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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Steam Hardware Survey Results 97

Posted by Zonk 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."
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Steam Hardware Survey Results More

Steam Hardware Survey Results

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  • OpenGL beats DirectX for HalfLife 1 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Marc_Hawke ( 130338 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:47PM (#10321237)
    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.
    • Direct X 7. You need it for some of the effects they did in the game.
    • Exactly.

      The rendering technology part of this survey is only valid when viewed in the scope of "What do people who play Half-Life or CounterStrike prefer". Outside of that scope, though, it's a single datapoint and therefore spurious.

      There may be some entries from internet cafe/lan center machines Those responses would be from machines that have at least tried CS:Source. Unfortunately, though, the percentage of those respondants to the rest will be extremely small. Since those lan center machines are th

    • I thought about that, but this survey seems to count what Steam users are running now, not five years ago. The reason I submitted the story in the first place was that Steam popped up and asked me those questions for the first time earlier today. Granted I don't know when they started the survey, but AFAICR Steam didn't exist when HL1 was released...

      Other interesting bits of info is of course the AMD/Intel and ATI/Nvidia stalemates.

    • Yeah, if I remember correctly D3d mode was the poorer of the two modes. I've had a few weird ass problems trying to get it to work. I've had it glitched out to the point where I could see through walls, just from running in it. OpenGL was just the better supported renderer for the game, that's all.

      I'm quite surprised that anyone even runs it in D3D, but that's only based after my personal experience.

  • bad phrasing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:53PM (#10321317) Journal
    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.
  • I bet most people here are about average on that scale, I know I am (except the...oooo...radeon 9800).

    Aside from that, OpenGL? Yeah, I use OpenGL for HL because if I try to use D3D it crashes.

    Way to go steam. I use D3D for everything else though currently.

    • Re:Mostly average (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Masami Eiri ( 617825 )
      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

  • AMD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:00PM (#10321425)
    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.

    • Not likely.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @02:03AM (#10326884)
      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.

  • And yet again we see plain evidence (Score:4, Funny)

    by Trelane ( 16124 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:01PM (#10321442) Journal
    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]
  • What is RDTSC and why is it so brilliant that it breaks even the bounds of mathematics?

    • Read Time Stamp Counter. Used to count clock cycles for benchmarking.

      Or so Google tells me... ;)

      • Gettimeofday(), brought to you by RDTSC. (Score:4, Informative)

        by j1m+5n0w ( 749199 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @04:33PM (#10323306) Homepage Journal
        Read Time Stamp Counter. Used to count clock cycles for benchmarking.

        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

    • They're probably counting CPUs and failed to divideit through the number of CPUs total, not the number of computers.
  • I'd say the most interesting part is the Intel vs. AMD part. It might as well be 50/50 looking at those stats. Not what you might have expected.

  • Quesionable data (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:23PM (#10321717) Homepage Journal
    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?
  • I can't belive how even the CPU types are. It's *nearly* 50/50 between Intel and AMD, which is quite interesting. How the hell does two giants such as these manage to share the market so even? ;)
    • actually, Intel is the giant. amd is a much smaller company.

      The reason why I think it's split because the serious games all have homebuilt amd machines, while the casual games have dell, hp, etc. bought systems that have intel processors.

  • nitpick.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chilles ( 79797 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:23PM (#10322402)
    Writeup:
    ...more than half a million responded.
    Article:
    ...Unique Samples: 293423...
    So that would be: "...more than a quarter of a million."
    • Oops, must have gotten a brainfart.

      I promise, I didn't do it on purpose to get a job as a Slashdot editor. Honest.

      • Well further research on the steam site [steampowered.com] shows that their own writeup is faulty:
        Check out the results of the "Half-Life 2 Hardware Survey". More than half a million respondents have taken part so far.

        And you'd have to be a statistics nut to notice the "unique samples:" line on the survey results page. I guess the steampowered editor did it on purpose to get his job :-)....

  • Games on DVD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Drakino ( 10965 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:41PM (#10322641) Journal
    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...

    • Re:Games on DVD (Score:3, Informative)

      by hunterx11 ( 778171 )
      The last two games I got for my Mac, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Battlefield 1942, were DVD-only. For once vendor lock-in on the hardware is an advantage, since one hasn't been able to get Macs with a DVD drive for a bit now.

  • If this survey was automated, I wonder about... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:54PM (#10322777)
    ... 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 (!)

  • Does Gordon Freeman own a 286? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spyrochaete ( 707033 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @04:02PM (#10322904) Homepage Journal
    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!
  • Are these people *blind*? That's... what did we used to call it, HiColor?
    I *remember* what that looked like. It was great if you were used to 256-color
    mode, but when SVGA systems came out supporting 24bpp, we all abandoned that
    graphics mode, because 24bpp looked so much better. At least, I *thought*
    everyone abandoned 16bpp in the mid nineties. Apparently the gamers *still*
    haven't. I find this ironic, given that in most other respects their specs
    for hardware are fairly high-end. And, 16bpp fails parti
    • > I'm also just a bit surprised that 1024x768 was so overwhelmingly much more
      > common than 1024x768 -- I would have guessed them about equal.

