General Computer Speed Survey

[ZacharyB]

Hey, is there a way to find out the average joe's computer processing speed? Some kind of survey or statistics. I'm not sure what to plug into a search engine.

I'm making a game, and I want to know if most people will be able to play it at 60fps. Does everyone have gigahertz-class processors now?

[Udderdude]

You shouldn't have any problem as long as it doesn't use 3D acceleration. That's still a bit iffy for your average PC user.

[Ed Oscuro]

It might not exactly be your target demographic (more so if it's a "casual game" of course), but:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

[Ex-Cyber]

It might not exactly be your target demographic (more so if it's a "casual game" of course), but:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Just to give an idea of how distorted that survey is compared to the general market, it has Intel GPUs at 3.61%, while Intel is generally estimated to ship more GPUs than AMD and Nvidia combined. Intel graphics are by far the most common on laptops.

Also, you might want to consider netbooks (Atom+PowerVR and Atom+GMA900 being common configurations) if it's technically feasible at all.

[Udderdude]

Should add that Intel integrated graphics are absolutely terrible for 3d. Don't even bother targeting it. You'll end up with something that looks like a PS1 and still runs like crap.

[BryanM]

You shouldn't have any problem as long as it doesn't use 3D acceleration. That's still a bit iffy for your average PC user.

The laws of physics still have to be respected. Attempting to draw ~3000 images per frame can bog down any system a bit - especially with monitors that run at 85+ fps.

Good times.

[PainAmplifier]

It might not exactly be your target demographic (more so if it's a "casual game" of course), but:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Just to give an idea of how distorted that survey is compared to the general market, it has Intel GPUs at 3.61%, while Intel is generally estimated to ship more GPUs than AMD and Nvidia combined. Intel graphics are by far the most common on laptops.

Also, you might want to consider netbooks (Atom+PowerVR and Atom+GMA900 being common configurations) if it's technically feasible at all.

Distorted? NO.
Targeted, YES.

The Steam reports are about *gamers*. Although perhaps more specifically, those that are dedicated PC gamers. Thus to even show on this list a person has to be a Steam user to begin with. Your average 'casual' PC gamer who just plays a bit of Pop-cap style casual games, Sims or an adventure game doesn't really show up on this list. Oh, certainly those who bought a Valve/Steam game will show up, but their that 3.6% minority that you see.

Plus, Intel's bread and butter, the corporate business market doesn't show up on that list either. No, the Steam reports are a indicator of what a pretty decent portion of the 'core' PC gamers are using. Casual and business users just don't show up here at all. And for the most part, they shouldn't.

When it comes to the huge business market, where companies like Dell and HP lock down massive corporate markets with big Intel contracts, where Intel can throw their Monopoly influence around and 3D performance is NOT an issue those PC's will never show up on this list. Even if they constitute a huge portion of the actual total PC market. Much less the market for discrete 3D card sales.

[Udderdude]

You shouldn't have any problem as long as it doesn't use 3D acceleration. That's still a bit iffy for your average PC user.

The laws of physics still have to be respected. Attempting to draw ~3000 images per frame can bog down any system a bit - especially with monitors that run at 85+ fps.

Good times.

If you're talking about ~3000 bullets, they tend to be small and easy to render. Also, 3000 bullets is overkill to the extreme (XOP Black's most ridiculous patterns don't even use more than 2000)

[Ex-Cyber]

The Steam reports are about *gamers*. Although perhaps more specifically, those that are dedicated PC gamers. Thus to even show on this list a person has to be a Steam user to begin with. Your average 'casual' PC gamer who just plays a bit of Pop-cap style casual games, Sims or an adventure game doesn't really show up on this list. Oh, certainly those who bought a Valve/Steam game will show up, but their that 3.6% minority that you see.

The OP specifically asked about "average joe", not "dedicated PC gamers", which is why I thought it was worthwhile to point out the discrepancy. It wouldn't be that important if the Steam survey lined up well with the PC market in general, but it doesn't even come close.

[PainAmplifier]

The Steam reports are about *gamers*. Although perhaps more specifically, those that are dedicated PC gamers. Thus to even show on this list a person has to be a Steam user to begin with. Your average 'casual' PC gamer who just plays a bit of Pop-cap style casual games, Sims or an adventure game doesn't really show up on this list. Oh, certainly those who bought a Valve/Steam game will show up, but their that 3.6% minority that you see.

The OP specifically asked about "average joe", not "dedicated PC gamers", which is why I thought it was worthwhile to point out the discrepancy. It wouldn't be that important if the Steam survey lined up well with the PC market in general, but it doesn't even come close.

It's an entirely relevant description. As for the most part, 'Average Joe' *doesn't* play games on the PC. They have a console to game on. Ever since PC publishers started chasing the console market, any push for the 'average' gamer on a PC got sidelined or canned entirely. Just take EPIC for example and the direction the Unreal franchise took. Gears of War and the console focus pretty much shows how badly the PC has been abandoned by (what is now) mainstream gaming.

What's left on the PC is pretty much MMO players and Sims/Casual players, apart from the more hardcore 'enthusiast'. (Who probably has a console or two anyway.)

And if the OP is asking about framerate, it's probably not a game for the casual people. Which pretty much leaves stuff for the enthusiast or (higher end) MMO players. Thus the market represented by the Steam numbers IS pretty much exactly the information that the OP appears to be asking about. If the OP said what type of game it was, there would be more information to go with. But from what was posted, this isn't a bad place to start.

