STEAM hardware survery discussion

Hardware and technical stuff
1

I don’t konw why, but every month I’m always excited to see this report. Probably just the nerdy stats junkie in me. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

I have a question I’m not sure anyone here can answer. In the processor speed breakdown, is that actual speed, or spec speed? With as much time as I’ve spent OC’ing to 4.3 GHz and knowing how easy it is to OC an i7 to wild numbers- I’m surprised to see the speed numbers so low across the board. If I had to guess if it was reported speed they’d expand the range to include value’s that go up to 5.0+ GHz. and a sizable chunk of the populace would be settled into the 3.7-3.8 GHz range as that’s so easy to attain on air and stock cooler no less.

2

Jeez, the damn 1024x768 and 1280x1024 numbers combined are still hovering near 30%. That’s pretty much all I look at when I see this.

I’d think spec speeds would show up, not OC’d speeds. Problem with reading a direct speed is that lots of processors don’t even run at full speed until you load up an intensive application (game).

3

I suspect that far, far fewer people are into overclocking than you think.

4

I’m still at 1280x1024 Pogo. I tried switching to a widescreen monitor for a while, but I still play older games that I didn’t like messing with to try to get them to the proper ratio. So I switched back. My 360 got the new widescreen monitor, and I’m going to continue using my 1280x1024 native LCD until it stops working. I actually love this monitor. The colors are so vivid, it’s a good size, and most modern games still support this aspect ratio, including Bioshock 2, which is the newest PC game I’ve played. I just see no reason to switch.

Plus, at this resolution, my ATI 5850HD card screams. Everything plays great at the highest settings.

5

Ditto, actually. I was just surprised.

6

Also, it’s Steam. Aren’t there still lots of cyber cafés with ancient PCs running Counterstrike?

8

The screen resolution thing is funny. Heh, even my laptop runs at a higher resolution (1680x1050) than the norm.

Anyway, it’ll be a sad day when Microsoft stop officially supporting Windows XP. That time should be coming up sometime soon (~3 years) won’t it?

9

Here’s a screengrab of the important parts. Somebody bump this thread in six months and we can compare.

Dual-core CPU = 2 physical processors.

11

Yup. PCs these days are fast enough that I don’t need a few extra FPS to justify even the slightest hint or worry of instability.

My new ASUS PC hard-locks once a week or so. No way I’m OCing it - and it even comes with built-in OCing software.

It’s unstable enough, thanks.

12

Wow that should not happen. Is it repeatable or just random? I would not be comfortable with a non-OC’ed system doing that. I only have issues when loading ~25 mods into ArmA2 and running a 500+ person battle.

13

Yes, there’s definitely something wrong. It’s very specific, too. First the sound will start stuttering, and then the frame rate will plummet. However, any in-game FPS meter will still report that the FPS is still 60+. Within 30-60s the system will hard lock, or, rarely, BSOD with a wacky stop code. If it BSOD’d, there will be an event in the event viewer complaining about CPU timings or something similar an esoteric. Software thermal monitors report everything is nominal on the CPU and GPU.

On the ASUS forums there are others with the exact same problem. ASUS came out with a new BIOS a few weeks ago, but it didn’t fix it. Not that they’ve actually acknowledged a problem.

It’s very intermittent, happens once every week or two weeks. And if it doesn’t happen within the first few minutes of booting up and launching a game, then I can be sure it’s not going to happen. And it’s never happened twice in a row.

14

Define “lots?” Unless there are 5-10 million cyber cafe PCs, the number of individual users probably relegates the cyber cafes to a rounding error at this point.

15

Can I ask which Asus mobo you’re using? If it’s similar enough to mine I might be able to offer some advice as I’ve spent weeks tweaking mine. You may have gone through everything and be done troubleshooting, but if not I’d be happy to help.

16

Just like to point out from steam stats that original counterstrike is still consistently the #2 or #3 most played game at any point in time (only consistently behind modern warfare, sometimes behind new counterstrike)

17

It’s my understanding that people in SE Asia mostly go to such cafes to play PC games, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were millions of them.

Thanks. So it seems to reasonable to assume that there are in fact millions of Counterstrike-only PCs out there, whether they are in public places or not.

18

On video/monitor, I’m solidly in the center of all those stats, 19" 1280X1024, 512MB ATI HD4850, DX10 capable.

CPU/RAM/OS I’m a little above - I have 4 GB and run Win7 64-bit as well as a 3GHz (stock) E8400 C2D. I bought this computer in Aug 2008, and I’ve had not problems with it nor any desire to upgrade. Well, not from any inadequacies with the computer itself, only from looking jealously at i5 and i7 specs. But it still runs everything perfectly for what I require.

19

I stayed at 1280x1024 until earlier this year and a loss of performance in games was my biggest reason. Having finally made the jump, I’ve been very pleased at how little I’ve lost going to a 1920x1080 widescreen. And while it took me a bit to get used to the widescreen, now I can’t see going back.