      Err, more common than 1280x1024, I mean.

    • Jesus, what's wrong with 32 (RGB-10bit)??
      1024 discrete levels is about as good as your ever going to get on a CRT or LCD with the contrast ratios available to you.
      Studios use 16-bit per channel, but that's mostly because they have lots of inbetween processing stages and the projectors can potentially have a much higher dynamic range.
      That is, so dark parts can be very dark, and light parts can be very light without saturation...
      And still that's only 48-bits. So where do you get 64? RGBA*2?
      I'd at least drop t
      • > what's wrong with 32 (RGB-10bit)??
        >1024 discrete levels is about as good as your ever going to get on a CRT
        > or LCD with the contrast ratios available to you.

        That's 1024 for ONLY primary colors and banding still sucks on it. Unpure color gradients are limited even further. BLAH.

        > So where do you get 64?
        16-bit components * 4 channels = 64 Bit RGBA color

        DX9 cards already support 16 bit half-floating point

        --
        Philosophy is a belief -- religion is the path that you walk in order to prove your p
    • Downgrade your favourite game from 32BPP to 16BPP and enjoy a 20% framerate increase. 16BPP is exponentially less work for your GPU to crunch and put onscreen. Just like 1024x768 is exponentially fewer pixels to render than 1280x1024.
    • There are varying levels of 16bit quality. Undithered or on cards that do rgb555 instead of 565 it can easily look like crap, but in other cases the quality can be good enough to make it a worthwhile tradeoff for a slight performance improvement, on those video cards that still render 16bit faster.
    • Maybe because some of us wouldn't notice the difference between 16, 24 and 32 bit unless we looked for it? It's like audiophiles who complain about mp3s being lossy - a lot of people don't notice it, so don't care.
      • > Maybe because some of us wouldn't notice the difference

        Like I said: blind. These are probably the same sort of people who think
        JPEGs look "good".

        > It's like audiophiles who complain about mp3s being lossy - a lot of
        > people don't notice it,

        There's a word for people who don't notice the lossy compression in MP3: deaf.
        That's like listening to a dirty cassette tape on a battery-powered player with
        carbon-zinc ("flashlight") batteries that are wearing out, and not noticing.
        How could you not *not
    • Well... there's simply two kind of gamers out there.

      The first, which I am and assume you are, marvel at the exerience a game has to offer. From the aural and visual wonders the game presents to how well it "sucks you in" to the environment making you temporarily forget that you're sitting in front of a computer and instead hacking away at zombies, aliens, evil marines, and other such enemies.

      The second, which my best friend would be, view a game purely as a challenge of mastery. My friend has a fair
      • I think that's quite accurate. I am very much the latter. During a recent upgrade I changed the UT2004 details from basically all off/low to almost all on/high and didn't really notice the difference. The vehicles still had the same shape, the weapons still did the same thing, no big difference as far as I'm concerned, except that my framerate was higher. I usually notice pretty graphics for the first few days of playing something, but after that I'm fairly indifferent to them. In fast-action games any
  • 1. Valve asked Steam users for their hardware specs and more than half a million responded.

    Steampowered site says: Unique Samples: 351563
    This page last updated: 8:51pm PST (04:51 GMT), September 22 2004

    2. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is that OpenGL beats Direct3D by a healthy margin.

    This part is not relevant, since you can play with either Direct3D or OpenGL for the same (or nearly the same) quality for HalfLife 1 and Counterstrike 1.x.
    And if I'm not mistaken, OpenGL is the first and def
    • I admit to the first error (and note that the numbers are rising fairly quickly) but for the second I like to think that hard-core gamers tweak their systems for every FPS they can get out of them and if they still prefer OpenGL over Direct3D that sort of puts a rusty old nail through Microsoft's arguments that Direct(whatever) is the best thing since pre-buttered bread.

      And to be perfectly honest, I never expected the submission to get accepted so I didn't spend too much time fact-checking and so on.

      He

  • The PC gaming market is a joke for one major reason: the CD-ROM binder you get with every game purchase. Why should I slog through 3 discs for Doom 3, or 6 for Unreal Tournement 2k4?

    If you look at the numbers, 78% of people use DVD-ROM drives in their PCs. I'd like to use my DVD-ROM drive (which I've had for 3 years) as something other than a way to watch DVD movies on my PC. Yet, with the expection of a handful of special releases (Sims 2 DVD, Unreal DVD), most stuff for the PC still comes on a butload
  • This is easy to explain: 1. 99% of all CS hacks out there require openGL. Apparently it was much easier for them to hack openGL than D3D. 2. The D3D renderer in HL1/CS sucks. It used to be full of bugs. I think they have fixed most of those in the last year or so, but Valve never did optimize it enough to keep up with their openGL renderer so the fps is lower in D3D.
  • Statistically speaking this is next to useless. Okay, when I loaded the Steam survey up, I had absolutely no intention of buying HL2, which is what the survey is for. That might mean that they are basing HL2's defaults and performance on this and previous surveys.

    Now, that means that you will only get the people who THINK they can run HL2 to actually reply and there've been rumours around for years that the specs required for HL2 will be phenomenal. This is going to bias this survey towards high-end ans

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