You can also get a rough idea where people's PC's are just by looking at where hardware has been/gone the last 5 years. AGP and EIDE have been pretty much replaced by SATA and PCI-E. For the CPU, dual core and 64 bit has been the minimum for a couple of years now at least. Even on the 'low' end. And that includes laptops. Sub-laptops are in a category of their own, and it's better to think of them as a seperate platform (like the iPhone and other mobile games) and not like the low end of PC's.

As far as graphics goes, you either have ATI or Nvidia of which DX 9.0 is the minimum. And then you have integrated Intel Graphics which doesn't do anything well at all. And anyone using it is not even an 'average' PC gamer in any way shape or form.

I'm not sure if Blizzard puts their hardware specs online, but if you want an even wider report of what hardware is out there that would be the place to find it. WOW and Battle.net pretty much covers just about everyone else still gaming on the PC who hasn't replaced their 7+ year old PC already, or can't disable their Intel Graphics and put an old, cheap $50 (or less!) ATI/NVidia card in there.

[TodayIsForgotten]

The Steam reports are about *gamers*. Although perhaps more specifically, those that are dedicated PC gamers. Thus to even show on this list a person has to be a Steam user to begin with. Your average 'casual' PC gamer who just plays a bit of Pop-cap style casual games, Sims or an adventure game doesn't really show up on this list. Oh, certainly those who bought a Valve/Steam game will show up, but their that 3.6% minority that you see.

The OP specifically asked about "average joe", not "dedicated PC gamers", which is why I thought it was worthwhile to point out the discrepancy. It wouldn't be that important if the Steam survey lined up well with the PC market in general, but it doesn't even come close.

It's an entirely relevant description. As for the most part, 'Average Joe' *doesn't* play games on the PC. They have a console to game on. Ever since PC publishers started chasing the console market, any push for the 'average' gamer on a PC got sidelined or canned entirely. Just take EPIC for example and the direction the Unreal franchise took. Gears of War and the console focus pretty much shows how badly the PC has been abandoned by (what is now) mainstream gaming.

What's left on the PC is pretty much MMO players and Sims/Casual players, apart from the more hardcore 'enthusiast'. (Who probably has a console or two anyway.)

And if the OP is asking about framerate, it's probably not a game for the casual people. Which pretty much leaves stuff for the enthusiast or (higher end) MMO players. Thus the market represented by the Steam numbers IS pretty much exactly the information that the OP appears to be asking about. If the OP said what type of game it was, there would be more information to go with. But from what was posted, this isn't a bad place to start.

I'm going to disagree with some of this. There are quite a few sites like pogo or king.com or yahoo games etc that have many casual players playing games. You have things like reflexive arcade and that one site that you pay to play that slips my mind.

With games like deadspace, bioshock 2, mass effect 2, COD on the pc i'm not really sure how you can say whats left of PC. There are still quite a few people who use the PC to play games and its not just the hardest of the hard.

To your defense i do agree that the shift has gone to console, but in no way is PC dead.

[EPS21]

Hey, is there a way to find out the average joe's computer processing speed? Some kind of survey or statistics. I'm not sure what to plug into a search engine.

I'm making a game, and I want to know if most people will be able to play it at 60fps. Does everyone have gigahertz-class processors now?

Hey OP I think its safe to assume most everyone should have at least a pentium4/athlonXP class processor, most of which run beyond 2GHz. These chips are a few generations behind and probably offloaded as extra PC's for parents children, cheap pc's just to surf the net, etc. With all the bloat in todays OS' and browsers, someones who's not technically savvy will have trouble tolerating running a P3 machine or lower just to surf the web, especially with flash involved.

If your game is just CPU intensive, imo you have nothing to worry about. The much bigger problem is if it'll be reliant on discrete graphics, since the divide in performance between integrated and a dedicated video card is huge.

[Ed Oscuro]

The laws of physics still have to be respected. Attempting to draw ~3000 images per frame can bog down any system a bit - especially with monitors that run at 85+ fps.

Where did all this come from? 3000 bullets? Is that from a thread in Development?

Laws of physics, lol.

And of course lots of games lock the framerate.

Saying that anybody with an Intel integrated graphics chipset is going to be interested in buying a game (if that's the question) is a bit uncertain since they aren't even putting the widely-regarded minimum of a discrete card into their system. Some of the newer Intel cards aren't quite as bad as Udder says (I'd put some of their chipsets at maybe a bit better than PS2 quality, lol) but in any case people have heard that none of them are good for gaming.

It also must be considered that not everybody who uses Steam is playing FPSes. There are many so-called casual and puzzle games on the system. We don't have a breakdown of game type there, though, so we don't know if the FPS-loving or puzzle-loving demographics (to simplify) are going to be interested in your game.

Consoles were mentioned, but there's still some large challenges getting published there, like being locked into a single system and having to compete with crap flooding the market in addition to additional costs over self-distributing on PC.

[BryanM]

If you're talking about ~3000 bullets, they tend to be small and easy to render.

Laws of physics, lol.

Nah seriously guys! Simple things can add up. And fancy smanchy effects and layering and such make it stack up much faster - Avernum 6 of all things requires a GPU for example.

As for the ~3000 number, that's something you'd approach the neighborhood of in a platformer with tiny tiles plastered on a 1600x1200 screen, with dozens and dozens of guys shooting at you, all with some elaborate tripping out background. Not everything is going to be boring like a Megaman game where the most you'll be threatened with is four floating drunken garbage cans.

Oh, and I uh... recently added a check on a thing I've been working off and no with that'll check if something is actually on the screen before trying to blt it. A level before this which was around like 120-200 screens long consumed all my giggahertzzzz.

[ZacharyB]

Just want to say, thanks for your replies. Seems like I'll be OK.