Take the Steam Survey results with a grain of salt. It is flawed.

[przemoli]

Steam Survey also underreport OpenGL version...
As it only count Compatibility Profile (OGL 3.0 instead of 3.3 on my 5730M with r600g)

[Vassili]

Basically the Steam Survey is BS. Almost half of the Steam Community doesn't know what they are talking about.

It's just a typo, at max. Since only some people (like you) don't understand it for some reason, and the majority does. It's just clear enough, could be better, could be worse. Since this website and it numbers is just meant for fun, and not cancer research or something. It doesn't matter.

You might have I point if this was a really important research document, than they should be more clear. (But nothing more) Just because there is 1 typo, doesn't mean the research if flawed. You are overreacting.

[AkiraFactor]

Best post ever

The Steam Survey is seriously flawed.

Why?

There is a huge bust in it which I believe is an indication that those polled either lied or the Survey polling itself is seriously flawed.

Review the Steam Statistics page here: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Windows users account for 95.47% of the Steam Community of 100 million or so. And those Windows users range from Win 7 being the most common to XP being the least common O/S.

Yet when you go over to the Physical CPU usage page : http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

We find that the 4 CPU's are used by 43.52% of your users. This percentage would seem to correlate to Apple OSX and Windows users, however OSX users account for less than 5% of the Steam Community and that makes this 43% statistic suspect.

Actually this is impossible.

This is either a lie or someone is distorting the truth.

NONE of the Windows operating systems that are in use in the Steam Community will support more than 2 CPUs. Only Windows Server supports 4 cpus and that operating system is not in use in the community at least according to the statistics.

QUAD CPU's can not be used unless Windows Server is in use. And it is not.

This is not a small issue. It is huge. If folks don't know how many cpu's they use or what operating system that they use then how can they be relied upon to provide accurate information regarding system memory and AIB GPU usage etc., etc., etc?

Basically the Steam Survey is BS. Almost half of the Steam Community doesn't know what they are talking about.

The single greatest post I have read on here. I will be laughing for days.

[mwpow3ll]

What is becoming interesting about my post is how many folks are trying to interpret just what Steam may or may not have meant when they posted data for Physical CPU’s. That is the flaw in the data set.

A successful survey disambiguates data it doesn't obfuscate data.

A single Physical CPU may have a single core or it may have up to 18 cores at least now anyway.

A motherboard with a single Physical CPU has one socket. A motherboard with 2 or 4 Physical CPU’s has 2 or 4 sockets.

When folks cannot agree upon what the data describes than that is a problem.

What Steam may or may not have meant should not be a matter of interpretation.

Steam is not very clear regarding their survey and that is the reason for my post.

It is their data, they collected it, collated and published it, yet it is not entirely clear just what the data means.

On the one hand it would suggest that the quite a few folks in the community do not understand their hardware.

On the other hand it may also mean that Steam simply needs to give some additional thought about how they present their data.

First, the data is automatically read from the user's system via Steam without any interaction; therefore, it's not possible that the user base is skewing the results.

Second, it's a flaw in how Valve presents the data to the public. If Valve changed the label of the offending graph from 'physical CPU' to 'physical cores', the same data would still be used and therefore proves it's not a flaw in the data set.

Third, think about what you're arguing. Yes, technically you are right and Valve is wrong, but it was likely presented that way to bridge the gap between the common user for sake of posterity. Want another example of this? GNOME reports "Processor: Intel? Core™ i7-4900MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz ? 8" which would indicate that I have 8 i7s, but this isn't the case. There is some freedom being taken because when you get down to it, while there is a lot technically different between a CPU and a core, the end result to a normal user is essentially the same.

Fourth, If you are running a processor manufactured from either AMD or Intel that contains integrated video, you're running a single physical APU and not a physical CPU... but... who cares?

[rbmorse]

I suggest...

you write Steam a strong letter and demand they correct this most egregious error at once. You can emphasize your argument by stipulating you will refuse to make use of any service they may provide until they do so.