Steam Hardware Survey, December 2008

Following our article with November 2008 details, here are the changes:

• AMD lost 1.04% of CPU share in December alone – Intel gained that share
• Nvidia lost 0.47% of its GPU share, while AMD/ATI gained 0.45%
• Out of those 0.47%, 0.25% bought a graphics card with 1GB of video memory
• Quad-Core processors are now used by 10.76%, up 0.64% from Nov ’08
• 50.81% of all users have at least 2 cores to play with
• DirectX 10 API is now used by 22.88% of all users, up 1.45% from Nov ’08
• 41.5% users use widescreen resolution, gained 1.47% from Nov’08
• Multi-GPU configurations are still used by less than 2% of all users, with 1.84% (+0.06%). This means that just 300.000 Steam gamers have more than one GPU in their computer.
• Revenue-wise, these 300.000 gamers spent 200+ million USD on their GPU hardware alone, or equal revenue to 1.2 million mainstream users (if they spent $199 on a card)

We can conclude that roughly 1% of all users (150.000) bought new systems, mostly equipped with quad-core processors and ATI Radeon graphics cards. Given the fact that cut-off for SHS is 10th in the month, only Steam Hardware Survey for January 2009 will show all the Christmas sales results. Then, we can see what happened with the base of Steam users.

This does not include the whole world, so there is a lot of room for free interpretation, but bear in mind that this number includes more than 15.5 million users worldwide. And Steam itself is gaining users, so it will be interesting to see how it will all equal out.

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Steam has more than 15 million users worldwide and is to software distribution what World of Warcraft is in the world of MMO games. But probably the most interesting part of Steam is world famous “Steam Hardware Survey”. Every month, Valve collect data from 15 million users and lists what kind of hardware do people use. This is an invaluable process that gives developers golden information about platforms they should target. In my discussions with game developers, I had countless verbal battles with people who didn’t want to create a game for high-end hardware, because the adoption rate is too low. Well, think again.

In survey for November 2008, stats show that Intel leads the CPU share with 63.62%, while AMD owns the remaining 36.38%. Dual-core dominates with 49.04%, e.g. almost eight million people own a dual-core processor. Quad-core captured just 10.43%, which means quaddies have a mountain to climb. It is surprising to see that 40.19% still own a single-core processor, but multi-thread support is a must-have feature today, not tomorrow – 59.47% own a multi-thread capable computer.

CPU-wise, best sellers are Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 processors (2.4-2.66 GHz), while owners of AMD platform just cannot get enough of Athlon 64 X2 2.2 GHz (4400+). Graphics-wise, Nvidia captured 65.11% of all steam users, translated into more than 10 million gamers. Here comes the most interesting part of the survey. According to Steam, GeForce 8800 captured the hearts of no less than 32.35% of users. Out of 10 million Nvidia users, more than three million people own a high-performing GeForce 8800 card – it is almost incredible to see that amount of 3D horsepower taking more market share than numerous mainstream and low-end cards. 

API is a key decided in what platform to go with, and software developers will appreciate the fact that even though almost half of all Steam users use DirectX 10 hardware, only 21.43% of all steam users can actually use DX10 API. Windows XP is loved by more than massive majority of DX10 HW-owning users.

Numbers don't lie, and these are results from more than 15M people around the world. World's largest IT-related survey, that's for sure.

Summary

All in all, I would conclude that this survey proves just how popular Core 2 Duo and GeForce 8800 are. If you’re working on game code optimization today, and plan to launch the game on Steam in 2009, focus your efforts on following parts:

• Vista is a failure, gamers are waiting for Windows 7 to tell Good Bye to Windows XP
• Focus optimization on two cores, most likely in 2.5 GHz range
• 480.000 users overclocked their CPU beyond fastest shipping clock, additional 1.5 million moderately overclock their machines
• Users have around 100GB of free space on the hard drive
• Most of users have 512MB of video memory.
• Most popular resolution is 1024×768
• Most widescreen users use 27″ screens (surprised?), followed by 24″ ones. Thus, for widescreen focus on FullHD resolution
• Multi-GPU is esoteric at best, with 1.79% of overall share. Yes, only 280.000 people have multi-GPU configuration, with SLI dominating the share with 1.55% (240.000).
• Currently, nobody uses 4 GPUs with ATI chips and mere 4600 people own two 7950GX2 cards
• Valve currently makes world’s largest IT-based survey, and probably one of largest surveys in existence (does anybody know how many people Nielsen actually track?)  

All in all, Steam survey offered an interesting insight. I’ll follow-up on this one in our future monthly reports on Steam.

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Is it possible that my 2408WFP is already out-dated?

What makes this very interesting is the explanation what Splendid video engine actually is. It is obvious that Splendid is a name for custom design C-Media chips that enhance the sound (on Xonar cards) and video (on selected graphics cards) quality. In case of displays, “Splendid Video Intelligence Technology” is a name for color engine that analyzes and modifies the video playback. There are five presets that should enhance your experience, but one of most important features to us is the fact that this technology clears distortion when playing 4:3 content on these 16:10 screens.
Out of launched displays, we like VK266H the most. This display comes with rotatable 2.0 MPixel camera and those mics that enable seamless internet communication. One of things that pissed me the most was the fact that if you used video conferencing, your notebook would be better equipped than the desktop. I had numerous video conferences where my notebook camera was capturing my face while I watched at 24″ screen, and that just looked odd.
If you haven’t tried working on 24 or 26″ screens, I would personally recommend that you switch from limits of 4:3/5:4. Could any of these four monitors be your ideal candidate? Only time will tell.

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