Steam survey, Nov 2009

[happy medium]

I bought a 5850 for the performance, not the API support, but it was a plus. I'm in the same spot as Lopri. A 5850 drives my 1920*1200 display very well, looks great and doesn't get labored very easily. It's the "This is good enough" card for me and my target resolution.

The problem is Lopri is one of the 2% percent of gamers that play @ 2500x1600 resolution. And you are one of the only 5% of gamers that thinks a 5850 is a "This is good enough" @ 1920x1200 with, and who need all the eye candy with aa/af maxed @ 90 fps.

Remember this forum represents enthusiast gamers.

In the real world most are still using a 9800gt @ 1650x1050 or at best a gtx 260/4870 @ 1600x1200/1900x1080 like me.

With the 5850/5870 prices at 320$/420$ right now, (used to be 269$/369$) and poor avalability, I think it's a poor time to upgrade (unless you have money to waste for e-peen), with no real direct x 11 games and no real need for more performance if you have a gtx/48xx card @ everyday resolutions.

I wanted to upgrade my 8800gt.
I took a good hard look at a highly overclockable Asus 5770 @ 159$ for the lower power, heat and noise, but now there up around 175$. I have a crossfire board and figured I'd just pick up another one for cheap later on.

I decided on a used gtx 260 for 125$ with better performance then the 5770 to hold me over until we have more competition ,better pricing, and some games that use direct x 11.

Just my .02c

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Considering that there aren't enough DX11 cards to start with, I don't see how can someone claim how quick or less quick DX11 cards are being adopted.



So if I want to buy a 5870, with my money, you going to slap me in the wrist?

Nope, I'm not jumping on a 5870, as I don't value my want for a better graphic card as high as the price it is, but others that went and paid for, and are enjoying their cards now, are all dumb?



What if I want Eyefinity?

You going to slap me in the wrist because I don't need to play in 3x30" monitors?

GPUs are mostly for gaming - it is not a question of needing. You don't need to play games on the PC. You don't need a 30" monitor a 15" let you play as well. Etc, etc. It is a question of wanting. And it is a personal choice.

He was clearly talking to reasonable people in reasonable situations with reasonable finances. If you want that stuff, go for it; he wasn't talking to you. Probably a little overboard with the reasonable stuff, but I'm sure there's plenty of people who don't really know what they want that would be wise to heed his advise. The 5 or 6 people that are setting up 3x30" eyefinity setups are probably pretty sure about what they're looking for.

 

[Painman]

The problem is Lopri is one of the 2% percent of gamers that play @ 2500x1600 resolution. And you are one of the only 5% of gamers that thinks a 5850 is a "This is good enough" @ 1920x1200 with, and who need all the eye candy with aa/af maxed @ 90 fps.

Remember this forum represents enthusiast gamers.

In the real world most are still using a 9800gt @ 1650x1050 or at best a gtx 260/4870 @ 1600x1200/1900x1080 like me.

With the 5850/5870 prices at 320$/420$ right now, (used to be 269$/369$) and poor avalability, I think it's a poor time to upgrade (unless you have money to waste for e-peen), with no real direct x 11 games and no real need for more performance if you have a gtx/48xx card @ everyday resolutions.

I wanted to upgrade my 8800gt.
I took a good hard look at a highly overclockable Asus 5770 @ 159$ for the lower power, heat and noise, but now there up around 175$. I have a crossfire board and figured I'd just pick up another one for cheap later on.

I decided on a used gtx 260 for 125$ with better performance then the 5770 to hold me over until we have more competition ,better pricing, and some games that use direct x 11.

Just my .02c

Yup, I'll admit it, I'm an eyecandy whore. I also got hold of the 5850 before the price shot way up; TBH I agree and I don't think it's that great of a purchase at the prices being asked right now.

Anyway, the point I was expressing was that DX11 isn't the reason I bought the card.

Good move on the used 260... that's a lot of card for 125 bucks.

 

[dguy6789]

I'm completely content with my 4870 and the performance it gives. I have no desire to upgrade. I've been a pretty involved enthusiast in PC gaming for a long time but now the constantly upgrading thing has started to get old for me. In the old days, if I encountered a game I wanted to play that I couldn't play with maximum details, I'd buy a better graphics card. If that happens today I'll just turn the settings down a bit. The only PC games I am even looking forward to over the next few years are Bioshock 2, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3. I'm not looking into getting anything else.

