Friday, July 7th 2017
Steam Survey Update: It's All About Quad-cores, NVIDIA and Windows 10
An update to the Steam survey results is always worth noting, especially with the added, tremendous growth Valve's online store service has seen recently. And it seems that in the Steam gaming world at least, quad-core CPUs, NVIDIA graphics cards, and Windows 10 reign supreme.
Windows 10 64-bit is the most used operating system, with 50.33% of the survey. That the second most used Windows OS is the steady, hallmark Windows 7 shouldn't come as a surprise, though it does have just 32.05% of the market now. OS X has a measly 2.95% of the grand total, while Linux comes in at an even lower 0.72%. While AMD processor submits may have increased in other software, it seems that at least in Steam, those numbers aren't reflected, since AMD's processor market share in the survey has decreased from 21.89% in February to just 19.01% as of June, even though the company's Ryzen line of CPUs has been selling like hotcakes. Quad-core CPUs are the most used at time of the survey, at 52.06%, while the next highest percentage is still the dual-core CPU, with 42.23%.
On the graphics cards side of the equation though, AMD seems to be in a pretty considerable losing streak when it comes to the Steam hardware survey. The red company has fallen from a 26.2% market share in January 2016 to a much lower 20.5% in June 2017; it seems Polaris' price-point and lower cost of entry for FreeSync did little to convince users to migrate to the red team. Perhaps the lack of a halo product doomed AMD from the start?
There are a total of 19 NVIDIA video cards taking up the top spots in the Steam hardware survey before the first AMD video card series - the HD 7700 - makes an appearance with its measly 1.21% market share. Of the top 19 NVIDIA graphics cards, the GTX 1060 takes the top spot, with 6.29% market. Other 1000 series graphics cards from NVIDIA in the top 19 spots include the GTX 1070 (5th place with 3.60%), the GTX 1050 Ti (6th, 2.80%), the GTX 1050 (13th place, 1.74%) and the GTX 1080 (14th, 1.73%).
Source:
Steam Hardware Survey
Windows 10 64-bit is the most used operating system, with 50.33% of the survey. That the second most used Windows OS is the steady, hallmark Windows 7 shouldn't come as a surprise, though it does have just 32.05% of the market now. OS X has a measly 2.95% of the grand total, while Linux comes in at an even lower 0.72%. While AMD processor submits may have increased in other software, it seems that at least in Steam, those numbers aren't reflected, since AMD's processor market share in the survey has decreased from 21.89% in February to just 19.01% as of June, even though the company's Ryzen line of CPUs has been selling like hotcakes. Quad-core CPUs are the most used at time of the survey, at 52.06%, while the next highest percentage is still the dual-core CPU, with 42.23%.
90 Comments on Steam Survey Update: It's All About Quad-cores, NVIDIA and Windows 10
Such a shame that AMD will always have to fight that uphill battle. Against both the competition and the mindset of people.
*Looks at sig*
Oh crap, i'm NORMAL
Maybe standing ovation...
Edit: ahhhh, never mind. That wouldn't explain hyperthreaded dual cores. They must be mixed in the 4 CPU.
They've never explained exact methods they use to get their results - is it random pickings who gets to survey each month?
It can't be everyone, since the survey doesn't pop up on hardware changes.
What about users who use more than one machine on same account?
Also, they still haven't cleared up obvious mistake that has been in their video cards survey for years.
No - "HD 8800 -series", which is one model sold for one year on prebuilt OEM-machines is not and has never been used more than HD 7800 -series, which includes several models sold for a year in prebuilt OEM-machines and several years on retail.
I'd guess they have a token somewhere that recognised an already surveyed system and they just auto-renew that so it stays in the stats, and systems that dont get refreshed (hardware changed, owner upgraded etc) get removed from the stats.
Afterward it redirects to the results and allows you to compare to the rest of the surveyed machines.
All the Steam Survey shows is that the most common denominator of performance level is what the most popular games are coded for, and this is nothing else but common sense, because that's where the greatest market potential is for a publisher.
Retrospective indeed. Steam Survey is a great way to see stagnation, you will never see progress here. In the same vein, this is also the reason we're still using quad cores for gaming; there is no argument to have more than that because games don't use it, and because nobody has any need to get more than 4 cores, there will not be many games that use it in the future either.
Another important omission from the Steam Survey is that big publishers have their own platform and nobody really likes using two layers of DRM. So Steam misses out on a vital part of the market, most notably the part where you are rewarded for having a faster system because the games can make use of it.