By Alec Meer on January 5th, 2011 at 5:57 pm.
Do you own a DirectX 10 NVIDIA graphics card, run the 64 bit version of Windows 7, have an Intel dual core CPU, 4GB of RAM and speak English?
Then you’re average. Sooooooooooooo average. How does that make you feel, Mr Average? Does it make you feel… average?
This comes from the latest Steam hardware survey, which paints a statty picture of the slow march of progress. Quad core CPUs are slowly on the ascendancy, now boasting 35.9% of the chip market (dual core still leads, at 53.67%), while those once-scoffed at DirectX 10 cards have made it to 56.36% of the GPU market. DX11 doesn’t look so pretty at 5.6%, however. Maybe if we had some games that looked really, truly, palpably better thanks to it?
Windows 7 continues to be slowly on the rise, with combined 64 and 32 bit lurking on 48.18% of Steam gamers’ hard drives despite being a relative youngster. Nearly 25% of folks are still on Vista, bless ‘em, which is outdone by Windows XP 32-bit by about 1%.
What else can I tell you? Well, the software data’s interesting – that 63.05% of Steam users (who allowed the auto-survey to run, at least) are running Firefox says much about the sensible IE-fearing smarts of yer average PC gamer. And that 57.26% are using the £100+ Microsoft office perhaps says much about the Bittorrent aptitude of the average PC gamer. I’M GUESSING, OKAY. I HAVE NO FACTS WHATSOEVER TO SUPPORT THAT WILD STATEMENT, OKAY. Except that 29.41% of people have µTorrent installed.
Oh, and 36.63% of Steam users have Games For Windows installed. So it’s very much out there, even if it’s got a bad rep.
Steam for Mac’s not looking super-healthy, alas – just 4.27% of Steam accounts which took the survey use OSX, and that’s decreased slightly from earlier surveys. Still, if Steam can push out a really stonking OSX game day and date with the Windows version, I can still imagine that proportion spiking.
So how excitingly different are you from the average system? Go on, wave your willy all over the place if you must.
05/01/2011 at 18:01 Sigh says:
9.5 inches (24.1 cm) length…
is what I measured by Geforce GTX 470 at.
05/01/2011 at 19:41 l1ddl3monkey says:
Ditto, although since I got it I have saved on heating bills.
05/01/2011 at 20:01 Sigh says:
I know exactly what you are saying. My computer is in an unheated entry room (or mud room as some call it) and that is not a problem at all. When I want heat I just boot it up and run a game at max settings.
The oil delivery truck makes less stops due to Crysis.
05/01/2011 at 18:01 Rich says:
“Except that 29.41% of people have µTorrent installed.”
Hmm… didn’t realise it gathered that kind of data.
Best hide the porn stash.
05/01/2011 at 18:03 BooleanBob says:
Presumably 29% of people surveyed were happy to voluntarily share that they had a BT client install on their PC.
Right..?
05/01/2011 at 18:09 Kaira- says:
I was actually surprised that Steam can pretty much launch any program via “Add non-Steam game”-method. Such as Windows Media Player, Notepad++, Unity and so forth. Surprisingly it found most of installed programs on my computer, but almost none of the non-Steam games.
05/01/2011 at 18:12 Daniel Rivas says:
Well, it’s just a shortcut.
05/01/2011 at 18:46 Thatidiot says:
Shit , they’re onto me!
05/01/2011 at 20:39 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
After adding a “non-Steam game”, you can rename it too. So you can annoy your Steam friends by having it say you’re playing “DXHR Beta” or “Super Meat Boy 2″ or something :)
05/01/2011 at 21:06 Vague-rant says:
To be fair it does mention that its going to gather all that information for everyone who reads it.
Also I use an ATI card. On a laptop. Ha. I am not a (statistically significant) number/statistic (possibly).
05/01/2011 at 21:26 Muzman says:
You should never hide the porn stash. Wax it and wear it daily as a badge of honour.
05/01/2011 at 21:59 Urael says:
“To be fair it does mention that its going to gather all that information for everyone who reads it.”
I refused to do the survey on that basis. Why the hell does Valve need to know what software I have installed on my PC?
05/01/2011 at 22:20 opel says:
@Urael I refused to do the survey because of that as well, but only after it showed me the list of information that was going to be sent. I had to commend them for the transparency and for letting me opt out even after steam had gathered the information.
05/01/2011 at 22:32 Urael says:
I’d have happily done the survey were it not for that. And I was grateful they were up-front about it. I just couldn’t see why they’d need that rather personal and entirely-unrelated-to-gaming bit of information. Still can’t, really. Anyone able to explain on their behalf?
06/01/2011 at 01:25 Sam says:
Because it’s interesting? What is the harm at all in letting Valve know (and everyone else anonymously) that you have a free open source entirely legal piece of software on your hard drive? Fair enough if you want to opt out but there’s no need to get all uppity about it.
