Thoughts on Steam's gpu statistics for Sept. 2009

[Beanie46]

First, I'm not the heaviest gamer out there and don't use Steam really......only have gone there twice in the last year and only to download a couple of really, really on sale games, like today with the entire Company of Heroes set for 50% off.

Anyway, I decided to look at the gpu statistics for once......everyone tends to tout the numbers there, so I took a peek at them and found some interesting things.


1. While Nvidia does indeed lead the overall number/percentage of gpus used on Steam, the vast majority are the GeForce 8xxx and 9xxx series. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised given the rebadging Nvidia has done to move the 8xxx/9xxx series cards to the GTX2xx series of cards, but still, I'd have thought there would be much more representation of the GTX2xx cards there.....

2. ATi's 4800 series of cards really has outsold, if Steam's stats mean anything, the whole lineup of Nvidia's GTX2xx cards.

According to Steam, and I'm looking specifically at the DirecX 10 GPUs only, not systems.....

ATi 4800 cards hold around 11.5% of all gpus seen during September, 2009...

Nvidia's GTX 2xxx cards totaled a hair over 8.6% of all gpus. I find that amazing given some of the postings about how strong Nvidia is and has been in sales.

Nvidia's card breakout......

GTX260......4.18%
GTX275......1.03%
GTX280......1.34%
GTX285......1.26%
GTX295......0.80%


So, it appears to me that either ATi's current gen. (no stats for the 5xxx series cards yet, so the 4800 series is "current" as of last month.....) hammered Nvidia's "current" generation of cards, or Nvidia's prices are too high, or or all the lambasitng about how superior Nvidia's GTX2xx cards are and how many there are in the "wild", so to speak, is just wishful thinking.

In all honesty, from the few stats I'd seen here at AT, I thought Nvidia's GTX2xx series of cards was shaming ATi's 4800 series in numbers represented at Steam. Guess that is wrong......it's all those 8xxx's and 9xxx cards out there.

 

[OCGuy]

11% v 8% when ATi had such great price/performance with 4890?


Not exactly "hammering" if you ask me. Flamebait?

Really, what purpose did this thread serve other than to start another war that is going on in a few other threads already?

 

[alcoholbob]

People probably just looked at their wallets and the msrp at the store and said, "Eh, I'll get the second or third most expensive card here; I'm sure its' almost as fast."

 

[arkcom]

Originally posted by: OCguy
11% v 8% when ATi had such great price/performance with 4890?


Not exactly "hammering" if you ask me. Flamebait?

Really, what purpose did this thread serve other than to start another war that is going on in a few other threads already?

You don't think a 36% difference is substantial?

 

[Janooo]

That's correct. 4800 series has been outselling GT200.
NV even had to write off invetory earlier this year. It seems GT200 didn't make any money to NV.

 

[Vertibird]

8800 series was a good card. Something like that just doesn't need updating for the casual gamer.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Janooo
That's correct. 4800 series has been outselling GT200.
NV even had to write off invetory earlier this year. It seems GT200 didn't make any money to NV.

And again, 4800 series did not net ATi any money either.

 

[Rezist]

According to OCguy

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Rezist
According to OCguy

 

[BenSkywalker]

This makes my head want to explode when I keep seeing it repeated.

In Steam's survey, the 4770, 4830 and 4850 are all included and have no competition from the GTX family of products. The G92 family, as far as games are concerned, has feature parity with the GTX parts. The only difference is performance. You need to include the GTS250, 9800GTX+ and 9800GT at least to make an equal comparison(you could also argue the 8800GT and perhaps the 9600GT as they are certainly competitors to the 4770).

The G92 part was designed to be nV's mid tier solutions, ATi was forced to use the 4xx0 parts as the 3xx0 parts were horrible in comparison. The G92 based offerings did not suck, so they stuck around.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
This makes my head want to explode when I keep seeing it repeated.

While what you said is true, it is also true that nvidia was making money before and ATI wasn't - it was actually losing more money than now.

So the 4xxx series improved ATI situation while the GTX200 series didn't improve nvidia situation, quite the opposite.

 

[BenSkywalker]

So the 4xxx series improved ATI situation while the GTX200 series didn't improve nvidia situation, quite the opposite.

The largest global economic meltdown since the depression couldn't have had anything to do with the situation now could it have? Take a good look at the financials, nV spent more on R&D then ATi generated in total revenue- in terms of operating budget nV actually made a decent profit(which is the only net financial numbers ATi gets, its' R&D budget is listed under AMD's broader R&D budget).

