Wow I should have looked at that sooner. Dang 3x as many players playing CS then users playing CS:S. Wow that suprises me as well. Guess that explains alot of the 5200s, Geforce4s , and X300 users.
Why would anyone play that instead of CS:S is beyond me, even though I knew it would still be large portion of useit I didn't think it would be that much of a difference or even that CS would even be in the lead.
Your not making any sense. If we were talking about Content your arguments would hold up. But we are just talking about the media inwhich content is stored on. The material for DVDs and CD's are about the same. but the equipment to make them is really different and thats where part of it comes from. But since the publishers don't actually produce the media, then they should just switch suppliers to one that has decrease costs on DVD production since the media is down to $.25 anyways vs CD at about $.10.
We are now seeing a bigger push and since Doom3 I have yet to purchase a CD version of any game I have played, I think the industry is now ready for the move to DVD only.
well i know one guy who is, coz i just fixed his rig for him
its a right mish mash though, AXP 2400+ coupled with 384mb of PC100 SDRAM and a 5200
infact the motherboard is jumpered for 133mhz so the chip runs at the right speed so his ram is actually overclocked 33% lol i hope it holds up
(i did build the machine, they guy who did, did a ****** job so i ended up fixing it, but i only fixed it up enough to get windows installed......good job he paid £60 for the entire thing)
yep they still sell creative branded 5200's 5600's 5700's and pny ones in shops such as pc world here in the UK, they are way overpriced and the sales people say its got 256mb of ram, that means it can handle any game today. uneducated joe soaks it all up and heads for the check out
RussianSensation
Elite Member
- Sep 5, 2003
- 19,458
- 765
- 126
I dont think the valve survey is representative of anything significant over the whole gaming market.
1. It's only applicable to those who own valve games
2. It cannot recognize new videocards if those who upgraded no longer play the game (hence no updates)
3. It's accuracy is questionable at best -- Intel 48%, amd 51%? That is not even close to reality. This alone tells us that it is not representative.
If you want an accurate comparison just read ATI's and Nvidia's financial reports and analyze profitability ratios, notes in financial statements, and do a company valuation. From these statistics ATI is doing terrible, when in reality it is the market leader in graphics. Not to mention it isn't even close in the mobile markets where a lot of profits come from as well.
1. It's only applicable to those who own valve games
2. It cannot recognize new videocards if those who upgraded no longer play the game (hence no updates)
3. It's accuracy is questionable at best -- Intel 48%, amd 51%? That is not even close to reality. This alone tells us that it is not representative.
If you want an accurate comparison just read ATI's and Nvidia's financial reports and analyze profitability ratios, notes in financial statements, and do a company valuation. From these statistics ATI is doing terrible, when in reality it is the market leader in graphics. Not to mention it isn't even close in the mobile markets where a lot of profits come from as well.
As some other people have pointed out, the results aren't quite as 'shocking' as you might have thought initially.
The most add-in cards are probably sold in the $50-150 range, and the 6600 and 6600GT have generally the cheapest 'good' cards in that range for a while now. Although note that the RADEON 9700Pro and 9800Pro (nearly as fast as a 6600) are also still quite popular, and the RADEON X800 series (with a lot of these probably being X800SEs and X800/X800GTOs that compete directly with the 6600 and 6600GT) is also up there.
9800s + X800s: ~80,000
6600s: ~80,000
Although the 6800s seem to have a pretty heavy lead over the X800s (if you assume a good chunk of these are vanilla X800s) and the X850s.
The 6800GT, basically, was a very popular card, and certainly took advantage of some of the supply issues ATI had initially with the X800XL and X800XT. And it took ATI a while to get out something that could compete at the same pricepoint as the GF6800NU.
The 7800GT got a huge head start because of the delays on the X1800s. Although the X1800s and X1900s seem to be selling pretty well now.
I'm not sure I really follow you. The cards in the same performance/price range as the 9600s are the GF5500/5600/5700 (and to some extent the 6200), and there are WAY more 9500/9600s and X600/700s.
