AMD says Valve is underestimating its success in the Steam Hardware Survey
AMD's hardware – especially its processors – seem to be on a roll, but every month the Steam Hardware Survey, which publishes data on the type of hardware PC gamers using Steam are running, suggests AMD is failing to catch up with Intel and Nvidia – and AMD thinks it knows why.
In a recent interview for Hot Hardware, AMD's Scott Herkelman suggests that a bug introduced in August 2017 caused AMD systems be underestimated – and he suggests the problem is still affecting results.
The error involves Steam counting every individual login at internet cafes (which are particularly popular in Asian countries) as separate PC configurations. So, if 10 people log into Steam on a single Intel-powered PC at an internet café – and opts in to the Steam Hardware Survey – then the survey will count it as 10 separate machines.
With AMD hardware not as widely used in internet cafes, Herkelman claims that this has resulted in AMD's hardware popularity being under represented compared to its competitors. This could explain why AMD seems to be doing so well recently – especially with its processor – yet recent Steam Hardware Surveys don't show a corresponding growth in AMD adoption.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday July 28 2019, @06:43PM (2 children)
Lots of articles and comments have been written using these stats. Now there will be more skepticism going forward.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/01/03/2153221 [soylentnews.org]
https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/aytybf/steam_hardware_software_survey_february_2019/ [reddit.com]
https://uploadvr.com/steam-vr-survey-june-2019-rift-vive/ [uploadvr.com]
https://www.techradar.com/news/latest-steam-hardware-survey-is-good-news-for-microsoft-intel-and-nvidia-bad-news-for-amd [techradar.com]
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https://hexus.net/tech/news/software/133094-amd-says-steam-hardware-survey-miscounts-processor-data/ [hexus.net]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Monday July 29 2019, @03:20AM (1 child)
Yep, Steam hardware surveys have always been quite bad. It still seems to count Wine users as Windows users - unless the user is using Proton. This is despite the fact that it can detect the user is running Wine without issue.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 29 2019, @04:41PM
Wow, that doesn't give me much faith in their statistics.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"