the latest poll on the gamedev newsletter:

Q: What shader model does your video card support?

None------------------24----|||----------------------------------2.33%
SM 1.0----------------15----||-----------------------------------1.46%
SM 2.0----------------115---|||||||||||||------------------------11.1%
SM 3.0----------------336---||||||||||||||||||||||||||||---------32.7%
SM 4.0----------------377---|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||----36.7%
I've got no idea...---160---|||||||||||||||----------------------15.5%

Total Votes: 1027

as you can see most have 3.0 or higher, and almost none have 1.0 or less, so i dont understand why people keep saying we should design games not have shaders, and not be optimised for around shader 2.0 generation or higher cards.

because geamedev is a relatively small community (1024 votes...) and not representative.

valve's hardware survey is much more interesting,
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
even though that's only the steam community. i expect the percentage on fx5200 and intel x3100/iGMA chips to be much higher.

top 10 of used video cards:

How is a gamer defined for each survey?
Is there a generally accepted definition for term gamer?
If so, how many surveys used it?
Was the survey limited to a certain group of gamers?
(representative ref -> broozar)
What group performed the survey?
If the actual root group for the survey can be determined (a big if, maybe), are there any motivating factors or interests which might affect the results?
(NVIDIA did not perform that survey.)
assumption: As a party taking a stance on the matter, do you have any conflicting interests, or is truth and debate settling / sparking your only aim?
To what degree do surveys across domains conflict?
What do surveys for users of the 3D Gamestudio product and the forums of that product suggest about user made products, target demographics and gamers as defined, if consistently / typically defined?
Is there a generally accepted definition for 3DGS user?
If so, and / or not so, why is that conveniently irrelevant?

Never mind.
I am convinced.
(Although, some machines here are not used by gamers per se, and those machines have cards which support shader model 3+, and those cards are not listed strongly with good frequency.)
Well done.
The point is well-received.
Thank you.

this survey counts me and othe geforce 9 series users as (and many others) "other".

... that only prooves that a gf9, despite common belief here at the forum, is much less commonly used than the intel GMA chips, the exotic via/s3 unichrome chip or the old GF4.

OMG... I had NO idea we were all the way up to 4.0!!!! :P

While both survey pretty much give us a "d'uh" result (gamers have gear... wow... really?), I trust Valve's card reference more than Gamedev's shader reference merely based on my own ignorance. I know exactly which card I have but honestly, not a clue on which shaders it supports. The way I find our shader support has always been the same: buy game, install game, see how pretty it looks, and if it doesn't "look", Upgrade!

I suspect that the hardcore gamers (about 20% of the market) ARE the ones that will know exactly when 4.1 comes out and in some sense are represented by the gamedev data. The other 80% (casual and softcore) are likely represented by the valve data as they know their hardware better than their shader version.

I still think this is a "d'uh" result, but thanks for sharing!

"I still think this is a "d'uh" result, but thanks for sharing!"

you'd think, but apparently not to a lot of people on this forum. I remember lots of arguments over that very subject.

I have an easier way to find out... *googles*, 3.0! Usually the shader model is in the minimum requirements of the game.

The polls from Steam prove it again and again. Hardcore gamers have the latest graphic cards. They have better hardware than most of you developers.

But if you don't want to address hardcore but casual gamers then it can look a bit different. I don't know of any poll asking the usual pc owner about this. And this poll would not work anyway. My parents cannot tell you what hardware they have except they look into the invoice and spell it from that paper

But if my parents buy a new pc then it will have one of the latest graphic cards (but probably not an expensive version of it). You cannot buy something with shader 1.0 in Germany

yeah in america if you buy something new its almost impossible to get something under 2.0, and its difficult to find something under 3.0 since even cheap $300-$400 pcs come with integrated nvidia 6100 or 6150 cards.