9500+9550+9600+X600+X700: 102,000
5500+5600+5700+6200: 58,000.
Although it can be hard to gauge these numbers, since you can't tell if people bought them when they were new and relatively fast, or if they bought them more recently when they were cheap but slow.
The most impressive thing to me is still the number of very old/crappy cards in use (although, as noted above, this includes people playing HL1 and the original CS, which are still popular). Almost 30% of the systems are using an FX5200 or worse. And most people have 512MB of RAM and play at 1280x1024 at most.
True, but I'd say at least 75% of the 'gaming' market probably owns at least one Valve game.
This survey is only results from March 3rd of this year on. So you're only seeing results from people who have logged into Steam in the last month or so.
Um... have you seen how many systems Dell/HP/Compaq/Gateway/etc. sells? AMD may be the popular choice in homebuilt enthusiast systems, but OEM boxes are still almost all Intel-based. Frankly, I'm surprised it's this even; I would expect it to be more in Intel's favor.
See now who is playing with figures. The fact is a large enough people from all over the Gaming market have Valve games. It is a sample but it a very large and has more coverage then you think.
Because this is a gaming only sample, though the CPU figures would be representitive of computer people Game on, Bussness and old peoples computer wouldn't be counted. This figure is more used to show add on graphics card sales for desktops. I never said this entails the world as a whole but in the gaming community only.
As for ATI being the sales leader, most of that is in systems that are not used in gaming, with either very low end or integrated graphics. ATI makes so little margin on these sales they are of very little help. They do lead Laptop sales but not by whole bunch and alot of this depends on what dell is provding with systems at a given moment. If Dell goes Nvidia heavy things may change a bit.
People keep forgetting that the real money is in the mid range cards, then High end, then low end, then integrated and then finally the Super highend. the Worse trouble for ATI appears to be their mid range section and their regular high end, and trust me it does look bad. Its not doom and gloom because I am sure hey make enough money on the low end and integrated to stay affloat if they didn't sell any mid range or high cards and the fact that they are means that really they are just losing money that can be used on development and purchases.
Trust Me I want both to be competitive (which they are) with the same quality parts (roughly but some would say otherwise) so that the can go into price wars. I buy the Best bang for the buck at high end, or best performer all around depending on funding. I do after seeing these figures wonder how after three gens of lack luster sales keep up with Nvidia in development, and I am sure they will, but for how long? This again is more of a big surprise to me then anything else, but just because you don't like the information provided doesn't mean you can just toss that information out. The sample is large enough and I think you would be surprised as how deverse it is (in the pc gamers angle).
The high-end and super-high-end cards ($300+ apiece) are a ridiculously tiny fraction of their sales. Even what you might refer to as 'midrange' cards (in the $100-200 range) are a pretty small piece. Selling integrated graphics chipsets and boatloads of low-end cards like X300s or FX5200s to system builders is where the big money is. And ATI and NVIDIA's deals with MS/Nintendo and Sony (respectively) are also worth quite a lot.
Most interesting also is the fact that most people use ONBOARD SOUND.
Sound Blaster / Creative has very few customers nowadays....
Sound Blaster / Creative has very few customers nowadays....
Yeah some of the number if I thought more about them when I poseted would make more sense. I think the big Surprise was the lack of heavy hitters from ATI on both the Mid and High end since the 9000 series cards. Nvidia has sold between the 6600, the 6800, the 7800, and the 6200 series 170,000 to ATI's 100,000 with the x800, x700 x300 x600 x850, x1600, X1800, X1900, X1300. Acording to this and again it not the whole story but it is about the one if not the most important market that these two companies compete on for both prestige and profit. The fact that Nvidia has out sold them by 70% (according to this survey) using only lines vs. the 7 need from ATI also impacts ATI worse as each seperate line increases cost per chip coming from the fab.
