News Valve publishes hardware survey results

Don't see why 32 bit would be more popular as a boxed copy of win 7 includes 32 and 64bit versions.

 

Hardly anyone buys retail windows, and not everyone got in on the Win7 preorder deal.

 

i think this brings up a few very interesting points, first of which is the fact that almost 60% of users now have dual core cpu's. i hope this detail can help push the development of multi-threaded applications (especially games, multiplayer FPS's and such would see great performance gains if there were more support for multi-threading). i was a little supprised to see 1280x1024 as the most common screen resolution, as i have always thought a 5:4 ration was somewhat uncommon (especially as games frequently fail to recognize it automatically on my system and set it to something like 800x600).

most importantly though, it shows that (save for the OS) the average computer these days is not so bad. i think publishers can start raising the standards on game requirements, allowing them to make games with better quality graphics, more advanced AI, and so on and so forth, without worrying that the majority of players wont be able to run the game.

 

As far as I know Steam scans your PC automatically to gather information, you don't have to do a survey.

It annoys me when I load Steam as it wakes up all my hard drives to have a nosy at my system which adds about 20 seconds to the log in time (I have them set to turn off after 5 mins idle as hard drives are noisy and I have 5 mechanical storage drives!)

 

That's because updated drivers can break older games. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I will only install an updated driver is if there is a tangible benefit, eg extra performance or fix of known bugs for the games that I play.

 

Well, the scan is automatic, yes, but you have to agree to the scan and to the submission of the data (at least I did) - I wonder how many people just said 'no' when asked and how many users there are on Steam in total...

 

It was a few years ago when I joined Steam so can't remember if I was asked or not when I made my account. I've just had a look in the options menus and can't see a way to not be part of the survey (not that I'd see any reason not to include my PC in their stats).

On Valve's website it basically says everybody will be included. It's just personal details they keep secret: http://www.valvesoftware.com/privacy.htm

 

I look forward to reading that.

 

Interestingly I think Steam will tell you if your drivers will make running a game difficult (although Batman kept crashing my PC until I updated the Nvidia drivers on my 260 SLI set-up and Steam didn't say anything). Steam also seems to want to update DirectX on installing any new game too.

 

It just runs the installer to check if you have the latest version/whatever you need to run the game. If you are already up to date it won't install anything.

 

All this gathering of information about people is getting obsessive and somewhat worrying ... Who eventually will get all this info about individuals? ... and then will our government officials loose it all on their laptop in a cab/train whilst worrying about buying a coffee ...
Not that I have anything going on in my dull mundane life that I would like hidden ... I just prefer not to have my life inspected analysed and dissected by data analysts from respective governments

 

What difference does it make if the government knows whether you have a dual core or quad core CPU? It's not like they're giving out personally identifiable information about you anyway (since they don't have it), so you're just one statistic among several million.

I'm sure there are far worse things you could be worrying about.