Just double checked the numbers, excluding packaging repair charge costs, nV posted a $37.7Million profit and was operatinig on 36% margins for the last reported quarter(new report should be coming any day). This is a very sharp improvement over what they had been dealing with.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

So the 4xxx series improved ATI situation while the GTX200 series didn't improve nvidia situation, quite the opposite.

The largest global economic meltdown since the depression couldn't have had anything to do with the situation now could it have? Take a good look at the financials, nV spent more on R&D then ATi generated in total revenue- in terms of operating budget nV actually made a decent profit(which is the only net financial numbers ATi gets, its' R&D budget is listed under AMD's broader R&D budget).

Just double checked the numbers, excluding packaging repair charge costs, nV posted a $37.7Million profit and was operatinig on 36% margins for the last reported quarter(new report should be coming any day). This is a very sharp improvement over what they had been dealing with.

Now just do the maths for the ATI numbers in the same recession and the ATI numbers before that.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Page 4. It appears that overall ATi was $12Million worse off with the 4x00 series then they were with the 3x00 series for comparable quarters to what I just checked for nV. Overall sales decline seems to be about the same percentage wise(although ATi only sells a small fraction of what nV does so in absolute numbers it was much smaller).

Going by the same guidelines people wanted to use for ATi, nVidia's graphics division is doing significantly better with the GTX generation then ATi did with the 4x00 parts.

 

[Zap]

Here's my take on the numbers.

First, this is just people who game (on Steam). How many have multiple Nvidia 9800 GX2 or GTX 2XX cards Folding away? While the number of people may not be much, seems to me that some of them have dozens of Nvidia cards in their folding farms.

Second, I would like to see more of a breakdown for the cards. I can understand an 8600 GT and 8600 GTS being lumped together, but c'mon, an 8800 GT/GTS/GTX/Ultra all lumped together? Radeon 4830/4850/4870/4890 all lumped together?

Third, I think what this really shows is that gamers are choosing one price point over another.
* The 8600 series had the $100-200 price point. It still has 8.25% of the DX10 numbers.
* GTX 260 by itself has 4.18% and is in the $150-200 price point.
* Radeon 4800 series has 11.46% and is in the $100-200 price point.
* 9600 series has 6.22% and (until recent rebated sales) was in the $80-150 price point.

I'd really like to see the breakdown of Radeon 4800 series between GDDDR5 and GDDR3 models because my guess is that the biggest numbers will be for the 4830/4850 by far because they have been in the pricing sweet spot for longer.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

I think that part of the issue is that Steam games are not ultra ultra gfx intensive. (I could be wrong, havent been on steam in 6+ months).

But last time I looked, you don't need high level 4xxx or 2xx class cards to run most steam games.

Therefore, a survey of Crysis players or even World at War players might have different results.

That said, I just bought an ATI 5870 and I LOVE it.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

oh hai gais lets take amds current lineup and compare it to half of nvidias wow wow look at how much more amd is selling lulz. How anyone can make serious replies to these "numbers" is beyond me.

 

[BenSkywalker]

* Radeon 4800 series has 11.46% and is in the $100-200 price point.

You mean the $100-$400 segment? I don't recall seeing a lot of 4870x2's in the $200 range

 

[SlowSpyder]

OP, I have no doubts that the 48x0 cards have outsold the GTX2x0 cards. But, you have to remember that not all 48x0 cards compete with a GTX2x0 card. A 4850 for example competes in the same category as a 9800GTX+/GTS250. The Steam data isn't useless, but it would need a better break down of the numbers (and actual numbers as opposed to percentages would be awesome) to make any real conclusions.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

* Radeon 4800 series has 11.46% and is in the $100-200 price point.

You mean the $100-$400 segment? I don't recall seeing a lot of 4870x2's in the $200 range

You can't seriously think that 4870x2 is a significant chunk of that percentage... but you're right to a point. Really, we need a better breakdown.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Page 4. It appears that overall ATi was $12Million worse off with the 4x00 series then they were with the 3x00 series for comparable quarters to what I just checked for nV.

But the recession isn't only for nvidia is it?

And according those same numbers, the last quarter in there their graphics division was in the black.

More interesting would be to see the number of even earlier quarters, before ATI had the 3xxx series.

Now, there will be this last 2009 quarter. It will be interesting to see if ATI can improve their numbers.

BTW can you provide me with the source that used for the nv numbers? Ty.

 

[n7]

Here's a question...how many Steam users on AT actually allow submission of their system info to Steam to harvest?