Hopefully ATI's numbers will look better by the time the X1900 series lives out its life. But even then in three months of sale for that and really limited availbility of the 7900 for the month its been out Nvidia still has almost half as many cards on the board there.
I didn't say it was all, I said this is a very profitible parts of bussiness. I also said ATI and nvidia (ATI more so) could survivie on their OEM parts alone but its the higher margin market that gets the company rolling. ATI even said when they had the bad year last and especially 4th quarter, where they said that it was their lackluster sales in the higher margin markets that killed their earnings.
As for the console market I don't know about Nintendos deal but both MS and Sony paid upfront costs for the design and are producing them themselves. Large influx of money for delivery but nothing from future sales. This also worked against ATI as they devloped from the ground up the R500 (?) while the RSX is almost if not all entirely a G70 or G71 GPU so ATI had to spend alot more out of pocket for development then Nvidia. The one advantage is if the ATI design becomes the basis of future retail cards. The nitendo deal no matter what will not make much of a difference for ATI even if they collect money per chip, in fact if the sold the IP rights or licensed it to Nintendo they probably would end up making more money.
Regs
Lifer
- Aug 9, 2002
- 16,666
- 21
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Authoring and encoding systems can be purchased at prices from $400.00 to over $2 million. Not to mention the worthless CD-Checks, security measures, etc... Remember developers go to the publishers and the publishers publish tons of game titles a year. If only one out of those 100 titles could not fit on one or two discs then what's to justify to switching to a new format for one or more titles? This is why they sometimes make special editions. Which really means, get it now because you wont see it later.
Since the DVD-ROM can play both DVD and CD-ROM optical, we will be stuck on this compatible forward migration path.
Like I said at this point almost every game worth a damn is available in DVD anyways so the point is moot. Now if only we could stop some of them from charging like an extra $10 for the DVD then all would be great.
RussianSensation
Elite Member
- Sep 5, 2003
- 19,458
- 765
- 126
Did you accidentally forget a decimal point? There are numerous games that have been released that have outsold everything Valve has done combined. Valve is very small in relative terms. You want to limit that to the hardcore set then maybe closer to 50% own a Valve game- but even then that may be pushing it.
A quick points with your comparison- you included the 9500 and the x700 which were up against the GF4Ti and 6600 respectively which would change your results rather enormously. The x700 was the second ATi released card that was supposed to go head to head with the 6600 series- and in terms of pricing they have been quite comparable. On the other side, the Ti4200 was all nV had to go head to head with the 9500 for quite some time. This was clearly nV's fault, just pointing out that you included three generations of ATi products without having their nV equal compared.
For the broader gaming market absolutely- but look at how many people are running 6600 series or better- these are not the people that have made Intel the market leader in graphics solutions. Intel has 1.67% of this survey while they command in excess of 30% of the broader market(speaking just in terms of graphics solutions). Now given that you are going to be running an Intel processor if you are running an Intel graphics chip this survey takes ~30% of the market out of consideration right off(which then makes the AMD numbers make sense- not saying that they are in fact indicative, just that they make sense when looked at that way).
If what you mean by 'hardcore' is something along the lines of 'people who play more than Sims 2 or Rollercoaster Tycoon on their PC' (which is what I was very unclearly trying to get at), I think the percentage is well over 50%.
Isn't Counter-Strike (if you add up 'old' CS and CS:S) still the #1 online FPS? I admit I haven't checked any of those stats in a while, so maybe they have slipped in favor of things like BF2.
You're right; I should have included the GF4Ti numbers as well. That adds another ~20K on the NVIDIA side. Still, it seems even at best in the 'midrange' segment, if not tilted somewhat in ATI's favor. It's not until you get up into the higher-end products that NVIDIA has dominant numbers. But like I said, for the older cards, these numbers don't say when the cards were bought.
Ultimately, the numbers are only truly 'representative' of people who are currently playing games through Steam. What relation that has to the overall market is somewhat questionable, but I would think it is a pretty good cross-section of the 'enthusiast' PC gaming community.
