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Updated Steam Survey

C

Commander Suzdal

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 29, 2004
Messages
2,134
Last week's update of the system survey by Steam is the first time it's happened since I installed Half Life 2. The statistics were pretty wild. The top two models were both ATI cards, which didn't surprise me, but going down the list and seeing how many people were playing with GeForce MX series cards was a shocker. How do they even load the game?

On the other hand, hanging around these boards tends to give the impression that most serious gamers have upgraded to either ATI x800 series or NVidia 6x00 series, and that the split is about 50/50, maybe 60/40 or even 70/30 ATI for HL2 fans, but it's just not there in the numbers. You don't see ANY X800 cards until you get way down on the list, and not exactly a boatload of 6800s either.

It all leads me to draw some conclusions:

1. A lot of Radeon 9x00 buyers must've finally cashed in their HL2 coupons, and waited to upgrade until they could get their money/game's worth out of those cards.

2. All the high-end cards around here must be a pretty small sample of even the enthusiast market--[H]'ers may be a mob of elitist rich-boys, after all! ;)

3. I doubted some of the talk of X800 scarcity in the marketplace, since both my local Circuit City and Best Buy seemed to have a lot of them (especially Circuit City, totally dominated by ATI cards). I live in a very non-metropolitan area, too. But the total number of X800 cards in the survey was so low, especially considering the ATI/Valve alliance, that it makes me wonder what ATI's retail market penetration is really like beyond the privileged few. Where are all the cards? Surely anyone who bought an X800 would have HL2 and thus have been captured in the survey?

Anyway, lots of surpises and food for thought in that table of results.
 
What is happening is that the top end cards of last year....um..2 years ago (not used to the 2005 yet ;) ) is now much more avoidable. The flagship cards now are the ones everyone (mainstream) wants but can't afford. So they wait. Next gen cards knocking the prices of these cards a lot more
 
Look at my rig. I play CS:Source at low settings (at 1024x768) and get a good 40FPS average, which is pretty good
 
Sounds good enough for fraggin' so who cares about braggin', right?

I had a Geforce 2 MX, even though reviewers said the 4 MXs weren't that much different, mine wouldn't OC worth a dime and the memory was lame. I bet your memory is a lot better.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
Sounds good enough for fraggin' so who cares about braggin', right?

I had a Geforce 2 MX, even though reviewers said the 4 MXs weren't that much different, mine wouldn't OC worth a dime and the memory was lame. I bet your memory is a lot better.
Click to expand...

ya it's pretty good. Ive only recently noticed slow downs with most games (once I got HL2) so it lasted me a good long time. Im waiting a few months for the R520 and dual core opterons for my gaming/Video editing Machine
 
Yeah the Geforce 4MX is my surfing machine plays HL2 decently, people forget how well these games actually scale.
 
The survery doesn't take into consideration any SLI systems. It only detects one 6x00 card...not duals. Even though it would be a VERY small percentage, it would still be interesting to see how many users actually are playing with an SLI rig.
 
Its readily apparent Commander Suzdal that you really dont know much at all about the computer market, or HL2 for that matter.

The majority of gamers do not build their own machines, the majority of gamers are gaming on a prebuilt system. The majority of gamers also dont upgrade their video card everytime the next best thing comes out. And finally, the majority of gamers are gaming on the mid to low end cards.

About HL2, it has been well shown in many HL2 reviews that the Source scales incredibly well to even the lowest of system specs and still provides an enjoyable gaming experience and high frames.

The results of the survey dont surprise me at all, and are probably around what I expected.
 
lol, look at the free HD one. most people only have about 5-40gb free, hahahahahaha! I would be under the catagory 250GB+
 
Bugalaman said:
lol, look at the free HD one. most people only have about 5-40gb free, hahahahahaha! I would be under the catagory 250GB+
Click to expand...

I have about 7 gigs free...
 
How do they choose who's info is added, because I know that there are more than 823,158 people that have played half-life two. It's sold way to many copys for that....
 
I ahve dual 80 gigs and i ahve about half free on one and 75 % free on the one with the OS

and nice..amd cpus are catching up to intel real fast :)
 
Commander Suzdal said:
1. A lot of Radeon 9x00 buyers must've finally cashed in their HL2 coupons, and waited to upgrade until they could get their money/game's worth out of those cards.
Click to expand...

Valid conclusion, the number of 9x00 cards is disproportionate because hl2 was "given away" with said cards.

Commander Suzdal said:
2. All the high-end cards around here must be a pretty small sample of even the enthusiast market--[H]'ers may be a mob of elitist rich-boys, after all! ;)
Click to expand...
Not logically valid, following your first conclusion, if hl2 had also been bundled with GeForces the numbers would be different. Also any 'enthusiast' who purchased a vid card during the Rad9x00 vs GF FX days of course went with the ATI. Further, this is a STEAM survey not a HL2 survey, meaning it includes everyone still playing original CS/CS:CZ either unable/unwilling to upgrade. Last estimates i saw, there was something like 5x as many ppl playing the older games than Source.

