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Games Entertainment Technology

Valve Releases Hardware Survey Results 77

Posted by Zonk from the i-know-what-you've-been-playing dept.
Chris_Yates writes "A hardware survey containing over one million entries has been made public by Valve, the creators of Half-Life 2. Some interesting facts include: 65.89% now have SP2 compared to 17.04% for SP1, AMD and Intel almost split 50/50 with nVidia edging out ATI 50.72% to 41.03%. The Radeon 9800 and 9600 take the top two spots with 20% combined."
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Valve Releases Hardware Survey Results More

Valve Releases Hardware Survey Results

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  • confusing presentation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) * <busheatskok@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @01:29AM (#12345502) Homepage Journal
    They made the same mistakes in presentation of this survey that everyone else seems to make. I have 1 gig of RAM. So, do I fit in the category of 512mb-1gig, or do I fit in the category of 1 gig to 1.5 gig? That's just a stupid mistake. Even if they collected the data properly, they aren't reporting it properly. Stupid, useless survey. OK, I see the first line that implies that the ranges are set up like this: [low-high). Is it so hard to carry that through the entire chart?

    • Re:confusing presentation (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tyir ( 622669 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @01:33AM (#12345516) Journal
      Stop moving two minutes forward in time and stealing my posts!!

      • Re:confusing presentation (Score:5, Funny)

        by kafka47 ( 801886 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @02:00AM (#12345626) Homepage

        If he were moving forward in time, wouldn't he be posting after you?

        Plus which, his post is shown to be four minutes before yours. My temporal mechanics is a bit rusty, but that makes him posting a full six minutes ahead of you (had he not used his transmorgifier to shorten the gap).

        Takes quite the effort to get ahead of, er behind, you.

        • No, if you look further down you'll see his original post which is very similar (modded redundant currently) and they are only a minute apart, if that even.
        • If he were moving forward in time, wouldn't he be posting after you?

          The answer, of course, is that it depends on your frame of reference. If you're waiting for the mysterious future, moving forward in time will allow you to get the first post while the other guy's stuck in the past hitting refresh.

          Any other jokes I can kill while I'm at it? :)

    • Re:confusing presentation (Score:4, Funny)

      by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @01:37AM (#12345532)
      REAL statistics are expensive.

      This garbage statistic is useless and only serves as a bragging tool for those who wish to "purchase" profiles from a gamer-type computer user.

      The real statistics are 20K$ and up. With optional forced updates that scour the registry for names, addresses, and unique identifiers and such to hard-link all that information.
      • Accurate or not, these stats are still pretty interesting. They don't give you much insight into what your average joe has under the hood, but it does give you insight into those who play these type games, and have $60 to throw at an overpriced game (aka hardcore PC gamers).

        I'm just curious as to under the "Windows Version" section if the 957 "other" is referring to the Linux/Wine users, or if they ignored those users completely?

  • Bandwith (Score:3, Interesting)

    by roseblood ( 631824 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @01:30AM (#12345509)
    80% of the respondants(sp) in the survey have pipes that handle at least 256.0 Kbps.

    Over 56% have 768.0 Kbps.

    The largest responding group has 1,024.0 Kbps.

    It's certainly a broadband world in Valveville.

    • Re:Bandwith (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bad_fx ( 493443 )
      One word: Steam.

    • Re:Bandwith (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rathehun ( 818491 )
      Whats so strange?

      You *need* at least a 256 kbps line to play CS : Source, and Steam just sucks up bandwith, especially with the initial decryption or whatever. I know a friend who specifically arranged for a 512 kbps line so that he could play Source.

      And if I take India as a representative, $10 for 256 kbps works out, especially when you're shelling out $50 for the original game.

      What I do find crazy is that there are some computers with 32 mb of RAM listed here. I'm surprised Steam even loaded! There

      • Re:Bandwith (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Dr.Opveter ( 806649 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @03:15AM (#12345902)
        When i used to play Quake online i remember my 33k6 dial-up had a better ping than the 1.5mbit cable i got later.

      • Re:Bandwith (Score:4, Insightful)

        by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @05:31AM (#12346335) Journal
        What I do find crazy is that there are some computers with 32 mb of RAM listed here. I'm surprised Steam even loaded! There are about a 100 people who have less than a 100 megs of RAM who are probably cursing 'coz HL2 doesn't work on their machines. And don't get me started on the 200 MHz machines which are listed!
        There is also alot of people who love messing with statistics ;)
        • the data was collected automatically and shown to the user. the only two questions asked were 'what is your connection speed?' and 'is it ok to send this data?'.

          not much you could mess with unless you want to run your steam account on an older pc u have for a few secs.

          • Re:Bandwith (Score:3, Informative)

            by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
            or on the other hand , have the system misrepresent the data which is rather easy on linux ,Fairly sure it would be easy on windows too.

