Average Casual Games Machine

Based on Gfk's post about the lowest spec PC youve tested your games on:

http://www.blitzbasic.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=80074

(BTW, the oldest/lowest spec Ive got it an AMD 1800, with 1.5GB and a 6600GT - it use to be the main PC about 4/5 years ago)

What is the average casual games machine spec?

A myth?

"(BTW, the oldest/lowest spec Ive got it an AMD 1800, with 1.5GB and a >>6600GT<< - it use to be the main PC about 4/5 years ago)"

Wow...you are way off there. Sorry... you need to research the Intel Integrated boards and their overall installation base. As far as what might be close to "average" in 2-3 years, you may want to check out the low end systems available at Wal-Mart, etc, etc.

LOL... yeah I know!



Dont be sorry... Like I said it use to be the main PC in our home... actually I think that PC doesnt have the 6600GT, but the Geforce FX 5900XT...

Currently got 4 PCs:

Main: C2D E6600, 2GB, Geforce 8800GTS 512MB
2nd: P4 3Ghz, 2GB, Geforce 6600GT 256MB
3rd: AMD 1800, 1.5GB, Geforce FX5900XT
HTPC: Celeron E1200, 2GB, Intel GMA X3100

My current PCs are:
1. Compaq Presario C700, 1.4GHz Dual Core, 2GB RAM, 384MB Intel GMA X3100 graphics, Vista.
2. Athlon XP3000+ 2.2GHz, 1.5GB RAM, 256MB 7600GT, Vista.
3. Athlon XP2800 2GHz (I think), 512MB RAM, 128MB Radeon 9600, WinXP.
4. P3-733 MHz, 256MB RAM, 8MB Shared graphics, WinXP (soon to be 64MB GF4 graphics).

I reckon the 'average' PC, if such a thing exists, falls somewhere between #3 and #4.

The Valve Survey can give you an idea of what the majority of people are using as well as giving you an idea of where you can reasonably place a hardware-related cut-off point.

Whatever the other specs might be, it's pretty much guaranteed to have a craptacular onboard Intel video adapter.

I don't understand the unnecessary and outlandish hatred of Intel graphics adapters.

First, it is not 'pretty much guaranteed' to have an Intel video adapter. There might be a lot of them but that is far from being a guarantee. Second, they're currently really good for the purposes relating to this thread. Finally, this is a thread with a purpose - not another wanton opportunity to bash Microsoft/Intel/anything else you don't like, for no logical reason.

I would have thought with that survey, it would be more "hard-core" gamer answers...

I did read somewhere (cant remember where) that 50% of PCs use an Intel graphics adapter...

So for testing, I might rip out 1GB (to make it 512MB) and find an old graphics card and stick it in the AMD 1800...

Bah! I was hoping it was a machine that would churn out average casual games...

Email grey alien.

Perhaps in the early days of Steam, that'd be fairly accurate. But there's a hell of a lot (and ever increasing) number of casual games on Steam now.

I aim at 1GHz CPU with like XP and 256MB of RAM and a 32MB Video card. Also test it on an old laptop as their GPUs mostly stink. The end speed will depend on a) if you are making a CPU heavy game and/or b) if you are making a graphically intensive game. For example, maybe your CPU doesn't do much but you are using lots of big graphics - the GPU will be the bottleneck. Or maybe you have some really complex slow logic code so the CPU is the bottleneck. Or maybe you are making tons or particles, this consumes a lot of CPU power and also GPU Power (this is pretty much like my match-3 games).

If the user has Vista, in theory the CPU is better and so is the GPU (if they bought it new and didn't upgrade a crap machine), but there were some awfully cheap and nasty low RAM Vista PCs/Laptops floating around when Vista came out.

Have you actually looked at the steampowered survey? If some of those systems are considered "hard-core", then I'd say the average casual game machine is a C64. Maybe an Amiga 500 if you're going for that slightly high-end casual games market.

The Steam survey:

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Is nice and all, but it only reflects data for their specific user base. I'd like to see a similar survey from BigFishGames. That might prove more useful.

http://unity3d.com/webplayer/hwstats/
Reflects much more casual gamers than Steam's more high-end market.

Great stats to add to the mix thanks gosse.

Don't thank me, thank taumel, I just snipped it from http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=80024
[edit]
The biggest difference from Valve's stats and Unity that shows Valve's survey is much more high end:
In the Steam survey: The top 25% most common cards are either a GeForce 6600, 7600, 8600 or 8800. (The 8800 accounting for over 9%)
In the Unity stats: The top 25% most common cards are either a GeForce 6100, Radeon Xpress or Intel 945 or 845. (The 8800 account for 0.5%)
[/edit]

In the past i used an 800 Mhz duron w/intel 82815 as bottom end testing.
It doesnt have to run well but my stuff must be *useable* in lowest detail.

However, I am thinking of raising the bar/spec to 1Ghz + OpenGL accel. 3D functionality as my minimum. 1Ghz seems to be a standard speed for UMPCs.

I was just Speaking to Emmanuel Marty (BFG Europe) about this and he posted the same link on Indiegamer a while back and used it to work out specs for Azada 2!

Well, i posted it shortly after it officially was available. ;O)

So according to that, as a minimum you should be looking to cater for:

256MB RAM or higher
16MB graphics card or higher
XP or Vista
1024x768 and 1280x800 res at *least*

According to those stats nobody is using Win98 any more? That can't be right.

The also don't mention processor speed. The valve survey suggests that if you look at using a 1.4GHz CPU as minimum you'll still be getting over 98% of the market.

The Unity webplayer doesn't run on Win98.

Well keep in mind that people with 1.4Ghz are t3h h4rd-c0r3z! So maybe aim for about 700MHz just to be on the safe side?

Yeah I wish the survey had processor speed. One reason why you might still want 800x600 is that if someone tries to show a 1024x768 window on a 1024x768 screen they will have the bottom of the window cut off and there may be important info/buttons down there...

Having said that, my next game (after the current one) will be 1024x768 ... or maybe widescreen...

My framework supports 98/Me but BFG put XP on the min specs.

Plus don't forget Mac as Fairway sold a very good number on Mac, much more than the % of Mac users shown on those stats for sure.

ohhh.. 21st century stuff ;-) LOL!

Will BFG sell 1024x768 games? With Gunslinger, I gave them 2 versions 1024x768 and a 800x600... they only sold the 800x600.

Still might look out of a really bad PC (around the 1Ghz mark and with an intel gfx).... what about something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Pentium-III-1GHz-128MB-Ram-10GB-Hdd-CD-RW_W0QQitemZ310080151076QQihZ021QQcategoryZ111440QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Weird. Azada2 was 1024x768 and it's sold masses, so have some past games been (not theirs though, although I don't know if Amazon was 1024x768)