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

[rav55]

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.

[droste]

Or they simply count physical CPU cores and everyone with an Intel i5 or i7 has at least 4 of them...

[rav55]

Or they simply count physical CPU cores and everyone with an Intel i5 or i7 has at least 4 of them...

The data collected is for "Physical CPU's". NOT "Physical CPU Cores".

Again the issue is about folks having the knowledge to report accurately what their hardware is. Or perhaps it's revelation regarding reading comprehension.

[Melcar]

Doesn't Steam Survey just send back whatever your system reports anyway? No actual user interaction there, other than accepting to take the survey. Never really paid attention to the survey's results anyway.

[asdfblah]

It seems to me that the definition of "Physical CPU" used by Valve is different than that used in the Windows license... they probably made a mistake early and don't know how to change. IMO, a multi-core cpu has multiple CPUs, so I agree with Valve here...
Anyway, how is this relevant w.r.t the other data?

[droste]

The data collected is for "Physical CPU's". NOT "Physical CPU Cores".

Again the issue is about folks having the knowledge to report accurately what their hardware is. Or perhaps it's revelation regarding reading comprehension.

I really hope you make of fun of us right now. It *obviously* counts cores...

This is what steam says about my Intel i5 processor right now:
4 logical processors
4 physical processors

You can check yourself in steam:
Help -> System Information

/edit:
Oh and if you think you have to select what hardware you have in that survey you are wrong! This is gathered by steam and you simply click "Yes" or "No" when it asks you to participate.

[rav55]

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.

[droste]

You said yourself that it's impossible that 43% have 4 socket mainboards filled with CPU and I agree with you.

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.

I would go even further and say that almost no gamer has a mainboard with 2 sockets! So it's not really a matter of interpretation and pretty clear that it shows CPU cores.

This of course could be made clearer and there are probably more things that are not clear on the first look, but I would not go that far and say the data shown there is seriously flawed.

[erendorn]

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.

Lol such nonsense. "Physical CPU" is used by opposition to logical CPU, ie hyper threading. It's obviously counting core, that's clear to anybody (well, almost anybody, apparently).
Folks don' t have to know how many CPUs they use, their system itself reports that.

[rice_nine]

<snip>
This is gathered by steam and you simply click "Yes" or "No" when it asks you to participate.

This.