Commander Suzdal said:
3. I doubted some of the talk of X800 scarcity in the marketplace, since both my local Circuit City and Best Buy seemed to have a lot of them (especially Circuit City, totally dominated by ATI cards). I live in a very non-metropolitan area, too. But the total number of X800 cards in the survey was so low, especially considering the ATI/Valve alliance, that it makes me wonder what ATI's retail market penetration is really like beyond the privileged few. Where are all the cards? Surely anyone who bought an X800 would have HL2 and thus have been captured in the survey?
Click to expand...
X800s(as well as the 6800s) were very scarce when first released (the xt/pe are still going at a HUGE markup).
I could be wrong but didnt ATI stop bundling hl2 after the 9800s? Ppl who got it with thier card play it because its 'Free', those buying the x800s without it arnt going to rush out and buy hl2 just because it runs slightly better on thier cards (unless of course they wanted to play it anyways.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
Last week's update of the system survey by Steam is the first time it's happened since I installed Half Life 2. The statistics were pretty wild. The top two models were both ATI cards, which didn't surprise me, but going down the list and seeing how many people were playing with GeForce MX series cards was a shocker. How do they even load the game?

On the other hand, hanging around these boards tends to give the impression that most serious gamers have upgraded to either ATI x800 series or NVidia 6x00 series, and that the split is about 50/50, maybe 60/40 or even 70/30 ATI for HL2 fans, but it's just not there in the numbers. You don't see ANY X800 cards until you get way down on the list, and not exactly a boatload of 6800s either.

It all leads me to draw some conclusions:

1. A lot of Radeon 9x00 buyers must've finally cashed in their HL2 coupons, and waited to upgrade until they could get their money/game's worth out of those cards.

2. All the high-end cards around here must be a pretty small sample of even the enthusiast market--[H]'ers may be a mob of elitist rich-boys, after all! ;)

3. I doubted some of the talk of X800 scarcity in the marketplace, since both my local Circuit City and Best Buy seemed to have a lot of them (especially Circuit City, totally dominated by ATI cards). I live in a very non-metropolitan area, too. But the total number of X800 cards in the survey was so low, especially considering the ATI/Valve alliance, that it makes me wonder what ATI's retail market penetration is really like beyond the privileged few. Where are all the cards? Surely anyone who bought an X800 would have HL2 and thus have been captured in the survey?

Anyway, lots of surpises and food for thought in that table of results.
Click to expand...


Well, I wouldnt give it much merit since my X800XT wasnt identified correctly by the survey.
 
I had a feeling that the 6800 GT was the most popular current gen graphics card.

Yeah! I am like everyone else.

Oh wait, that's bad.
 
Im amazed that there are actualy 6,435 people playing HL2 with 96-128mb of main memory. That must run SLOW.
 
Ryland said:
Im amazed that there are actualy 6,435 people playing HL2 with 96-128mb of main memory. That must run SLOW.
Click to expand...

Again, the survey includes all STEAM users not just those playing HL2. Original CS runs just peachy on 128mb :)
 
Vermicious Knid said:
Again, the survey includes all STEAM users not just those playing HL2. Original CS runs just peachy on 128mb :)
Click to expand...

Why are old CS users on Steam? I thought it was only required for HL2 or CS: Source.

That is the reason my first comments were surprised at the number of Steam users with cards that were not one, not two, but THREE generations behind the current. I recognize that many users are not on high-end cards, but to me midrange or low-end usually refers to cheaper cards in the current series or maybe one generation back, not three. Such as, Geforce 6600/6200/FX 5600/FX 5200 or Radeon x700/9800/9600/9200, not Geforce 4s and 2s or Radeon 7000/8000s.

Most of the active posters on [H] seem to have, or at least argue as if they have, the latest cards, so that skewed my picture of the current situation. Up until 2 years ago I was always gaming at the back of the pack, usually with freebie hand-me-down cards. New game tech has changed too fast these days for me to get away with that and have what I consider an enjoyable experience, and I thought most avid gamers were in the same situation.
 
They might be using Steam to find games for original CS (I am guessing here).
 
Apallohadas said:
The number of people using XP without even SP1 is scarey...
Click to expand...

yeah - prolly cause they can't get it cause they have hacked versions... or they just don't give a rats a$$ about it... lol
 
I have HL2, CS:S. HL2DM and all other mods but find myself going back to the original CS a lot of times. And you now HAVE to use steam to play even the old mods.
 
revenant said:
yeah - prolly cause they can't get it cause they have hacked versions... or they just don't give a rats a$$ about it... lol
Click to expand...
Very good point. I hadn't considered that!
 
revenant said:
yeah - prolly cause they can't get it cause they have hacked versions... or they just don't give a rats a$$ about it... lol
Click to expand...

Personally, most people I run accross in CS:S and HL2:DM are completely clueless. I don't think that a lot of them could figure out how to get a hacked version. lol
 
What surprises me, is that over 12,000 people that play hl2 still use win98..While only 5,000+ use ME.. I guess I shouldn't be though.... ;)
 
Using ME is like asking for a BSOD or something bad to happen. (That includes getting laughed at.) lol
 
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