      • You *need* at least a 256 kbps line to play CS : Source

        Have to say thats not right - I'm on ISDN (128kbps), and it plays perfectly fine. Pings in the 60-80 range, lag is rare, and I have a fragging good time, even on the 32 person servers. Dropping the ISDN to 64k is not great, but you can still play on 10-12 player servers with not too many flying barrels with no lag.

        Now, admittedly more bandwidth = a better experience, but its quite playable and enjoyable on 128k.

      • Re:Bandwith (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FictionPimp ( 712802 )
        Dont forget people running servers. Counterstrike doesn't take much for a good server.
      • What I do find crazy is that there are some computers with 32 mb of RAM listed here. I'm surprised Steam even loaded! There are about a 100 people who have less than a 100 megs of RAM who are probably cursing 'coz HL2 doesn't work on their machines. And don't get me started on the 200 MHz machines which are listed!

        Because this is a *Steam* survey, not a Half-Life 2 survey. Those folks are playing things such as Half-Life 1, TFC, Sven-Coop, etc. :-D

  • Windows SP2 stats: The beast is everywhere... (Score:4, Funny)

    by geoffybiggins ( 160923 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @01:37AM (#12345533)
    XP SP 2 (Build 2600) 666,890 65.89 %

  • nice... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BRTB ( 30272 ) <slashdot@brtb.oDEBIANrg minus distro> on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @02:14AM (#12345671) Homepage
    I just want to salute whoever the joker is that convinced the survey app that he had an "INTERWEBntel" processor.

    • Re:nice... (Score:3, Funny)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      Personally, I want to salute the thousand people trying to run Half Life 2 under an intel i810 on-board graphics card. I remember struggling to get that chipset to work with the first Half Life.

      Or that one person trying to get things running on a less than 1 GB HDD.

      Eternal optimism, I salute you!

      • Hey, what about the 1,024 using an ATI Rage 128 Pro?

        Ohh, and there seems to be one running it on Virtual PC (for Mac likely).

        • There's nothing wrong with running HL on a Rage 128. The card was released after the game, and was quite competitve at the time.

          You can even get accelerated Win2k / XP drivers for it :D

          This is ignoring the huge debacle that was the Rage Pro MAXX.

          Now, trying to play Half-Life with a Trident Blade 3D, now THAT would be a challenge.

  • Learn a new thing everday! (Score:4, Funny)

    by doofer ( 852276 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @06:12AM (#12346473)
    Language:
    Korean (Adult) 22,241 2.19 %
    Korean (Teen) 3,140 0.31 %

    Never knew Korean language was actually specified as different for Adults and teenagers!

    Bet english and a lot of other languages _could_ do the same.

  • AMD/Intel split (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dave-tx ( 684169 ) <df19808+slashdot AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @06:44AM (#12346615)
    I think the most interesting point on this survey is the CPU split between Intel and AMD. Maybe I've been out of the loop for too long, but this is by far the highest percentage of AMD users I've seen in any survey.

    Perhaps this speaks more to the demographic that Valve is serving, but I still find this statistic to be very important.


    • AMD has been producing better CPUs for PCs for a while now. It's about time the markets caught up.

      Intel lags behind on power consumption, balanced performance, and price. They've run out of frequency head room on the Pentium 4, so I guess the Pentium M is all they got for the future. AMD still has room to go.

  • Massive Hard Drives (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    8.88% have over 250GB HDD? And to think I am fine with 20GB....

  • Just like last time (Score:3, Informative)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <vasqzr@nosPAM.netscape.net> on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @07:25AM (#12346830)

    Didn't they have a similar survey last time?

    Wait, I found it.

    http://valve.speakeasy.net/ [speakeasy.net]

  • PC Developers VS. Console Developers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CokoBWare ( 584686 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @07:52AM (#12347015)
    I participated in this survey, and one thing that strikes me as interesting is that there are a lot of people who are still holding onto the ATI 9XX0 series of hardware.

    One question I have is... considering that console game developers push the absolute limits of the console platform, why don't PC game developers do the same with a baseline PC hardware config? Anything extra processing juice will be just gravy then.

    Is it funny that as PC owners, we are forced to upgrade our equipment every year or two to get the experience with the games we want, where consoles don't have that at all except get the games?

    Maybe this is why consoles are so popular. PC gaming hardware gets way to expensive year after year.

    It's a conspiracy... I know it! Get the developers to make games for advanced hardware instead of pushing their engines and baseline hardware to the max with better code.

    I love gaming, on any platform. But I know I'll get flamed for this... so... flame away!
    • Consoles are popular because most people are idiots, and if you give them choices, they get confused and inevitably fuck it up. This is further confused by marketspeak on new PCs, advertising things like, "WOW! Intel Super 3D GRAPHICS INTEGRATED!" and then people wonder why, if Intel (the only brand name they likely recognize and associate with quality) has this "Super" 3D chip, why does their PC game run like total crap, if at all?

