Steam 2011 Oct. Hardware Survey GPU results

tviceman

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2008
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http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
Interesting results! The 5770 is still the single most active dx11 card in the survey, holding mostly constant against ALL cards but is dropping off among active DX11 card owners (3% less users now vs. it's high in Jun). The gtx460 has been in a solid second place for sometime as well, but it's also off it's popularity height among DX11 cards acheived in June by 1.5%.

Other things of interest...

30% of the steam users polled in survey have a DX11 video card. 93% have at least DX10 capabilities.
The gtx560 (presumably gtx560 and gtx560ti) and gtx570 are the two most popular cards since both companies have refreshed their lineups.
The gtx560 and hd5870 saw the largest increase in users last month. I suspect the hd5870 resales are driving it's percentage up, which might indicate a flaw in the steam polling method (since if cards are being sold from user to user, overall percentage should stay about the same).
The hd6950 has been hovering very close in user percentage to the more expensive gtx570 for as far back as the survey shows, but it has never surpassed the gtx570. (0.05% difference among all cards)
The gtx580 is owned by nearly as many steam users as the hd6870. (0.09% difference)
The gtx550 had it's biggest increase in steam users (0.44%), but has sold poorly compared to it's bigger counterparts despite being the cheapest revised Fermi.
The hd6970 has a very low number of steam users, only 1.58% of all dx11 hardware polled in survey had an hd6970, or 0.48% of all steam users in survey.
 
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GotNoRice

Senior member
Aug 14, 2000
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I suspect the hd5870 resales are driving it's percentage up, which might indicate a flaw in the steam polling method (since if cards are being sold from user to user, overall percentage should stay about the same).

Well I'm guessing the 5870s sitting in someone's bitcoin farm weren't previously showing up in the Steam survey. Since that virtual currency has basically crashed, a lot of people are selling cards that might have never even been used in games before.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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Actually you are right about the 5770, but for all cards overall, the most prominent is the 9800GT and in combination with the very similar 8800GT they still have over 10% of the total market. Just shows what an outstanding card it was for its time. Yes, I am running a 9800GT. I have a lower end system and am CPU limited in most cases now I think (E4500 and stock, not overclockabe in an off the shelf system), especially since I run at 1440x900.
 

OVerLoRDI

Diamond Member
Jan 22, 2006
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Well I'm guessing the 5870s sitting in someone's bitcoin farm weren't previously showing up in the Steam survey. Since that virtual currency has basically crashed, a lot of people are selling cards that might have never even been used in games before.

This is true. I unloaded my bitcoin farm and sent off ~10 5870s to new owners. I am probably not the only one.
 

hdfxst

Senior member
May 13, 2009
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does steam show sli?because if i look at steam system info it shows 1 5800 series card and no sli or crossfire detected
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
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does steam show sli?because if i look at steam system info it shows 1 5800 series card and no sli or crossfire detected

It detects SLI but not Crossfire.

Also I doubt the reselling of cards is what's leading to the results, it's more the lack of meaning in Steam hardware survey numbers which is the cause of it.
 

Chaoticlusts

Member
Jul 25, 2010
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It's kinda weird they haven't seemed to have updated the lists to keep up with tech enough..

having GPU RAM not going to 2GB, RAM max at 5GB+ and HDD total capacity at 1TB+....when the 2nd (almost equal first) most common answer to a statistic is the 'and above' one you haven't plotted out your list right :p

I know top end computers are fairly rare but people with larger than 1TB HDD's really aren't.

Not so much bitching as wondering why. I'd guess maybe these are the stats they put up when they started these surveys and for consistency they haven't changed them but of course there's new GPU's and OS's etc...confused! :p
 

nanaki333

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2002
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my janx is pushing dual 6970s and my wife has a 6970 + 6950 (i had a 6950 laying around so i threw it in her machine). so there's 2 cards that are not detected since it doesn't pick up crossfire.
 

LOL_Wut_Axel

Diamond Member
Mar 26, 2011
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Only ones that really make sense in that list are the GTX 460 and HD 5(6)770. After that I would've expected the HD 6850 and HD 6870 to follow suit closely behind.
 

nanaki333

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2002
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Only ones that really make sense in that list are the GTX 460 and HD 5(6)770. After that I would've expected the HD 6850 and HD 6870 to follow suit closely behind.

yeah. i was expecting 68x0 to be pretty high up there. they're a great bang for the buck.
 

Dribble

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2005
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yeah. i was expecting 68x0 to be pretty high up there. they're a great bang for the buck.

Many of the people who would buy it already had a 58xx, and for them the 68xx wasn't a step up so no point getting one. AMD a bit of a victim of their own success there - the 58xx cards were so good that if you owned one (and lots did) no massive need to upgrade.
 

Throckmorton

Lifer
Aug 23, 2007
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People were seriously spending thousands of dollars on graphics cards and motherboards to farm Bitcoins? Seriously? They thought that investment would pay off?
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
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People were seriously spending thousands of dollars on graphics cards and motherboards to farm Bitcoins? Seriously? They thought that investment would pay off?

It paid off for many. People were paying off their Upgrades in a month.
 
Feb 19, 2009
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Its surprising that out of the recent dx11 sales, a lot of people buy top-end gpus. The enthusiast market is going strong.
 
Feb 19, 2009
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Steam doesn't split gtx560 vs 560 ti?

And CF is not detected, registers as a single card. Thus AMD # are artificially low.