HL2 Survey

[unipidity]

http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Whilst I would hesitate to claim that people responding to this survey are representative (since ati gave out vouchers!!), it might still be interesting.

The absolulte dominance of the Nvidia low-end is, I supposed, to be expected- the 9000 series of ATI cards have never been that ubiquitous. ATI seem to utterly dominate the mid/high (last gen) range though- though the aformentioned skew might be the cause.

 

[cw42]

The vouchers have a negligible effect on this survey. The 9600/9800 make up about 11% of the video cards. Now you have to guess, how many of those are vanilla/SE/PRO/XT, and how much are actually built by ATI. My guess? 2% at most.

the 9600/9800 has always been more popular than the nvidia equvilents.

and for the lowend with the GF4, it's one of the best bang for ur buck video cards. Remember this game is like 4yrs old and u don't need a good grafx card to play it.

there's nothing all that suprising on this survey to me except for the amount of people running D3D with this game when the performance of it is horrible in CS.

 

[Childs]

I filled out this survey the other day and my video card doesn't even have a category.

I think its strange that they count CPU speed, but thats meaningless. CPU architechure would be better. Also, its interesting to note that more people run HL with OpenGL than all other renderers combined. 16bit color still dominates, and 4K people are playing with less than 64MBs of RAM! The thumb drive I keep on my keychain has more memory than about 350K HL players.

 

[Rage187]

wow thats a crap load of Nv cards.


where are the high end cards?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Rage187
wow thats a crap load of Nv cards.


where are the high end cards?

If you mean the next-gen cards, I'm pretty sure this survey was done a few months back before they were available.

This page last updated: 6:44pm PST (02:44 GMT), May 03 2004 Unique Samples: 956900

As far as most of these systems being relatively "low-end":

1) The vast majority of these players are playing Counter-Strike and not much else (although why they're still playing it I don't understand). You can probably render Counter-Strike on the processor in your average microwave oven these days.

2) The vast majority of gamers do not have super-high-end hardware. Gamers with super-high-end rigs are a small minority within a small minority of computer users. Less than half a percent of the survey takers had a GFFX5900 in May -- and I'd bet over half of the 4.8% of "9800" cards are 9800SEs. At least in terms of players on Steam, over 95% of them did not even have an FX5900XT or R9800NU -- cards now being looked down upon as "slow".

 

[jiffylube1024]

Strong numbers for AMD there, and impressive number of HT enabled PC's also (close to 10%).

Video card results are not surprising in the least - that is about the real distribution of cards. Value cards dominate the market.

Also impressive is just how many people are running XP (damn near everyone!), and how many have it patched to SP1 (which was the lastest service pack at the time).

Also surprising is the number of dumb@sses that have it on 16-bit. 32-bit has been the standard forever now in 3d games!

 

[nemesismk2]

Interesting survey:-

OpenGL - 441,287 - 46.12 %
Direct3D - 248,106 - 25.93 %

Kinda explains why Doom3 is OpenGL doesn't it!

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2
Interesting survey:-

OpenGL - 441,287 - 46.12 %
Direct3D - 248,106 - 25.93 %

Kinda explains why Doom3 is OpenGL doesn't it!

Not really.

HL was written on top of the Quake engine (which was written in OpenGL), and runs better in OGL mode on NVIDIA cards (and possibly on some ATI cards as well, though I never really found this to be the case on my 9800Pro). This says very little about the relative merits and/or popularity of OGL and D3D outside of the narrow scope of HL/CS.

Doom3 was written in OGL because Carmack likes to write things in OGL. Carmack seems to like OGL because it's an open standard and it offers somewhat better flexibility in terms of coding than D3D.

 

[Tab]

I think that survery suck personally, they only give you one connection speed opition? Whats up with that.

 

[Schadenfroh]

woah, why are they such big ati supporters while 54% of their customers run nvidia and only 24% run ATI?

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
woah, why are they such big ati supporters while 54% of their customers run nvidia and only 24% run ATI?

