steam-hardware-survey posts

For the past few years, the Steam PC/Mac game download client has allowed its users to voluntarily allow for the client to take a snapshot of the user's PC hardware specifications. The result has been the Steam hardware survey which has been updated every month and has given the public a chance to see how PC hardware specs have evolved. Because Steam is used by so many PCs around the world it also helps Steam's creator Valve to see if the PC games it is developing will work with its audience.

In 2010 Valve announced that its Steam hardware survey would be joined by a software survey, letting people see what kind of software programs are installed on their hard drives. The software survey launched in August 2010 as it looked back on the July 2010 survey results. While Valve said the software survey would be updated on a monthly basis, that hasn't happened. Indeed the software survey result have not been updated on the Steam web site since last August.

What happened? No one seems to know. Big Download has emailed Valve more than once to ask about the status of the Steam software survey but those emails have gone unanswered so far. Meanwhile the Steam client is still gathering both hardware and software info from its user's PCs.

The weather is already getting cooler and the first leaves are changing color and hitting the ground. Yep, that means it's time for some good old fashioned time in front of the PC monitor playing your favorite game. Oh, wait. We do that every day. Never mind.

• Steam's September PC hardware survey results are now live.
• All the extra downloadable content for both Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War are now available for 50 percent off on Steam until October 7.
• The closed beta test for Dynasty Warriors Online is set to begin on October 14.
• Get ready to get cute. Ubisoft has announced 2011 release plans for Petz Online, a free-to-play MMO based on its pet sim series.

For the past several years, people who used Valve's Steam PC game download service have had the option to allow the Steam client to peer into the hardware specs of each users PC rig and send that info to Valve. The hardware survey results have been released to the public since then and have been a resource to see how PC gamers have upgraded and changed their hardware specs on their rigs.

This week Valve announced that the hardware survey will start adding software stats to the mix. At the end of this month Valve will display what software programs will be on PC users' Windows' Programs and Features control panel alongside the hardware survey results (the Mac program stats will apparently be displayed at a later date. As Valve states, "The new software component of our survey helps us understand what else our customers are using their PCs to do, and as a result, what features we can deliver or leverage to make Steam and our games better." As with the hardware survey Valve users can opt not to participate in this new software survey.

Valve's Steam service lets its users voluntarily upload their PC system specs up to be compared and contrasted and every month Valve offers up updated surveys of what their users have inside their PCs. Their January 2010 survey results are in and the results show that Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system has now overtaken Windows Vista in gamers' PCs.

Combining both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, Windows 7 now has a 28.53 percent slice of the OS pie in the survey while Windows Vista's slice has 27.91 percent of Steam users. Now the Windows 7 numbers may be somewhat inflated due to the fact that some of Steam's users may still be using the free release candidate version of the OS that was released in 2009. That version will begin to become unusable in March and will shut down completely in June. It's also worth noting that the 32 bit version of Windows XP blows both Windows 7 and Vista away with 41.15 percent of Steam users still using the now 10 year old OS in their PCs.

Valve's Steam service allows them to (with permission) look at the hardware specs of their user's PC rig. The latest such survey for the month of December 2009 is now out and gives a solid view of what PC gamers have inside their machines.

The latest results are not exactly suprising with Intel still leading over AMD in terms of processors with just over 69 percent and Nvidia is still king of the dedidcated graphics kingdom with 63.46 percent. Windows XP is still the OS that gets the most use with 44.77 percent of Steam users. Windows 7 in only installed in 7.45 percent of Steam users' PCs. Ironically the 64 bit version of Windows 7 is in more systems with 15.61percent.

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.