There have been some changes in critical categories since the last time we took a good look at the results (I know, they’re published every month, but we’re not obsessive compulsive enough to check in every four weeks). For starters, while Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 was the graphics card of choice in January, by May it’s the Radeon HD 4800. Nvidia still dominates the market overall, however, with 69% of users owning one of their cards.
Something that’s a little surprising is how fast the uptake of quad-core processors is, as 25% of Steam users are now packing one. I’ve got a dual core and find most games still can’t make use of two.
In other important bits, 41% of you have graphics cards ready for DirectX 11, Intel is the most popular chip provider by far, and only 61% of Steam’s userbase has their PC set to the English language. Considering how unfair the service’s pricing structure is for European customers, that’s more than a little shocking.
Steam Hardware Survey: May 2010 [Valve]
Mr Waffle
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 3:19 PMATi cards are gaining ground because the current generation get better results in benchmarks etc.
Unfortunately their drivers continue to be complete garbage and I absolutely regret “changing sides” from an 8800GTX to an HD5850. It took three updates before my random “giant cursor” and “full screen youtube crashes windows” stopped occurring, and Aliens vs Predator is still unplayable on DX10 or DX11…
OzHuski
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 3:25 PMYou might want to look into whats causing it on your end. 3 Friends of mine are using a 5870 and 1 is using a 5850.. None of them have had that issue nor have any of them had issues with AVP either.
Lots of people love to complain about there drivers but in the last 1.5 years I think ive only had 2 issues with drivers. One related to my HTPC just 2 months ago and one related to my gaming rig – which was fixed by a re-instal.
Fury
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 3:27 PMReally? I upgraded from a 8800GTS to the 5850 a while back and haven’t had a single issue.
Performance is great, much better than the 8800 was in it’s peak, cooling is better, better available connections, etc.
Never had a problem playing AvP on full graphics either.
Adam
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 4:43 PM“In other important bits, 41% of you have graphics cards ready for DirectX 11″ – No, they don’t. 41% of people with DX11 capable cards own a 5800 series card. The table is showing the most popular entry in the DX11 category.
The graph shows only 3.29% of users have DX11 systems.
Kray
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 5:26 PMKeyword being capable?
Blah
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 6:33 PMHuh? Adam got it spot on – 3.29% of Steam users have a DX11 card. 41% of that 3.29% are using a 5800 series card.
Stinky
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 6:16 PMAMD CPUs have a pretty good share, better than I thought. Good on them, “keeping the bastards honest!”
Thomas Ingram
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 6:25 PMWoo! The 5 GB and higher (-0.05%) 9.90% catagory!
(12G ram XD)
With two HD5870′s
ATI Crossfire (2 GPUs) (-0.02%) 0.10%
Okay, now I’m just bragging :/
Will Higgins
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 10:22 PMYes, yes you are. Jealouz.
How much would a machine like that cost?
Michael Barnes
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 7:48 PMSeems im getting behind… I better update to a 5800 stat!
Goraxium
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 9:10 PMThat first pic of the motherboard reminds me of something PS3s and 360s are lacking: something to hold the damn CPUs and GPUs in place.
Thomas Thongvilu
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 11:33 PMwow, look at ATI go!
metalisticpain
Friday, June 4, 2010 at 2:28 AMim a Quaddy, but im also still an 8800gt’er :)
akiba
Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 2:21 PMim sorry Luke Plunkett but if most of your games cannot make use of even two cores then you must be playing games which are 3+ years old on your pc. which is okay but if youre going to make a statement like that some people might think most new pc games do not make use of atleast 2 cores. im sure if you tried playing napoleon total war, crysis warhead or battlefield bad company 2 your pc would struggle unless you had the games running on very low settings