People probably look at this all the time, however I found it quite interesting, especially when you see all the media going on about 4k gaming, top end graphics cards and the like. I just got the infrequent "fancy submitting to the Steam hardware survey", and went through the link to the results.
Some highlights for me;
1) VR market penetration is <1% in the PC market. That explains an awful lot about lack of software! Be interesting to know what the PS4 VR penetration rates are...
2) Less than 1.5% of people have a 4K monitor/screen. This really surprised me, as there is a lot of noise around this, and how 4K gaming is becoming the norm. Again, this may be a place where consoles (especially the xBoneX) has moved ahead of the PC market. Even 1440p (often quoted as the performance gaming standard) has less than 5%, with the vast majority still on 1080p (it would be interesting to know defualt refresh rates as well, something else that gets more and more noise these days)
3) Clearly people are spending all their money on processors, as this is the only category where the upper ranges are more populated. I can also see 16Gb of RAM becoming the norm soon as well, though looking at the specs, even without a detailed breakdown I can see that the bottleneck on the average system is going to be the GPU
4) Fuck me there are a lot of GPU options out there. I had sort of assumed that 1080/1080Ti's may be the norm, with a reasonable uptake on RTX models due to all the noise, however that is clearly not the case. This may well explain why the resolutions haven't gone up.
I had sort of assumed that my gaming setup was somewhat underpowered, as it has a number of compromises (not least I'm running off an ultra-low power CPU, and my GPU is at the end of a metre long Thunderbolt cable), but turns out that isn't the case. I half get the feeling that all the bleeding edge top-end bits of kit are solely in the ownership of hardware reviewers, rather than in general usage...
Comments
Some interesting numbers there clear trends with most pc's running win 10 with an nvidia graphics (1060 being the most common) and an intel cpu with 4 cores.
The vr numbers are also interesting I'm surprised that the gap between rift and vive isn't a lot larger since the price difference is quite large given oculus repeatedly slashing prices. I guess since the overall market is small the price perhaps isn't the driving factor in choosing a headset. That's probabaly also borne out by the mixed reality sets which often were even cheaper than the rift (depending on the particular hmd) not having a very large slice of the pie.
It's always been the case that the mid range gpu's are where most of the market is at but it is interesting to see that it's the mid range of the previous generation that has the numbers perhaps the RTX range mid point card 2060 (I don't see it at all in the numbers) is not at the appropriate price point or doesn't offer anything over it's probably cheaper GTX series predecessor. I noticed that nvidia have added a 1060TI to their range in recent months so perhaps they are seeing those numbers too and released this slightly improved version to try and pull in some purchases.
The display res stuff is interesting you see some spikes at things like 1366 x 768 which is probably laptops the thin and lights 13" often hit around there. Most people being 1080p still is somewhat surprising, I've not bothered with the 4k thing myself yet my current setup would support it now I guess which was a factor earlier. The price of acceptable quality monitors has only recently started to come down (sure you could get something crap for low money but usually for the same price the 1080p or 1440p version was much higher refresh better colour reproduction and still cheaper) so I'm not completely surprised the uptake of 4k isn't as high but I would have thought 1440p would have been higher than it is.
I wonder with the consoles xboneX and PSpro4 the actual rates of 4k screens being attached to them as there are reasons to have the pro versions without 4k. I know 4k tvs dropped in prices a lot quicker than monitors something to do with the panel density in that a 40+ inch 4k tv lcd panel is easier to make than a 30 inch monitor lcd panel not counting the preference for higher refresh rates on the PC than the console equivalents.
As always the valve hardware survey is an interesting snapshot of the state of the market
That moment where your GFX card is in the Other bracket! Aggro's second hand GTX 780 Ti (which was top of the range in its day). Still works nicely, don't have much problem on most games at 1440p.
Like EMW, I'm not bothered by 4K just now; my 27" monitor is great at 1440p - although I usually change my mind when I see whatever Byrn has.
Thanks for posting, Pete! It was an interesting delve.