Valve Hardware Survey

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The folks at Valve have updated their hardware survey again posting the most popular CPU, GPU, operating system, amount of RAM and more. Interesting stuff. Of the 1,724,108 systems in the survey, some of the most popular hardware was:

Network speed: 2,048.0 Kbps / System RAM: 2GB and above / Processor Vendor: Intel / CPU Speed: 2.3GHz - 2,69GHz / Video Card: GeForce 8800 / VRAM: 256MB / OS: Windows XP
Click to expand...
 
And let that be a lesson to all the "Multi-GPU"-, "Widescreen"-, "Vista"-, screamers...
 
Video card numbers are...fishy.

GeForce 8800 the most popular video card? REALLY? When for so long, it was budget cards? (I think the GeForce 440mx was kind for a few years!)

I also find it odd that the 'other' category is easily the LARGEST single category, and must include the bulk of the Radeon HD lines (2900 and 38xx cards)...which have no detail lines. This seems to be supported by the driver lines - just the top 6 lines of all GeForce cards account for 31.92% of the sample, while the display driver line suggests only 48% of owners are using an nVidia card. Compare that to ATI drivers having 27% of the market share, and not having one of their models appear until #7 on the list of cards, and totalling every line on the chart SHOWING an ATI card only gets you just over 20%.

Very bizarre - I think they maybe need to take a look at their sampling algorithm, or how the list of cards is presented (at least).
 
dderidex said:
Video card numbers are...fishy.

GeForce 8800 the most popular video card? REALLY? When for so long, it was budget cards? (I think the GeForce 440mx was kind for a few years!)
Click to expand...

The 8800 series is the best card NVIDIA have had for a long time.
From the 8800GT 512 MB to the 8800GTX 7568 MB, it has for almost 2 yearrs been king of the hill and best bang for buck...nothing fishy here, ATI just dropped the ball on their DX10 cards...and that shows.
 
And to see the GeForce 8800 listed as the most popular card, and 1024x768 nearly the most popular resolution...(the not-much-better 1280 being the most popular)

...I'm very, very confused.
 
Also - are Steam games not available in China? Kind of odd that the most popular languages are all European...
 
still alot of single cores out there. i guess alot of people are still running p4's and athlon's. and here i thought almost everyone has a dual core now.
 
there is no community in China I don't know why you are surprised about that. Europeans have a stranglehold on the steam community as when listening to people talk you can here strong russian, british, and other european presence so nothing to be wondering there. Ever person I know who plays CS:S or TF2 has an 8800 series card, which is old as stated below and encompasses so many suffixes and version changes it is ridiculous so no surprises there. The monitor is usually the last thing a person will upgrade on their computer is also not surprising. All in all everything is where it should be in that light. I just wished there were 0 cards defaulting to DX8, and to a lesser extent Dx7, as all those cards keep games from progressing forward
 
Hehe wonder if my 4Ghz is still in the top 1%? Though these days I doubt it's that small now.
*Lol - the numbers didn't change. WTF.

And on the 8800 being popular? You guys do notice that the VRAM goes 256, 128, and then 512. Which means we're talking the budget versions...that are actually just fine under 1280 I think. LCD's are still only 1/4 of the used displays vs. CRTs - which is a bit surprising. What is a bit surprising is that >33% of those LCDs are 24" or higher - living in luxury :D
 
Windows XP 1,398,776 80.92 %
Windows Vista 258,612 14.96 %


1024 x 768 553,497 32.02 %
1152 x 864 89,339 5.17 %
1280 x 960 677,282 39.18 %
1440 x 900 129,912 7.52 %
 
I was part of that survey...guess I'm a statistic. hey when your bored, you're bored XD

6kbps 4gb, Intell 2.4 Quad, 8800GT OC 512, vista
 
This is why Valve succeeds commercially as well as creatively. They see what people are actually running and design their games around that. The strength of the look is based on a great, creative art team and art direction rather than technology that requires a brute force rig to run (most of which look mediocre in the end anyway). They do throw in just enough to keep the high end rigs happy, but even with scaled back settings their games still look great.

Blizzard also does this but to an even greater degree since they target even lower specs than Valve does.
 
The other plus side of Valve's great scaling and broad focus is that their faster paced games like TF2 will still run at an excellent framerate with settings cranked at native 1920x1200 res on a 24" LCD.
 
tvdang7 said:
still alot of single cores out there. i guess alot of people are still running p4's and athlon's. and here i thought almost everyone has a dual core now.
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I was running a single core until January. :D

Mav451 said:
Hehe wonder if my 4Ghz is still in the top 1%? Though these days I doubt it's that small now.
*Lol - the numbers didn't change. WTF.

And on the 8800 being popular? You guys do notice that the VRAM goes 256, 128, and then 512. Which means we're talking the budget versions...that are actually just fine under 1280 I think. LCD's are still only 1/4 of the used displays vs. CRTs - which is a bit surprising. What is a bit surprising is that >33% of those LCDs are 24" or higher - living in luxury :D
Click to expand...

I am still rocking the CRT. I don't really see any compelling reason to switch.
 
uh no. 1680x1050 widescreen is far better than 1600x1200. Far far far better. But that's just an opinion of course.

I'm also an 8800 user. 8800 GTS 640mb here.
 
Azhar said:
uh no. 1680x1050 widescreen is far better than 1600x1200. Far far far better. But that's just an opinion of course.
Click to expand...

