Valve's Updated Hardware Survey Summary

Posted on:June 05 2007

Valve just updated their Hardware Survey again, which I think is a very interesting resource of information. It's a list of statistics collected from the hardware of their users.
Interesting IMO: Nobody actually uses Windows Vista (only 5 percent of all users). Most people only have 128 or 256 MB of VRAM. After English, the next most used language is German. And: Only 1% of all users have DirectX 10 systems.

Comments:

Windows Vista is a memory eater. Microsoft is a fortune eater.

Virion

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2007-06-05 18:07:00

best video card is 6600GT!
Old bat Very good!

Sax

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2007-06-05 18:57:00

DX10 is no wonder considering that basically only a single high-end card has been widely available so far. I expect that to increase once more low-end systems are sold (and some put that into laptops - the new MacBook Pro is DX10 capable, yay!).

I think dual-core CPUs have jumped significantly from the last survey results.

Aras Pranckevici

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2007-06-05 19:40:00

nobody's using Vista yet because there's little incentive for people to upgrade to it so far. DX10 games are nonexistant, only a few cards come with it. as the notebook manufacturers roll out all Vista and DX10 hardware with the new notebooks preparing to be released, and the desktops get mid-range and low-range DX10 cards, that will start to change, probably rather quickly

I'm using Vista myself, and wont ever go back to XP.

The Anaconda

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2007-06-05 22:09:00

I am using Vista at work and at home since November last year... - never had any problem so far... - rock solid OS like Win2K after SP4 - with XP I had often trouble since Jan 2002! So don't flame Vista if you never had the chance to test it! And 'NO' I am not a MS 'blind' person, I am using Windows AND Linux ;) !!

Duncan Mac Leod

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2007-06-05 23:12:00

My favorite game, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, doesn't run very well under Vista.

Michael

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2007-06-05 23:14:00

dx10 and vista are cursed with a kind of catch 22. nobody has dx10, so no studio wants to invest in making dx10 games, but there are no dx10 games yet, so nobody wants to buy a dx10 card.
realistically dx10 will catch on soon enough, but between vista and dx10 microsoft has asked everybody to upgrade a lot of things all at once, and the availability/pricing of suitable hardware and drivers is still poor, so the takeoff of vista has stuttered. I run vista at home, and it's not bad, though just like when I first got XP it has occasional stability issues. after a service pack or two it will be more solid.
Once Crysis and other big anticipated dx10 games come out I think vista and dx10's fortunes will improve

buhatkj

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2007-06-05 23:43:00

Those are people who play Valve games, and were willing to take the hardware survey. It is not an accurate representation of all Vista users, only those that play games. This, therefore, excludes a massive amount of people, especially corporations/businesses/organizations that run Vista.
People keep saying that Vista is doing bad, and people keep saying that MS sucks. The reality, though, is that most people run Vista or XP and use Microsoft products ALL the time. I realize that you, Niko, did not say that MS sucks, it's just that I feel the need to defend Vista.

For more info, check out this article from Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/27/1219215.shtml
Original article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6598025.stm

Andrew

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2007-06-06 00:09:00

I switched back to windows because I couldn't run my softwares: photoshop and 3dsmax on linux.

Virion

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2007-06-06 07:56:00