How many cores does your CPU have??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

According to the latest Steam Hardware survey around 35% of Steam users have a CPU with 4 cores and more:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

It would be interesting to see what the core count of the most powerful PC a Hexus user has!

[nibbler]

Lets hope 1stRaven doesn't see this thread, could be a long story...

So if 35% of users have a quad core then presumably most of the rest have a dual core as tri cores and hex cores are nowhere near as common. That's an impressive count however, and I'd be interested to know what proportion of those quad cores are Q8200s
Edit: Interestingly only 33% have punkbuster

[Rob_B]

That seems awfully high doesn't it? ...or are people with better systems more likely to respond to the survey?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Lets hope 1stRaven doesn't see this thread, could be a long story...

Why??

So if 35% of users have a quad core then presumably most of the rest have a dual core as tri cores and hex cores are nowhere near as common. That's an impressive count however, and I'd be interested to know what proportion of those quad cores are Q8200s

Most of the CPUs seem to be under 3GHZ too:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/

[Fuzzed_out]

Interesting to see who wins, what does a triple core that has been unlocked to quad count as?

[nibbler]

Why??

He runs work servers and has many many many cores folding for team hexus, so total cores he'd have upwards of 50 if that counts

Interesting to see who wins, what does a triple core that has been unlocked to quad count as?

4 cores?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That seems awfully high doesn't it? ...or are people with better systems more likely to respond to the survey?

There are quite a lot of lower end quad cores now available. Even cheaper systems nowadays can have a Q8000 series or Athlon II X4 processor.

A lot of the processors seem at 3GHZ and under too.

[nibbler]

The thing is that although my pc is only a reasonable specification compares to the pcs on hexus, it's probably one of the most powerful desktop pcs [Clarksonvoice]in the world[/Clarksonvoice] in that compared to all the crap in the world it must be in the upper tenth of a percentile. That makes me feel good

[aidanjt]

Steam would probably think I have 8, but I have a lowly 4.

[Singh400]

4, no HT.

[dirky]

Just upgrade a few months ago so am sporting a hex am3

[kalniel]

This question will get quite hard to answer when bulldozer arrives!

[Saracen]

Currently, I could tick several of those options. On the assumption that the poll wants the most powerful one, Quad, no HT.

[Rob_B]

I'm still supriesed its that high considering the sort of 'average' desktop PC & the recent announcement that Intel made their money mainly from Atoms & Core 2s.

I'm amazed triple core is so low, I know there aren't many but it's a tiny percentage! I'm special

[Saracen]

I'm still supriesed its that high considering the sort of 'average' desktop PC & the recent announcement that Intel made their money mainly from Atoms & Core 2s.

I'm not. It's a sampling issue.

If you survey a gaming site like Steam, or hardware site like ours, you are almost inevitably going to see results that indicate a bias towards the high end. It's not surprising when you consider that for that type of user, hardware spec is a priority. In fact, it may be a hobby or even an obsession.

You'll get much the same bias in results if you asked on these types of sites about users with an SSD, and then asked again in the wider world. Except that in the wider world, they may well ask what the hell an SSD is.

I remember a story told by my old university stats professor about an election survey done in the USA in, if I remember correctly, the 1950s. It was decided to do a telephone poll of voters, and the poll results indicated a landslide Republican majority yet the actual election yielded a substantial Democrat win.

In a post-election analysis of the polling results, it was observed that by doing a poll by telephone, you preselected a bias into your sample of those that could actually afford to have a telephone. In that part of the United States, at that point in history, having a telephone meant you were affluent and being affluent meant you are very likely to be Republican. It's a bit like conducting a poll in the 1940s UK and sampling only car owners, or perhaps sampling 18th-century UK country estate owners. Or even sampling 21st century UK citizens, but only bankers with a City pad and a second home in a leafy Surrey stock broker belt suburb.

The very first rule in any form of polling is to be very careful on the criteria you use to select your sample, precisely to avoid building in a bias. By sampling those visiting a site like steam or HEXUS, I would argue you do precisely build in a bias.

[razer121]

core i5 here