I don't, for example.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I'm not sure what Steam list you're looking at because the one I see has an Nvidia card first (8800 series; 9.89% of the total Steam graphics market), an ATI card second (4800 series, 7.89% of the total Steam graphics market), and then 11 Nvidia GPU's in a row, followed by an Intel one. Nvidia is dominating the Steam list, which I believe gives a fairly accurate picture of what people are gaming on these days.

Nvidia owns 65.4% of the GPU market on Steam, to 27.6% for ATI. ATI is getting spanked - frankly, I thought ATI was going to be a lot closer at this point!
--------

What surprises me is Nvidia's strength in Mobile cards; they're kicking butt. The 8600M and 9600M, and 8400M series have 4.2% of the mobile market on Steam; this is more than Intel's 965 series + 4 series +965 series +645 series (3.8%), despite Intel's dominance in sales the mobile GPU market.

AMD's highest placing mobile GPU is the Mobility Radeon 3470, with <1% of the market.

Another shock to me is just how weakly ATI's 38xx series did; the 3870 and 3850 combined have less than 2% of the market, despite being a great price/performance card for awhile (apparently the 8800 series just trounced it).
---------

I do predict ATI to take a much higher percent of this chart over the next 6 months. The 48xx series probably won't have quite enough legs to ever pass the 8800 series for first place [thought they just might], but the 57xx and 58xx series should chisel sales away from the top end of the chart and take top-10 positions over the next 6 months. And since Nvidia owns 9 of the top 10 GPU's on there, that means increased market share for ATI.

-------

In the future, I would not be surprised if Nvidia's 9400M graphics card, which is currently integrated on Dell's Studio 14 laptops and many Apple laptops, which doesn't even currently place on this chart, may take a commanding lead in mobile GPU's on this list over the next year.

However, ATI has not one but two nice, cheap, competitive mobile cards now, perhaps for the first time: the Mobility 4570 (which I currently have in my Dell Studio 15) and the Mobility 4670.
--------

On another note, AMD has a quite strong 33.5% of the total CPU market - I thought Intel had a bigger lead over AMD, but AMD has appared to hold tough through the Athlon X2 / Phenom 1 era where they were well behind technologically.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
I'm not sure what Steam list you're looking at

The DX10 GPUs list.

EDIT:
So if we look at the DX10 GPUs list we get that the entire 4800 series has 11.46%, the GTX200 series has 8.61% (with half of it being the GTX260) and the 9800 series (which are the competitors vs the 4830/4850) 9.81%.

If we join the 9800+GTX200 nvidia has 17.79% vs ATI 11.46%, or 61% nvidia vs 39% ATI.

It would be really interesting to know exactly what percentage do the 4830/4850 represent of the 4800 totals.

Depending on different assumptions, we could have ATI being crushed at the high end market or near parity with nvidia.

Anyway, the 4800 results vs the combined GT200/9800 are a lot closer than the 65.4% vs 27.6% figures.

 

[BenSkywalker]

You can't seriously think that 4870x2 is a significant chunk of that percentage

GTX295 is almost 10% of the GTX numbers for nVidia. No, I wouldn't assume that it would be a large chunk, but I sure as hell wouldn't have thought that the 295 would be close to what it is at either. If we look at sngle GPUs faster then anything ATi sells, it is a full 40% of the GTX numbers- although ATi does have two different parts that operate in that segment(4850x2 and 4870x2).

But the recession isn't only for nvidia is it?

Of course not, the point remains that ATi did worse with the 4x00 parts then the 3x00 parts. That was the point I was getting at. The 4x00 parts, for whatever reason, did not do well for ATi by any stretch of the imagination.

BTW can you provide me with the source that used for the nv numbers?

nV's last quarter financial reports, don't have the link atm, but they are right on nV's site(same as AMD's.. well, you know what I mean ).

EDIT:
So if we look at the DX10 GPUs list we get that the entire 4800 series has 11.46%, the GTX200 series has 8.61% (with half of it being the GTX260) and the 9800 series (which are the competitors vs the 4830/4850) 9.81%.

If we join the 9800+GTX200 nvidia has 17.79% vs ATI 11.46%, or 61% nvidia vs 39% ATI.

It would be really interesting to know exactly what percentage do the 4830/4850 represent of the 4800 totals.

Depending on different assumptions, we could have ATI being crushed at the high end market or near parity with nvidia.

Anyway, the 4800 results vs the combined GT200/9800 are a lot closer than the 65.4% vs 27.6% figures.

You left out the 9600GT and on a realistic basis the 8800GT which was widely available for a good chunk of that timeframe. When you factor those in, you see the market dominance.