Hmm, did anyone look at the numbers for SLI? Wasn't trollo trying to tell us the millions of people use SLI or what not? Well whatever... If only 5,500 out of 711,000 people have SLI, well... That tells me how many people use it. :thumbsdown:
This isn't to say SLI sucks, I think it is a great... But it certainly isn't common, like everyone would have you believe.
Additionally, a few people have tried to say that 1600 X 1200 is a "low" resolution... Which, makes me laugh. Because, here, we have around 90% out of 711,000 people whose main resolutions are from "1024 X 768 to 1280 X 1024" which would of course be the most common resolutions out there. So, according to the 16 X 12 is low theory... 90% of people out there are running either "ultra low resolutions" or "extremely super ultra low resolutions." Uhm... I don't think so.
As far as people whining about the accuracy of the survey... Well, come on... 711,000!!?!?!? That is plenty enough to derive great information. Personally, what is so hard to believe about these numbers? Great post, BTW.
This isn't to say SLI sucks, I think it is a great... But it certainly isn't common, like everyone would have you believe.
Additionally, a few people have tried to say that 1600 X 1200 is a "low" resolution... Which, makes me laugh. Because, here, we have around 90% out of 711,000 people whose main resolutions are from "1024 X 768 to 1280 X 1024" which would of course be the most common resolutions out there. So, according to the 16 X 12 is low theory... 90% of people out there are running either "ultra low resolutions" or "extremely super ultra low resolutions." Uhm... I don't think so.
As far as people whining about the accuracy of the survey... Well, come on... 711,000!!?!?!? That is plenty enough to derive great information. Personally, what is so hard to believe about these numbers? Great post, BTW.
Completely agreed. For the longest time i played PC games without even knowing how to build one. Play CS 1.2 on an old gateway.
Started playing source on an Inspiron 5100 Laptop: 512mb Ram, Radeon Mobility 7500 64mb Video card. Still was owning though
- Nov 30, 2005
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I play CS:S on an X300 and it works great, could be better, but still works great!
Edit: grammar
By hardcore I mean those people who spend significant amounts of their time playing games- even of those WoW is quite a bit bigger then anything we are talking about in this thread. Valve is a very small company. HL series~10 Million; GTA series ~50 Million; Madden ~100Million; Mario ~200Million. Valve is a tiny little ant in the gaming industry- they are only somewhat influential amongst hard core FPS players which are a miniscule portion of the gaming market.
You realize you are asking if something is the biggest out of one of the smallest niches in gaming right? I honestly don't know if CS is still king of the hill, but it is small in comparison.
6600. You include the x600 and x700 but ignore the absolute dominant part in the mid range sector for the last eighteen months- why?
Only for those who are obsessed with Valve. Most people have long moved on from the shockingly mediocre sequel to the greatest FPS ever made.
Hl2 rocked imo
I understand that is a matter of taste.... it just appears you don't have any
Seriously though, I would rank HL2 as one of the most repetitive and boring shooters I've played in years. Getting in the buggy- drive a hundred feet- get out to move ******- repeat fifty freakin times- hands down the best example I can think of what not to do in a game is that leve. Epitomizes piss poor level design in every sense. It was highly polished, suffered from no single crippling element, it was just weak overall.
Best looking.... is there any well known engine being used today that is weaker then Source? Honestly, it seems to me to be very clearly the weakest engine being marketed currently- and by a long shot. The gameplay is a matter of perspective, this one can be nailed down to technical merits.
GLQuake runs on more systems then HL2. If we want to talk about games with comparable visuals we will have to pull out some really old titles like Mafia- which also runs better on older hardware.
Oblivion's engine slaughters it, FC's kills it, D3's smokes it, U3 make it looks antiquated to an extreme degree and even the latest U2 powered games make Source look tired and weak. LS3D was out years before Source, pulled off nigh everything that Source did and did it while rendering an environment the scope of which Source couldn't imagine and did it with considerably higher levels of perfromance on older hardware.
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