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Steam Hardware Survey Results

Posted by Zonk on from the showing-off-your-rig dept.

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."

7 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. OpenGL beats DirectX for HalfLife 1 by Marc_Hawke · · Score: 4, Informative

    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--
    1. Re:OpenGL beats DirectX for HalfLife 1 by Black+Hitler · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Uh, HL does have a DirectX renderer.


      True, but it's crap and everyone knows it. It's not in the least bit surprising that OpenGL outnumbers Direct3D by such a wide margin. I imagine that most of the Direct3D users are running CS Source.

      where are the 3dfx cards?


      Um, in dumpsters all across the nation? 3Dfx has been dead for awhile now.
  2. bad phrasing by Jahf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:bad phrasing by joeljkp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      These stats make me think that the numbers are automatically detected by Steam, not input by users.

      So to fix the bad phrasing, all they need to do is correct the typo or resort the raw data or whatever. The data itself isn't effected by it.

      --
      WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
    2. Re:bad phrasing by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Informative

      I took that survey; they don't ask the user, they ask the machine and get an exact count of memory, which they summarize here. As you point out, they summarize it badly, but the original data doesn't have that weakness.

      Chris Mattern

  3. AMD by mabu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. nitpick.... by Chilles · · Score: 4, Informative

    Writeup:
    ...more than half a million responded.
    Article:
    ...Unique Samples: 293423...
    So that would be: "...more than a quarter of a million."