 

[SunnyD]

Discipline yourself... haha, what a crock. So what you're saying is go out and spend $150-$170 on a "midrange card" today (4870/90 or GTX260), wait for parity on the next gen models and spend $250+ in a year? So in the end you're spending about $400 down the stretch whereas you can just cut to the chase and spent that same money or less now?*

*Note, this doesn't take into account potential resale value of your current card, but given how the resale market works when current top-end become main stream your resale value on the current card has been reduced by usually by an equivalent significant amount.

Seriously? If you have the money and anticipate the need, why bother waiting?

 

[happy medium]

Yup, I'll admit it, I'm an eyecandy whore. I also got hold of the 5850 before the price shot way up; TBH I agree and I don't think it's that great of a purchase at the prices being asked right now.

Anyway, the point I was expressing was that DX11 isn't the reason I bought the card.

Good move on the used 260... that's a lot of card for 125 bucks.

If I had a "fat wallet", believe me, I'd have a large monitor and a 58xx card too.

On a side note: The used XFX 125$ shipped gtx 260 overclocks past gtx 275 speeds stable! Very happy camper:thumbsup:

 

[Idontcare]

No Keith, I specifically used the word gamers because Steam users are PC gamers and since gamers, almost to a person, tend to play more than one game, and with most popular games available on Steam, almost all gamers today run Steam regardless of what else they run (D2D, Impulse, etc) or might play offline.

In other words, Steam users and gamers are safely synonymous terms in the context of this current-gen PC gaming discussion. They are very much the majority of the audience that matters when discussing gaming-class GPUs. People who only play Solitaire and Mine Sweeper aren't even in the context of this thread. Pirates are irrelevant.

A: Steam users
B: PC Gamers

A is near enough to being equal to B that we can safely substitute A for B in this specific context.
All (99.9x% because there is always some random exception) Steam users are PC gamers and almost all PC gamers have Steam installed because they have purchased/play at least one game through Steam.

And even if there was some segment of PC gamers who do not have Steam installed, and aren't pirates, but are playing current-gen PC games, that still wouldn't invalidate this data which covers the majority of PC gamers.

Why not make a poll here on the AT forums, simple one "do you report your GPU config to Steam's GPU survey?" Yes/No

I game, have for nearly 30yrs, have never once sent my rig config stats to Steam. I think you are making way too many assumptions and painting with a rather broad brush here.

Put up the poll, let's see if it comes out that 99.9x% of us use steam. Put the topic to rest.

 

[happy medium]

Discipline yourself... haha, what a crock. So what you're saying is go out and spend $150-$170 on a "midrange card" today (4870/90 or GTX260), wait for parity on the next gen models and spend $250+ in a year? So in the end you're spending about $400 down the stretch whereas you can just cut to the chase and spent that same money or less now?*

*Note, this doesn't take into account potential resale value of your current card, but given how the resale market works when current top-end become main stream your resale value on the current card has been reduced by usually by an equivalent significant amount.

Seriously? If you have the money and anticipate the need, why bother waiting?

I for one think its silly to spend 100% more (320$ hd5850) for 25% more performance (160$ hd4890). For Eyefinity? Well if you have the money for 3 monitors and possibly need a 100$ display connector, I guess it dosent matter how much you spend.

 

[GaiaHunter]

He was clearly talking to reasonable people in reasonable situations with reasonable finances. If you want that stuff, go for it; he wasn't talking to you. Probably a little overboard with the reasonable stuff, but I'm sure there's plenty of people who don't really know what they want that would be wise to heed his advise. The 5 or 6 people that are setting up 3x30" eyefinity setups are probably pretty sure about what they're looking for.

The thing is most people wont go for a GTX 285 in the first place, anyway.

Basically, what he is saying can be applied to any card over $200.

Most people have crappy IGP. Most people that play have under $100 graphic cards. A smaller number plays on $100-200 range. Even less for higher price category.

Considering the DX11 cards are available mainly >$300, and those that are in the $100-200 range are equal or inferior to cards that have been available for that price for the last 6 months, it isn't surprising DX11 isn't widely available.

If you look at the data, a huge amount of the market is based on 8800-9800/4850 performance or lower.

But make no mistake, if people don't have the hardware, software companies will never get the software out and if they do, you get Windows Vista.

When 5850/5870 performance is available at the mainstream then you will see high adoption of DX11 hardware.

So he is telling people to not buy >$300 cards based on price performance criteria when no one buying in that price range buys based on that.

If people were buying any DX11 hype, they would be massively buying 5770 and 5750, but both cards are available with no stock problems even though the ratio of Cypress to Juniper is 3:1 (or 5:1 not sure) and changing their 4870/GTX260 for them.

