Valve’s software Steam is required for those who wants to play Half-Life 2 or Counter-strike and of the interesting function with this software is that it registers all users’ hardwaer configurations. In other words you can easily do a survey of all users: e.g. how many use AMD processors and how many use an Intel such. But there are considerably deeper comparisons than that, among others what video cards are most common and if the user has chosen to use more than one. Of the 370 000 users whose hardware has been reigstered with Steam 52.4% has NVIDIA based video cards while 41.41% are using ATI based cards. A win for NVIDIA, but its when you look at the multi-GPU solutions NVIDIA SLI and ATI Crossfire that we have a devastating difference.
2836 users are using systems with two video cards and of these 98.48% (!) are NVIDIA SLI based. Crossfire makes up 1.52% of all Multi-GPU systems. These are some interesting figures which in no way means that NVIDIA has a superior Multi-GPU solution, but what a head start can do. Crossfire was almost impossible to get a hold of when it was launched at the end of 2005 and it wasn’t really until two weeks ago when the RD580 chipset was launched that the technology really bloomed. ATI has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to Multi-GPU solutions.
Source: Steampowered
