Valve Hardware & Software Survey

[frag.machine]

I guess this may be useful for us programmers:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Some interesting stuff, like the steady adoption of Windows 7 (in part due to Vista cannibalization) and the good amount of DX10/DX11 capable hardware.

[Baker]

I wish there was a desktop versus notebook stat, of course there isn't any way I know of how that infos would even be collectable. Still, I'm a bit curious as it seems that desktops are becoming increasingly uncommon.

I also would be curious of physical mouse versus no physical mouse game playing. I'm curious of the % of game players that play games using a notebook touchpad or just plain keyboard it. The impact is obviously that flatter more 2D worlds are easier for keyboarding, consoles and touchpad using laptop players.

Some interesting stats I see.

1. FireFox on 63% of machines. Cool.
2. Microsoft Office on 67%; Open Office on 14%
3. WinRar on 45% !! 7-Zip on 17.9% (kind of surprising to me considering the clumsy UI)
4. uTorrent on 29%.
5. Fraps on 13.9% --- the YouTube age in action
6. GIMP on 6% ... if only the UI didn't suck

Although those stats are good stats, I think 2 points of analysis have to be taken in context.

I bet the average Steam user is far more likely to be using a desktop, far more likely to have higher end (and newer) equipment and far more likely to be very computer literate and no doubt excludes a hella number of "business" computer with games that happen to be installed on them. Case in point, those Intel Integrated Media controllers cannot be anywhere near 6% of the general population (btw ... the latest ones are vastly improved over just a couple of years ago). Those stats can't even be casual gamer normal. You know that despite the increase of popularity of, say, FireFox that it isn't on 63% of the general population's computers.

[Downsider]

Silverlight is that common? Does it come preinstalled on Windows 7 or something?

[mh]

Intel integrateds are actually going to be substantially higher than 6%; I'd guess they're easily at over 50% market penetration. The main reason why is business PCs - outside of specialist areas (CAD/etc) these more or less ubiquitously ship with Intels. Other reasons why are laptops, particularly at the low/mid end, and home "multimedia" PCs; the type that you used to find with a Celeron in years ago, that are mainly used for media center duties.

WinRar on 45% is surprising to me too.

7-Zip not so surprising; the right-click context menu in 7-Zip is all the UI that a lot of people ever need see, and it's ability to open just about any kind of archive you care to mention with two clicks makes it an ideal tool. I reckon that substantially more people need to decompress archives than need to compress them.

It's good to see the DX 10/11 hardware base creeping up, but there's still a shocking enough amount of people who aren't even up to DX 9 level. It would be interesting to see stats for a more conservative community like Quake's, where even the baseline hardware for running something like Doom 3 is even today viewed as "high end" by some.

Even better to see that versions of Windows pre-XP are dead.

[Baker]

Silverlight is that common? Does it come preinstalled on Windows 7 or something?

One word: Netflix

There is even Silverlight for OS X and you have to have it for Netflix on both Windows and OS X. Netflix is available for PS3 and set-top boxes as well, but AFAIK those don't use Silverlight or maybe they do somehow (either way immaterial for the purpose of a Steam thread, but in the US, Netflix unlimited movie streaming for $9 per month is very popular). Other than being needed for Netflix, I don't think Silverlight is taken serious even by Microsoft these days as far as I know ... Flash is only relevant due to YouTube and the prevalence of Flash games, it isn't mobile useful either.

[dreadlorde]

Let's do our own hardware survey then. I'll start. I used speccy to get all the info:

Thinkpad W510:

Code: Select all

Summary
      Operating System
         MS Windows 7 64-bit
      CPU
         Intel Core i7 720QM  @ 1.60GHz   41 °C
         Clarksfield 45nm Technology
      RAM
         8.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 531MHz (7-7-7-20)
      Motherboard
         LENOVO 4318CTO (None)
      Graphics
         Generic PnP Monitor @ 1366x768
         NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M
      Hard Drives
         313GB Seagate ST9320423AS (SATA)   31 °C
      Optical Drives
         HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT30N
      Audio
         Conexant 20585 SmartAudio HD


[Sajt]

Silverlight is that common? Does it come preinstalled on Windows 7 or something?

Yes it does.

[scar3crow]

I have Silverlight exactly because of Netflix, though I was welcome to give it a try anyways. However I mostly Netflix through my Wii now.

I've got an 8800GTS 640meg, but its XP, so effectively its a DX9 card.

[revelator]

on the brink of upgrading my trusty old machine but atm.

285 gtx dx10 card.
8 gig ddr2 ram.
core2 duo 3.06 ghz cpu.

next month i should have an i5 or if the money allows an i7 cpu. mainboard allready bought. (msi big bang xpower).

and then some ddr3 ram (atleast 4 gig).

kinda annoying that you pretty much have to change every piece of hardware when upgrading today :S