And yet Intel's graphic card market share increased this year (63.4%), while AMD (19.7%) and NVidia (16.9%) both lost market share, in the desktop market.
Thanks to AKAK's recommendation we can look at actual GPU usage on monthly basis stats taken from Steam users. Which is probably as good a snapshot of PC gamers anywhere available on the net.
PC Video Card Usage By Manufacture
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurveyNVIDIA 52.2%
ATI 33.72%
INTEL 13.72%
As expected Intel is lowest by long margin and very small market share in gaming compared to Nvidia and ATI
OVERALL DISTRIBUTION OF CARDS
DirectX 11 GPU 58.33%
DirectX 10 GPU 35.87%
Direct X 9 Shader Model 2b and 3.0 GPUs 2.51%
Direct x9 Shader MOdel 2.0 GPU 1.49%
Direct x9 GPU and below 1.80%
Direct x8 (2000 - 2002)
Direct x9 (2002 - 2006)
DIrect x10 (2006 - 2009)
Direct x11 (2009 - current)
Majority of gamers have DX11 GPUs at 58% Majority age of GPUs in Gamers PC's is less than 4 years old and more likely to be less than 3 years old.
That is incredibly incorrect.
No it looks like your reference of overall graphics card usage is incredibly incorrect when looking at actual GPU's used by gamers. And since this is a game forum, probably more relevant than including large portion of graphic chips in laptops which are used for business and not gaming.
What?!? I said the exact opposite. My friends and I all use purpose built gaming computers. Even my 7.5 year old system was a purpose built gaming computer. I spent over $700 on just the CPU. The fact that I haven't been able to afford to replace it doesn't change the fact that it was a gaming PC.
You're the one claiming that gamers all use gaming PCs just like you (and I am guessing your friends) do, not me.
The statistics above show that average gaming PC is much higher spec (don't have time to go over other components only looked at GPUs) then you are trying to propose and equal to my expectation that average gaming PC is going to be 2-3 years old.
Since to keep up with current crop of games every couple years and to run them at high resolution and high detail you need to keep upgrading every 2-3 years, maybe every 4 if you don't mind turning down the graphics further.
Fact that you have a system which is almost 8 years old and that it cost $700 just for CPU is irrelevant, in it's day it was a gaming PC but that time has long gone and in computer terms it's prehistoric today.
Keep in mind my cell phone today has a quad core 1.6Ghz CPU and 2Gb Ram. Next years phones (if not already) will probably be 2.0ghz and 4Gb Ram.
I think in past posts, you've stated you installed a new high end DX11 graphics card, if that’s attached to a 7.5 year old system just going to create a big bottleneck.
Recently I built a sub $800 system for a friend and it can comfortable run F1 2012 at Ultra settings 60fps doesn't cost much today to build a medium level PC for current games and it will easily be able to play games at high-ultra settings for the next couple years.
But at the end of the day AH2 is still a pre 2005 game engine DX9 and with it's tiny niche player base who might have 8 year old + computers still gives them something to play if they turn down the graphics.
Would be interesting to know AH players average gaming computer spec. I would bet that it's considerably higher and more in line with the Steam statistics, since most players probably play other games and not just AH.
<S>...-Gixer
