Polling and Graphics: Help Us Help You
by Derek Wilson on January 27, 2009 11:05 PM EST- Posted in
- Dell
Hello everyone. We often get asked questions like: what is the most popular x? how common is y? And sometimes we can guess from what we read on the forums or from general market trends. But nothing beats actually knowing what readers are thinking. So it's about time we asked.
We've brought back the ability to do polls. And polls we shall do.
This is more or less a test run to see how polling works out, but I'm hoping we can answer one really key question and also satisfy a curiosity today. The really important question has to do with display information, while the curiosity has to do with current opinions about graphics hardware.
By knowing what resolutions our reader's displays are capable of, we can help target our testing and articles to better accommodate the average reader. We can look more heavily at graphics solutions that satisfy the needs of more of our readers. We've been doing a lot of high end stuff lately (and we've got one more in the pipe), but we are ready to focus on the more mainstream and value segments and we would love to be able to taylor those articles a bit better.
Also, there are a lot of different monitor options with all the many widescreen and laptop panels. Just pick the one that's closest to yours out of this list. If you really want to be as accurate as possible, you could multiply out the resolutions and see which has the closest number of pixels. But just a close guess is fine too.
Well, there's really no sense in beating around the bush. It's a poll, it's not rocket science. Here it is:
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Zap - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
It is interesting to compare this with Valve statistics, basically what you would get versus what you have, though not 100% accurate since the demographics may just overlap a bit. With Valve stats, NVIDIA has the "currently using" lead. In this poll, ATI/AMD has the "next upgrade" lead.chizow - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
Its not surprising at all really, this site's readers have always historically favored ATI/AMD parts. Remember, this is the site that returned 100% favorable with regards to ATI driver quality with a 50/50 split for Nvidia. It also returned 100 votes for those who would purchase a 4870X2, 50 votes for GTX 280 and 50 votes for neither. Feedback is good, but any feedback from the reader's of this site are obviously going to be skewed.MrWho - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
I use my (old) CRT at the resolution of 1152x864 - and that option wasn't available. Am I the only one using it? (Chose 1024x768 since my monitor doesn't allow more than 1152 at 75hz of refresh rate).geokilla - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
This poll, dare I say, is bad. I have a 9600GT, and if I was to upgrade, I'd pick either the 9800GT, 9800GTX+, GTX260 Core 216, or the ATI 4830/4850/4870, based on the price and whether I could upgrade to a bigger resolution when I upgrade.I did vote however. I chose 1280X1024 resolution and NVIDIA GPU just cus it beats ATI in F@H. Come the real upgrade time, and my upgrade decision will be based on the above.
Crusty - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
So you've been slaving away trying to get these polls running instead of working on getting rid of Fusetalk. Back on task!!!Sunrise089 - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
My 24" CRT can support 2304x1440, I game at 1920x1200, and I run Vista at 1600x1000. Perhaps in the future the question could be "the primary gaming resolution" or "the maximum resolution" to make things a bit more clear.UNHchabo - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
I'm not sure any CRT user uses the max resolution, simply because the refresh rate would be hideous at that res. My last CRT could go way higher than my video card (video card max was 1600x1200), but I kept it at 1280x1024 so I could run at 75Hz refresh rate.I'd say you qualify for 1920x1200, since that's the highest res you ever use, and it's your gaming res.
cjcoats - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
I'm a Linux user, and that allows me to do some things that are "off the list." I am running a 10-way virtual-2560x2200 display on a physical-1920x1200 monitor. How should that be counted?piroroadkill - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
I have 4 physical monitors.Simply choose your largest physical monitor.
michaelheath - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
While the price/performance ratio for Nvidia's GPUs aren't exactly the best, by far they have the superior driver team. While I'd love to own an ATI 4800-series, I am currently steering clear until the driver team can fix the issue they're having with Left 4 Dead and properly rendering shadows:http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU4OSw4LC...">http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU4OSw4LC...
I play L4D a lot, and it would bug me to no end if I saw such graphical anomalies while playing, especially knowing that it doesn't happen on Nvidia cards.