I'm developing a computer game for the PC. I'm looking for statistics
about computer users and their computer graphics capabilities.
Specifically:

1) I wish to know the statistical breakdown of computer users with
respect to their maximum computer screen size. For example, I'm
looking for figures like:

20% of computer users have a monitor with maximum screen dimensions of
640x480 pixels.
45% have maximum screen dimensions of 800x600 pixels.
23% have maximum screen dimensions of 1024x768 pixels.

The data for dimensions 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 will suffice for
this research.


2) I am also looking for percentages on users' video card's maximum
color depth (e.g. 16bpp, 24bpp, 32bpp etc)

3) Percentages of users with 1MB, 2MB, 4MB, or 8MB and above on-card
memory.

The reason I'm trying to get these figures is because I want to target
my game towards as wide an audience as possible without sacrificing
too much graphical quality. If it helps, the game I'm developing is a
2D tile-based puzzler, so there won't be any vertex or index buffers
loaded into the card. There will be quite a lot of texture data,
however, so I'm a bit concerned about the memory issue. Any other
information that you feel might be relevant would be appreciated.

Thank you for your go ahead. I'm sorry that I couldn't find the last
part of your question. My original comment follows below:

Hello, 
 
Jupitermedia, a leader in market research, uses counters on more than
1 million of their customers' websites to generate monthly global
statistics to see where the industry is moving in terms of computer
specifications.
 
From their latest report from December 2002 (linked below) taken from
over 331,874,742 unique visitors, I found these statistics:
 
Resolution breakdown: 
 
Resolution # of users (%) 
800x600 140148392 (47%) 
1024x768 117654290 (39%) 
1280x1024 14266949 (4%) 
1152x864 9483743 (3%) 
640x480 7517441 (2%) 
Unknown 3704209 (1%) 
1600x1200 2467850 (0%) 
 
Color depth: 
 
65K (16bit) 130887573 (44%) 
(32bit) 126678585 (42%) 
16M (24bit) 27836276 (9%) 
256 (8bit) 9123181 (3%) 
Unknown 615064 (0%) 
16 (4bit) 102195 (0%) 
 
 
Search Strategy: 
 
"screen resolution" statistics on google: 
://www.google.com/search?q=%22screen+resolution%22+statistics 
 
 
Additional Links: 
 
December's report: 
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/December/index.php 
 
December's resolution report: 
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/December/res.php 
 
December's color depth report: 
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/December/colors.php 
 
 
As for the last part of your question, I haven't been able to find
these statistics. Please let me know if the above is sufficient
though, and helps you on your way, I'll post this as an answer. The
last part of your question gets quite complicated due to onboard video
cards, as well as AGP video cards not needed so much on-board video
because they can always draw system memory for graphics memory as
needed. Just as a note though, running 800x600x16bit requires at least
a 4mb or 8mb video card, and you're hard-pressed to find a computer
manufactured with the past two years with a video card with less than
16mb of onboard video.
 
skermit-ga

Hello,

Jupitermedia, a leader in market research, uses counters on more than
1 million of their customers' websites to generate monthly global
statistics to see where the industry is moving in terms of computer
specifications.

From their latest report from December 2002 (linked below) taken from
over 331,874,742 unique visitors, I found these statistics:

Resolution breakdown:

Resolution # of users (%)
800x600 140148392 (47%)
1024x768 117654290 (39%)
1280x1024 14266949 (4%)
1152x864 9483743 (3%)
640x480 7517441 (2%)
Unknown 3704209 (1%)
1600x1200 2467850 (0%)

Color depth:

65K (16bit) 130887573 (44%)
(32bit) 126678585 (42%)
16M (24bit) 27836276 (9%)
256 (8bit) 9123181 (3%)
Unknown 615064 (0%)
16 (4bit) 102195 (0%)


Search Strategy:

"screen resolution" statistics on google:
://www.google.com/search?q=%22screen+resolution%22+statistics


Additional Links:

December's report:
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/December/index.php

December's resolution report:
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/December/res.php

December's color depth report:
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/December/colors.php


As for the last part of your question, I haven't been able to find
these statistics. Please let me know if the above is sufficient
though, and helps you on your way, I'll post this as an answer. The
last part of your question gets quite complicated due to onboard video
cards, as well as AGP video cards not needed so much on-board video
because they can always draw system memory for graphics memory as
needed. Just as a note though, running 800x600x16bit requires at least
a 4mb or 8mb video card, and you're hard-pressed to find a computer
manufactured with the past two years with a video card with less than
16mb of onboard video.

skermit-ga

Just another note, these aren't "maximum" resolutions/depths, just preferred.

skermit-ga

Hello Silentsalamander,

It may be true that a 16 Meg (or larger) graphics card may be found on
most new computers, please remember that many users will have 8 Meg or
less. I can tell you from personal experience, that a game program
with a hard limit -especially if it crashes the system (instead of
refusing to run or running at less resolution) is not one that will be
received well by users.

Since you mention the use of textures, you may wish to allow the user
to run without textures or at reduced resolutions to still be able to
play the game, even with a less capable card. I also suggest looking
at reported problems on display cards and drivers - I recently
answered a question about OpenGL on Windows and the problems I found
were far more than I expected.
  https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=155383

  --Maniac

Your comment will suffice as the answer. Please go ahead and claim your fee.

The previous comment was directed towards skermit-ga