Read these forums, no one is doing that.

And the OP can only be talking to people that read these forum as others wont read it.

 

[happy medium]

Why not make a poll here on the AT forums, simple one "do you report your GPU config to Steam's GPU survey?" Yes/No

I game, have for nearly 30yrs, have never once sent my rig config stats to Steam. I think you are making way too many assumptions and painting with a rather broad brush here.

Put up the poll, let's see if it comes out that 99.9x% of us use steam. Put the topic to rest.

What percentage of people here have used or still use Steam would be better.
I would guess 75% of gamers have played CSS?

 

[Idontcare]

I for one think its silly to spend 100% more (320$ hd5850) for 25% more performance (160$ hd4890). For Eyefinity? Well if you have the money for 3 monitors and possibly need a 100$ display connector, I guess it dosent matter how much you spend.

Don't forget to factor in the expense of the rig you are plugging that card into. Your percentages are skewed if you attribute 100% of the value of gaming and fps as being due to the GPU you are plugging in.

If your computer represents a $1500 investment, what would you like to do with your investment? Invest another $160 and get gaming performance 1.0X or invest another $320 and get gaming performance 1.25X?

(in my case my rig cost considerably more than $1.5k so the balance tips even farther for justifying the higher cost GPU investment to maximize the value from the rest of my depreciating asset)

 

[v8envy]

Put me in that .01% of non-steam reporting users as well. And I used to play nothing but counterstrike (until early Steam problems cured that addiction).

If you look at the monthly results you'll see non-noise amounts of ancient and wacky hardware. Some people must take perverse pleasure in reporting ancient, obsolete and strange hardware to Steam. I mean, 17" CRTs and S3 GPUs in Nov of 2009? Right.

Steam surveys don't seem to represent the broader market share or installed userbase pictures. And they're not meant to.

 

[aka1nas]

Put me in that .01% of non-steam reporting users as well. And I used to play nothing but counterstrike (until early Steam problems cured that addiction).

If you look at the monthly results you'll see non-noise amounts of ancient and wacky hardware. Some people must take perverse pleasure in reporting ancient, obsolete and strange hardware to Steam. I mean, 17" CRTs and S3 GPUs in Nov of 2009? Right.

Steam surveys don't seem to represent the broader market share or installed userbase pictures. And they're not meant to.

The Steam survey will be heavily skewed by casual gamers and the CS:Source crowd with old PCs. I bought Bejeweled on Steam for my wife, for example, so she can easily pull it down on any of her computers. She doesn't play any other games.

 

[nOOky]

I've been whining about this for a while, but people need to start paying attention to minimum FPS. I don't have the 5xxx cards, but I imagine that the extra computational horsepower on those will significantly increase minimum FPS values (most games already bottleneck at average FPS values on these new cards). Personally I find minimum FPS values above 20 (maximum frame time 50ms) to constitute a "smooth" gaming experience, but people have different tolerances. For FRAPS ... the frametime.csv file is extremely useful.

I look at the lowest fps in game, and when it dips too low it annoys me. Playing Cod4 on the bog map (multiplayer) for example I was seeing my machine dip into the upper 30's. That's why I booted the old 8800GT for a 4870, it made the gameplay better and got rid of the lagginess.
If I could afford a car with 30% more horsepower that got 10% better gas mileage I'd be all over that too. Even though I don't need it

 

[GaiaHunter]

Another heavy player that doesn't steam here.

I bought frigging half-life 2 and couldn't frigging get in. I downloaded the pirate version and installed it and played it before I could log into steam.

I know things changed since then, but meh.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

you can put whatever faith you want into the steam survey, but the fact of the matter is that 5800s are still selling out with their increased and gouged prices, and while the 5700s aren't selling out fast enough to stay OOS, they're obviously still selling well enough to incur similar price gouges that make them less than ideal for the smart buyer (seeing as how the 4870/4890 can offer similar if not superior performance for less)

people are buying up Radeon 5xxx cards in droves, and they're not doing it for DX11, they're doing it for the complete package they offer

 

[Ben90]

Considering there aren't any games* out yet that don't run just fine on a 4870/4890 or 275/285, imho, the "you need extra hp" thing is another misleading marketing claim at this point. Nothing is out before January that requires gamers to rush out and overpay today for a DX11 GPU.

*mainstream games that people actually play, not Crysis which we all know is the exception to the rule and not the norm

I wont run 4x AA on CSS for gods sake on my 4890... That game came out in 2005? Now not everyone has a ridiculous standard of performance, but if im competing and i see the fps drop down to 110 for a split second, im lowering the settings.
Im running medium/no AA settings on L4D2.