      In any event, most developers DO allow for older hardware. HL2 and Doom3 ar
      • You seen to forget that 1 small PC part can EASILY cost twice as much as a console and a couple games... Consoles are a great way to play great games with a limited budget.
        • The OP point was that PC game designers should be designing to the lowest common denominator of PC hardware. My point is: why would a gaming enthusiast want to game on a console if they had a choice? Your answer is one - if you have a limited budget, consoles are certainly a great entry level way to game. But let's say we have 3 classes of people:

          (1) Gamers with only consoles, or consoles superior to their PCs
          (2) Gamers with PCs only about as good as consoles
          (3) Gamers with PCs superior to consoles

          The aut
    • > considering that console game developers push the absolute limits of the console platform,
      > why don't PC game developers do the same with a baseline PC hardware config?

      Having shipped both PC and console (PSX/PS2) titles, I can answer this.

      "Too many variables."

      _What_ is baseline?
      * Is it DX8, DX9? (aka Pixel Shaders 1 or 2)
      * What is the minimum MHz we can count on?
      * How much Video and System Ram can we count on?

      Baseline is a moving target. It's WAY easier to optimized for a fixed platform.

      It's a
      • Postscript...

        Another reason this doesn't happen...

        If you're optimizing for yesterday, or even today's hardware, another game developer is optimizing for tomorrows hardware.

        Newer must be better right?! The market seems to think so...
      • The thing that confuses me is if the Xbox has a 733Mhz processor and 64MB of shared RAM, why does it take, say, around 1.8 Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM and a mid range grafics card to display a similer level of graphics.

        I know the OS eats RAM and runs processes in the background but unless your system is terribly loaded with spyware and the like, that still leaves at least a couple hundred megs for the game and more then enough CPU cycles. IMO anyway.
        • Read some posts above [slashdot.org]. Two reasons basicaly, the extreme optimizations that can be done when you know exactly on what hardware your game is going to be run on, and the relative low res of a regular or even an "HD" tv set.
          • I know you have to be right. The proof is the visual quality of games out today on all platrorms.

            And maybe when you take in all of the different things mentioned, it's ture.

            It just seems with all of the standards avalible on the PC front, your developing for the standard and not a particular peice of hardware. High end games are designed to run on either ATI or nVidia for graphics these days, and thats only '2' platforms. And they are very similer. AMD and Intel CPUs execute the same code with roughtl
        • The thing that confuses me is if the Xbox has a 733Mhz processor and 64MB of shared RAM, why does it take, say, around 1.8 Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM and a mid range grafics card to display a similer level of graphics. I know the OS eats RAM and runs processes in the background but unless your system is terribly loaded with spyware and the like, that still leaves at least a couple hundred megs for the game and more then enough CPU cycles. IMO anyway.

          It isn't a similar level of graphics. The resolution of cons
  • I also noticed that my 2800+ Athlon 64 was reporting in the survey as a 1.8 Ghz Athlon, which it technically is, but still misleading.
    • Which is why they group AMD hertz seperately from Intel's. Makes more sense in the survey, although these days there's signifcant overlap even within AMD. I'm not sure how they get a processor rated 3500+ to run the same as a 3000+, but the benchmarks usually indicate that they are indeed faster.
  • One of my pet peeves has been 6-CD disk installs for the latest games. To date, the marketing mantra has emphasized the Wal-Mart crowd. However, the glaring finding from the survey shows an overwhelming proportion of users now have a DVD drive. Multi-CD productions now have no excuse. Make it DVD.

  • DVD's at 85% (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Tuesday April 26, 2005 @10:42AM (#12348576) Homepage
    What I find interesting is that most players have DVD drives (85%), yet game companies consistently release majority in CD format..
  • Unfortionately people are too ignorant to know that they're more interested in the upstream of your network than the downstream

    and this info has been around for quite a while

  • NTFS? (Score:1)

    by 10537 ( 699839 )
    And what about the 96,172 people running XP or 2000 but not using NTFS? Surely some mistake?
  • Hmmm...
    People running SP1 or SP2 68%
    People running SP2 or SP1 32%

    The best part of this survey is that in 2 catagories I am in 4 postitions:
    I have 512MB-1GB AND 1GB-1.5GB of RAM
    I have a 30GB-40GB and a 40GB-50GB drive

    Also, my network speed is not an option, no matter what we are measuring, be it my 100Mb local network or my 3Mb net connection.

    • in reference to the hdd size, they are going by the actual real size, not the size that is listed by manufacturer of your hdd, so that would mean you would most likely have a ~38GB hdd, so you would be in the 30GB-40GB category...

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