The only place and LCD is better than a CRT are in text.
Games, movies look better on a CRT...like it or not.
Så WS LCD is not better than 21" CRT...
 
It is indeed interesting to see so many of the "Other" categories being the most popular, especially in the video cards. I am gonna guess they are vendor branded Intel-integrated crap. :mad:

People love to put too much weight behind graphics. Just look at GTA IV; great gameplay and style, but graphics are not jaw dropping.

HL2 Ep2 they added some nice shadows (or atleast implemented them really well) to source. My jaw dropped on some parts, it was that good.

My Specs:
Intel C2d e-6850, EVGA 680isli, 2gb DDR2-800, 8800 GTX, on-board RT HD Audio. Vista Business 32 SP-1
 
Atech said:
Same here...CRT 1600x1200@85Hz > LCD...period.
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Depends on the LCD we're talking about. :)

If it is a crappy Best Buy/Circuit City TN panel (2ms for gamers!!!1!) then yes, I totally agree. Unfortunately, the entry price for LCDs that rival and beat top notch CRTs is very high. I myself had an excellent G400 that I finally retired late last year. It was a great CRT that lasted me a very very long time, but I would never go back now with my current 24" iMac display and NEC 2490WUXi.

Both are amazing and the only negative thing is the price (especially the NEC, ouch), but then I see the quality of the images and IMO it is well worth it.
 
Atech said:
Games, movies look better on a CRT...like it or not.
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Games are arguable, movies I totally agree with. Nothing can beat the awesome black levels you get with a CRT. I still have a 40" HDTV CRT in my living room. Big 300lb beast that they stopped producing years ago but man it looks amazing.
 
parasitoid said:
People love to put too much weight behind graphics. Just look at GTA IV; great gameplay and style, but graphics are not jaw dropping.

HL2 Ep2 they added some nice shadows (or atleast implemented them really well) to source. My jaw dropped on some parts, it was that good.
Click to expand...

Totally agreed. We're at the point now where greater dividends are paid by focusing on the art style, AI, physics, and creating a cohesive world, rather than slapping a new hardware bleeding edge effect on top of what is fundamentally a weak visual style.
 
Serpico said:
Depends on the LCD we're talking about.
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Put the NEC 2490 or any LCD priced under $2000 next to the Sony GDM-FW900 and there is no comparison. The CRT wins. No stuck/dead pixels, No crushed blacks, 179 degree viewing angles, ~0ms input lag, mutliple resolutions and refresh rates that don't blur. LCD's offer reduced size and weight and lower power consumption, but inferior picture quality. LCD's are getting better, but it is not CRT quality yet.
 
panhead said:
Put the NEC 2490 or any LCD priced under $2000 next to the Sony GDM-FW900 and there is no comparison. The CRT wins. No stuck/dead pixels, No crushed blacks, 179 degree viewing angles, ~0ms input lag, mutliple resolutions and refresh rates that don't blur. LCD's offer reduced size and weight and lower power consumption, but inferior picture quality. LCD's are getting better, but it is not CRT quality yet.
Click to expand...

I owned a FW900 several years ago, up until space became an issue and I sold it while keeping my G400. While I won't argue the non-existent input lag or black levels of CRTs (which is why I still keep one in my home theater for watching movies), everything else is a non-issue for me. Even things that are an "issue" like the 1-2 frame input lag in the 2490 is actually fine for me. I can rail locally against nightmare difficulty bots in Quake 3 just as well as I did on my CRT, ditto when I play a fast run and gun character like the scout in TF2. Snapshot kills aren't a problem. Motion blur isn't an issue either. I (knock on wood) have never had an issue with dead or stuck pixels.

So yeah, I totally get where you're coming from, but the tradeoffs haven't been a net negative to me in the least. The only real negative, IMO, is that it costs an arm and a leg to even approach that level of quality, far more than it does with a CRT. I stuck with mine up until the bitter end, and the last few weeks were me waffling on whether or not I should really spend $1200 on a frigging display. Unfortunately, 99.999% of LCDs drive me up the wall so I wasn't left with too many other options. No regrets, fortunately.
 
Seriously. What can you even get those VIA IGPs in, non-Intel notebooks?
 
I give credit to alot of Valve's programmers for actually optimizing their games. I can play Portal on a Geforce 6200(OMGWTF?) on 1280x1024 @ 23fps with 4x AA (no motion blur, or anything else), and the graphics are still amazing (to me, I guess I love the final stage when you fight Glados, 6200 and 8800). I can barely say the same about some other titles.
 
KillaChaos said:
I give credit to alot of Valve's programmers for actually optimizing their games. I can play Portal on a Geforce 6200(OMGWTF?) on 1280x1024 @ 23fps with 4x AA (no motion blur, or anything else), and the graphics are still amazing (to me, I guess I love the final stage when you fight Glados, 6200 and 8800). I can barely say the same about some other titles.
Click to expand...

Good art direction and design along with a very scaleable engine go a very long way.
 
Man looks like my Radeon 9600 really was the pwn at the time i bought it, it still is the top ATI card. :D

Also i am still running a P4 3.0Ghz. :)
 
not 100% accurate. says my 19" lcd is 21.6". and of course with xp said i have less ram than for real.
 
Who the hell is playing on a 5" display? That's what i want to know. That and the 166 people playing on a 6 inch display.
 
They can't be serious that only 2 people are running 16x CSAA

I guess I'm one of them LOL
 
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