Valve shares their PC rigs specs

Posted Feb 21st 2009 5:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Hardware, Left 4 Dead Series, Team Fortress 2

Have you ever wondered what PC game developers have inside their own PC gaming rigs at work? At least one developer takes that info seriously. Valve's latest Steam news update reveals their current and upcoming PC rig specs for their work machines.

As Steam users know, Valve has a hardware survey that lets their users give info on their own hardware specs to Valve. As Valve notes in their news update, "The survey helps us make better engineering and gameplay decisions, because it makes sure we're targeting machines our customers actually use, rather than measuring only against the hardware we've got in the office." As you will see after the jump Valve's current specs are on the high end already and their future rigs they are transitioning to are over-the-top.

Current Valve PC rig specs
EVGA 780i SLI FTW Intel Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz Quad-Core Processor
4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 1066MHz ram (Crucial Ballistix, Kingston ValueRam)
1 x NVidia GTX280 1GB - OR - ATI 4870 1GB graphics card
1 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD (Seagate, Western Digital)
1 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD (Seagate, Western Digital)
Antec Sonata III desktop case
Zalman CPU Cooler
850W Antec power supply
1 x Dell 3008FPW-HC 30" LCD - OR - 2 x Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD monitors
Windows XP 32bit

Future Valve PC rig specs
EVGA X58 3X SLI Intel Motherboard
Intel Corei7 940 2.93GHz Quad-Core Processor
12GB PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz ram (Crucial Ballistix, Kingston ValueRam)
1 x NVidia GTX285 1GB - OR - ATI 4870 1GB graphics card
1 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD (Seagate, Western Digital)
1 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD (Seagate, Western Digital) Lian Li P60-F Case
Intel CPU Cooler
850W Antec power supply
1 x Dell 3008FPW-HC 30" LCD - OR - 2 x Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD monitors
Windows Vista 64bit

Tags: steam, steam-hardware-survey, valve, valve-software

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Those are some beefy computers. They should send one of the old ones to me. :DPosted at 5:08PM on Feb 21st 2009 by Einhanderkiller

I always had the idea that devs should have a more mid-ranged spec, if for nothing else to lessen the performance gap at the low end. Maybe these are their 1600*1200 Crysis gaming machines.

Posted at 5:43PM on Feb 21st 2009 by ChimpWithAHandgun

The Source engine already runs great on low end stuff, they don't need to run crappy machines for development.Posted at 5:50PM on Feb 21st 2009 by Crunch Jingles

These aren't that special!
They need:
* Core i7 965 - Overclocked to 4.5GHz
* 3 GTX 285s
* EVGA Classified Mobo
* 12GB ram @ 2GHz
* Water cooling
Posted at 5:55PM on Feb 21st 2009 by Game_playa

Why only 1 graphics card?Posted at 6:59PM on Feb 21st 2009 by thethirdmoose

@ thethirdmoose:

The state of the economy? :DPosted at 10:09PM on Feb 21st 2009 by Justin

Wait... 4GB on Win XP 32-bit, with a 1GB GPU? What's the benefit of that?

And yikes, those Dell monitors... the 2001FP has 16ms response time and 400:1 contrast. That's miserable.

That Lian Li case is awesome as hell, though.Posted at 12:08AM on Feb 22nd 2009 by obo

Another reason I respect Valve as a developer. Activly collecting relivant data from their customers to help steer their game development.

Unrelated: I'm buying a new computer in a few months and these are the specs I'm currently looking at. I'm surprised how close they are to Valve's specs

Intel Corei7 940 2.93GHz Quad-Core Processor
12GB PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz ram
2 x NVidia GTX285 526GB
2 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD
Water Cooler
Windows Vista 64bit UltimatePosted at 12:16AM on Feb 22nd 2009 by Strategy_Panda

@Panda
Get A 920 instead, the 940 is not worth the extra 300Posted at 1:05AM on Feb 22nd 2009 by Game_playa

And get faster ram, atleast 1600MHzPosted at 1:06AM on Feb 22nd 2009 by Game_playa

Faster RAM's not really necessary. With the Core i7, you have massive memory bandwidth. The extra cost isn't really worth the minuscule performance boost, in my opinion.Posted at 1:09AM on Feb 22nd 2009 by Einhanderkiller

Note the jump from dual core processors to quad core processors and 32bit OS to 64bit OS.

12gb of ram? Yikes!Posted at 6:44PM on Feb 22nd 2009 by Ladron