Valve Releases Recent Hardware Survey Results

Freastro writes "Last week, Valve reset their on-going Hardware Survey in order to 'keep on top of what kind of hardware everyone out there is running.' Little has changed statistically since their first 200,000 responses, and it gives some interesting insight into what hardware and versions of Windows people are actually running. Their news article gives the following statistics and the full results can be found on their Valve Survey Summary page. According to the survey, 'Just over 1% of respondents can run a DX10 path for graphics. About 78% of you have microphones plugged in for voice communication. This will help you out a lot in TF2. A little under 5% of you have upgraded to Vista. Around 20% of your PCs are running multiple CPU cores."

A problem with statistics such as these

[MichailS]

is that you only see what people use NOW, not what they might want to use but does not work well.

I have sent E-mails to various websites over the years that only work with IE to complain about this fact, and received answers that "We focus on IE because according to our logs that is what people use". Well duh. I'd be surprised if you got any data at all on Mozilla then.

In this instance it would for example be folly to assume that DX10 is uninteresting since most people can only run DX9. It may well be the case that people are holding off both Vista and DX10 because Valve games don't use it - but the second they started implementing it on a broad scale people would buy 8800's by the dozen?

Re:DVD!

[default luser]

I'm continually surprised at how low-spec so many systems are in the Steam surveys.

Why are you surpsied? Many of these people only have Steam installed to play Counterstrike 1.6, whch is STILL more popular than CS:Source.

I originally played Half-Life on a Rendition 4MB v2200 graphics card, on a machine with 64MB ram. I originally played Counterstrike on a 16MB Matrox G400. Is it any wonder you can play CS 1.6 today on any old Intel GMA 900-series with geat framerates?

Also, you'd be suprised how smoothly CS:Source runs on a FX 5200 if you run it in DX7 or DX8 modes. Most serious CS:Source players play with all the details turned off anyway.

The one that's really stumped me over the years is how ATI lost their spot on-top in the Steam survey. The first Steam survey, fueled by the impressive price / performance ratio of the 9600 series and the Half-Life 2 voucher program, put ATI on-top. It took two years of ATI continually ignoring the midrange, but they finally lost that spot to Nvidia's 6600 series. ATI continued to ignore the midrange, allowing the 7600 to become entrenched, and only now are they producing enticing midrange products.

It's really amazing how accurate a picture this survey is of the PC 3D gaming industry.