded.
...Unique Samples: 293423...
Article:
So that would be: "...more than a quarter of a million."
Ok, for the top end of the market, games really need to start being DVD only.
Survey says 77.93% of the machines had a DVD drive. Start putting games out only on DVD, and that will rise quickly.
I bought my first DVD game in 1998. I'm damn tired of seeing my game wallet have a full page just dedicated to one multi CD game. Lets get the market moved to DVD-Rom before BD-Rom starts in...
... a few things that struck me:
:)
- what kind of CPU can currently run above 3.7GHz?
- unless I completely missed something it does seem that there are very few (if none) nvidia 6800-class (standard, GT or ultra) cards around (my local hw shops have been backordered on these for MONTHS, practically impossible to buy). Also given how many 'older' video cards are around no wonder very few games are willing to push the video HW requirements
- what processor vendor is named 'ValveIsGreat'? what about the Euro symbol?
- why do 33 people run with an horizontal resolution of 832 pixels ?!?
- what video card can run in 49bpp? and what about 6bpp (EGA?)?
- there are two versions of the Korean language?!?!? (Adult and Teen)
- wow, 288 people have more than 250GB free hd space (!)
-- the cake is a lie
So these results are based on Half Life? This game is ancient, and 10% of people (more than 25000) play the game at resolutions LOWER than 640x480? This is the least credible survey I've ever seen, and it's more ridiculous if it's true that this data is collected automatically.
You gotta feel sorry for those 11 people with 10GB HDD's... And that one guy speaking an unknown language! I bet he's pretty lonely!
It's actually useful for more than just benchmarking.
The time stamp counter is incremented every instruction cycle, and it lives in a register on x86 processors, so it can be read very quickly. In linux, time is kept by the periodic interrupt timer (PIT) which causes an interrupt at some interval, like 100 times a second. If your program calls gettimeofday(), the current time is calculated as boot time + jiffies (the number of PIT interrupts recieved since boot time) + (current tsc value - tsc value at the last interrupt)/(cpu frequency). Programs can also call rdtsc directly, and save themselves from making a system call, though this is only useful if they only care about relative time, not absolute time. There was some talk awhile ago about making "jiffies" visible to user space through some sort of memmory mapping trickery, so gettimeofday could be implemented completely in user space, but I'm not sure what became of the idea.
I have no idea what the TSC is used for in windows, but it's probably something similar.
-jim
Major computer vender's will go with whoever gives them the best discouts. Intel overcharges on the retail chain, but you can bet the OEMs are doing fine. They wouldn't stick with Intel otherwise.
Besides, Intel's marketing campaign allows OEM's distinguish their product. After all, why would you want a crummy AMD when your can have Intel Inside (TM)? Intel's marketing campaign gives OEM's an excuse to jack up prices on Intel based computers. I talk to people all the time who are so proud of themselves for buying the very best computer Dell has. Even had it custom built. These kind of idiots want to spend more money. Intel provides a convient reason to do so.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/