Single core still rules the gaming world

ONCE AGAIN, VALVE has updated results of its hardware survey among users of Steam, and the results speak for themselves.

This survey took place among 969,600 gamers worldwide, almost a million from three million users that play steam on monthly basis.

For starters, it seems that gamers mostly live in a broadband world, with 2Mbit/s internet connection accounting for a third (32.54%) of all users. When you add the additional 107,813 users that own a 10Mbit/s (11.12%) net connection, it turns out that almost half of all users live in an internet dreamland.

In the everlasting battle of AMD versus Intel, currently Intel has the nod with 53.19% of all users on steam, while AMD held 46.80%. However, results do not sound so good for Intel, since 76.06% of all users own a single-core processor, predominately Intel Pentium 4. Over a third of users own a processor with clocks from 2.3 to 3.29 GHz in Intel world, while 21.06% owners of AMD processors like clockspeed of 2.0-2.3 GHz.

System memory speaks that majority of users are still cheapskates when it comes to megabytes of RAM. 1GB of memory accounts for 45.02% of all users, while only 23.81% own 2GB of system memory. We will see what will happen in near future, but so far, 1GB of system RAM dominates. Graphics however, speak of a story how ATI lost its market share and is not currently able to win it back. 57.74% of all users own Nvidia hardware, while ATI takes 35.47%. If Intel integrated graphics would have a market share as it has on Steam (2.93%), game developer world would have been such a nice place to develop games for, since frames per second would be present all across the board. No intrusion of frames per minute-only capable products, such as G series, or SiS/VIA integrated excuses for 3D graphics.

In terms of brands, most of users own GeForce 6600 (7.10%), followed closely by GeForce 7600 (6.63%). Surprising number is GeForce 8800 series, capturing the hearts of 41,889 gamers (4.32%). Sadly, for ATI, Radeon HD 2900XT is not even on the map, mostly due to the fact that nasty fog bug is not sorted yet. It will be sorted out in two weeks, though.

DirectX 9 API is used by massive two thirds (76.65%) of all users, meaning DX9 version of games just dominate here - Shader Model 3.0 is used by 52.10% of all users, while Shader Model 2.0 is used by 23.84% (predominately ATi hardware). This will probably change with next survey, since idSoftware games massively rely on OpenGL API.

Overall, very interesting results, that only speaks of reality of gamers out there. There is big number of users that own mainstream hardware with above-standard Internet connection, and it remains to be seen what publisher on Steam will be the cause to grow the adoption of DirectX 10 API. For now, DX9 is in charge. µ