When fermi comes out im jumping on the fastest single GPU card money can buy from green team so i can spend hours running it in directx 8. (I have issues with legacy D3D ATI drivers and random misc things)

 

[BladeVenom]

Dirt 2 is DX11. http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/dirt2-offers-dirx11-2009nov30.aspx

 

[ronnn]

I was surprised to see the 5700 and 5800 series even register. I guess they sold more than I thought. More than nothing is quite easy I guess.

I have great personal faith in steam surveys, just because I like steam. Give them my card number and download the game - very easy!

 

[happy medium]

Don't forget to factor in the expense of the rig you are plugging that card into. Your percentages are skewed if you attribute 100% of the value of gaming and fps as being due to the GPU you are plugging in.

If your computer represents a $1500 investment, what would you like to do with your investment? Invest another $160 and get gaming performance 1.0X or invest another $320 and get gaming performance 1.25X?

(in my case my rig cost considerably more than $1.5k so the balance tips even farther for justifying the higher cost GPU investment to maximize the value from the rest of my depreciating asset)

My computer is not an investment. I don't think it will ever be worth more money then what I paid for it.

If my performance is at 1.0 now, I'd rather spend 160$ for 1.75x the performance then 320$ for 2.0x the performance.
I don't care (pardon the pun) how much my system cost, 25% better performance for 100% more price sucks. I much rather spend 50% less on a 4890 and get 75% of the 5850's performance.

@I don't care,
I enjoy reading your post and most of the time I agree with your information, demeanor and common sense, but this time "I don't know what the hell your talking about".

 

[0roo0roo]

even if a card is too fast for your res you have features like ssaa...

 

[x3sphere]

Considering there aren't any games* out yet that don't run just fine on a 4870/4890 or 275/285, imho, the "you need extra hp" thing is another misleading marketing claim at this point. Nothing is out before January that requires gamers to rush out and overpay today for a DX11 GPU.

*mainstream games that people actually play, not Crysis which we all know is the exception to the rule and not the norm

well if you game at 2560x1600 or multi-monitor resolutions the extra power of the 5800/5900 series is needed, even in games other than Crysis..

 

[jvroig]

I game, have for nearly 30yrs, have never once sent my rig config stats to Steam.

You do? I thought all you do was inspect foundry processes.

And read/post at AT Forums.

Guess I was wrong, wouldn't be the first time

Don't let people BS you with how quickly they claim new DX11 GPUs are being adopted

DX11 GPUs are being "adopted" fast, if you take it to mean "selling out faster than hotcakes". DX11 GPUs are certainly being "adopted" fast by enthusiasts in that sense.

But if what you actually meant was "DX11 being adopted by developers" (notice that there's no "GPU" word there), then yes you are right, adoption isn't going to be fast. I don't know why anybody is expecting a whirlwind adoption of a new DX standard, considering that this one also requires a new OS, not just a download from Microsoft.

Developers will develop on the best platform their evaluation gets them - whether this is solely on a specific console, or for the PC exclusively, or a mix, and whether their PC development uses DX9 alone or will also encompass DX10/DX11 tech, depends greatly on their evaluation of the existing state of their target audience, and how much return on investment each particular course of action may get them, When their target market is saturated with DX11 cards, they may opt to make a DX11 only gane. Until then, most of their products will most likely run fine on non-DX11 supporting cards, and will add a few DX11 features just as a bonus (if they have time and resources to spare, or perhaps add it in later through a patch).

Of course, getting a 58xx card is more than just getting DX11. There's a fine performance increase as well, which makes the 58xx sellout, while the 57xx not so much. Both have DX11, but 57xx doesn't offer a sweet performance increase compared to last gen.

Anyway, hmm, what was I saying again? Oh yeah, I was suprised IDC games. I thought he stared at foundry thingamajigs all day.

 

[Idontcare]

solitaire is a game, right?

 

[MrK6]

Why not make a poll here on the AT forums, simple one "do you report your GPU config to Steam's GPU survey?" Yes/No

I game, have for nearly 30yrs, have never once sent my rig config stats to Steam. I think you are making way too many assumptions and painting with a rather broad brush here.

Put up the poll, let's see if it comes out that 99.9x% of us use steam. Put the topic to rest.

Would be interesting. I've never sent my configuration into Steam either. The most one can say is that X% of reporting users use Y brand video card/CPU/OS, nothing more.