They got paid to be.

 

[g3pro]

I'm hoping that the CD-key cracking system is easy like it was before so that everyone can get downloaded copies like they did of the original.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: g3pro
I'm hoping that the CD-key cracking system is easy like it was before so that everyone can get downloaded copies like they did of the original.

You know, people like you are the reason they *need* CD-key systems.

I hope they go to a secure online registration/activation system so that only people who pay for the game can play.

 

[Marsumane]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: g3pro
I'm hoping that the CD-key cracking system is easy like it was before so that everyone can get downloaded copies like they did of the original.

You know, people like you are the reason they *need* CD-key systems.

I hope they go to a secure online registration/activation system so that only people who pay for the game can play.

That actually would be nice, except for the fact that you cant install it ever again on a different system and you also require the internet. Windows XP right a bell? Its all just a huge pain for them to do such things.

 

[clicknext]

Originally posted by: g3pro
I'm hoping that the CD-key cracking system is easy like it was before so that everyone can get downloaded copies like they did of the original.

Actually, they are using a new system called Steam where you need to register the game to an online account, and have it verified before you're able to run the game at all. The CD you buy is just to save you the time taken to download it, and to give people a physical copy. Each unique CD-key is only usable by one person, I believe. Because of the online-based nature of the system, you don't really need to buy the game in stores. You can just download it since you need to check in online before playing anyway. This is how CS and CS:CZ and CS:S currently work. I don't like this system , but it's to keep people like you from getting your grubby little hands on the game without paying.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Doom3 was written in OGL because Carmack likes to write things in OGL. Carmack seems to like OGL because it's an open standard and it offers somewhat better flexibility in terms of coding than D3D.

He also likes OGL because it makes for an easy conversion to other none pc hardware like Mac for example.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: g3pro
I'm hoping that the CD-key cracking system is easy like it was before so that everyone can get downloaded copies like they did of the original.

I am hoping that it has good security so scum like you has to actually purchase software! :evil:

 

[g3pro]

What if you don't have an internet connection?

 

[Genx87]

I hope they go to a secure online registration/activation system so that only people who pay for the game can play.

Heh I am hoping not. As a person who has a legit copy of HL but cant use the CD-Key that came with it because it was deemed illegal. I can tell you judging from past experiences this is not a good idea coming from these guys.

btw I use a cracked cd-key and it works just fine. Go figure, a legit key doesnt but a fake one does.

wtg!

 

[Genx87]

This is how CS and CS:CZ and CS:S currently work. I don't like this system , but it's to keep people like you from getting your grubby little hands on the game without paying.

interesting. how does it work for people who got a voucher from ATI? Do I just submit the voucher to them so I can download it? I would prefer to have a copy sitting in a folder than worry about losing the cd.

 

[clicknext]

Originally posted by: Genx87

This is how CS and CS:CZ and CS:S currently work. I don't like this system , but it's to keep people like you from getting your grubby little hands on the game without paying.

interesting. how does it work for people who got a voucher from ATI? Do I just submit the voucher to them so I can download it? I would prefer to have a copy sitting in a folder than worry about losing the cd.

If you want to register your ATI voucher, what you can do is open a new Steam account (or use your old one if you had one), and when it asks for a cd key, enter the voucher key. If it doesn't ask you, there's a little button in the browse games menu that says register a game I already own. When HL2 becomes available it should appear in your My Games list. They will probably also give you a notification. Be careful when you're registering your account. Once you link your voucher/key to an account, it's permanently stuck there. You can't transfer the key to another account.

If you want the CD from ATI, you have to send the voucher (photocopy) to ATI according to instructions here.

What if you don't have an internet connection?

I'm not sure if they changed their system, but the last time I checked, you're screwed. I guess they're assuming pretty much everyone who has a computer good enough to play HL2 will have some form of internet connection.

They did change it so that you don't have to connect to the internet every single time you play, though, I believe.