06/01/2011 at 13:28 MadTinkerer says:
There’s nothing wrong with admitting you have a torrent client installed, just as there’s nothing wrong with admitting you have emulators installed. No, really:
Taito Legends 1 & 2, for example, actually gives you the ROMs ripped straight from the arcade machines. Legitimately purchased arcade ROMs. Due to the non-casual retail sector of the PC market being in the toilet for the last few years, this sort of thing is now especially rare, but still: Legitimately purchased arcade ROMs you can run with MAME or the emulator they come with.
Do a search for “legal torrents”. There’s actually plenty of completely legit torrents (literally completely not-copyright-infringing), as well as ROM hacks (not breaking copyright in themselves), translation patches (frowned on by lawyers and suits), unofficial-OS-upgrade-patches, not to mention the legally gray but morally fine “abandonware” stuff that is the only way to currently obtain some things*… and it all adds up to plenty of reasons besides pirated software that you might have a torrent client, emulator, ripper, hex editor, et cetera.
*All those games that EA just shut down the servers? I bet a few of those have illegal servers available, and those illegal servers are now the only way to play your legitimately purchased game with other legitimate users. Thanks EA!
06/01/2011 at 22:59 Grey_Ghost says:
Oh pffft! I remember at least one MMO beta that required I download the client via torrent.
07/01/2011 at 08:10 Martha Stuart says:
There are plenty of leagal reasons to have a torrent client installed. For example Ubuntu or any other linux build, uses torrents as a viable download source. Also so what if valve know’s i love hot lesbians? who dosn’t?
08/01/2011 at 15:31 Droopy The Dog says:
Lesbians schmesbians, I’m more worried about Valve finding the potentially copyright infringing GLaDOS-Dog illustrated slashfic.
And I have uTorrent installed, I’m suspicious!
05/01/2011 at 18:02 Decimae says:
Yehoo, not average. Well, sorta. 32 bits XP + 64 bits (full) 7 + Lucid Lynx x64(windows 7 x64, but not used) on my Radeon 4870(not nvidia, but DX10) + Good old Athlon X2 5000(dual core, but not Intel)+ with 4 gigs of RAM. However, I do use firefox, but also OO instead of MSO on my gaming rig.
05/01/2011 at 22:05 PUKED says:
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A FREAK, FREAK
MY CORE 2 DUO AND I LAUGH AND POINT AS WE GET ALL THE GIRLS
05/01/2011 at 22:29 TheTourist314 says:
I laughed so hard I almost pissed myself.
06/01/2011 at 07:05 BAReFOOt says:
It’s crazy how close you are to my specs? No Ubuntu but Gentoo (Stage 1) here, no Windows 7, and XP is runnable natively as well as virtualized by choosing K → Games → Windows XP. ;)
05/01/2011 at 18:04 Brumisator says:
100% have Steam installed…nooooooooo… really?
05/01/2011 at 18:26 2guncohen says:
The statistics are lying noooo
06/01/2011 at 01:38 Lord Byte says:
It would be so much creepier/funnier if it had said 99,9% have steam installed…
06/01/2011 at 01:38 Lord Byte says:
It would be so much
creepierfunnier if it had said 99,9% have steam installed…06/01/2011 at 01:55 Wang Tang says:
Aw, you can come up with statistics to prove anything,
KentBrumisator. Forty percent of all people know that.05/01/2011 at 18:06 Nathan says:
In some ways I’m bigger than average and some ways I’m not.
… standard.
05/01/2011 at 18:08 duncanthrax says:
Core i7, 160G SSD, some fast ATI card, don’t know the exact model.
I can however remember I had a 486DX2-66 and laughed about the SX Boons.
05/01/2011 at 18:13 Crescend says:
Mheh, that’s almost exactly my PC specs, except that I’m using ATI graphs card… so HAH! Not Mr Average >___<
05/01/2011 at 20:19 Bfox says:
Don’t worry, that lovely case you have makes you all the more individual.
05/01/2011 at 18:17 noodlecake says:
Same here except an ATI graphics card THAT CAN RUN DRAGON AGE ON FULL! I have no idea what that is in graphics card words but I was impressed when I installed it and I didn’t have to turn it down. :)
06/01/2011 at 07:07 BAReFOOt says:
Wanna bet it auto-tuned itself (down?) on first start? ;))
05/01/2011 at 18:19 Cooper says:
To those who have netbooks and ever use their netbooks for gaming:
Please only enter this survey via Steam on your netbook.
I’m fed up of newly released games which have very low CPU and GPU requirements but which cannot deal with 600 pixel high screens. It’s infuriating.
05/01/2011 at 21:48 snv says:
pfft netbooks are useless toys and not to be used for serious gaming
05/01/2011 at 18:21 Freud says:
Thanks for reminding me to check if I had GFWL installed. I had. Not anymore.
05/01/2011 at 18:21 DevilSShadoW says:
Well guess I’m not average… Yay for me?
EDIT:
Forgot to mention: great header image!
05/01/2011 at 18:27 Baboonanza says:
Actually it would make you modal *snort*
05/01/2011 at 18:36 UW says:
I’m not sure what you Mean?
05/01/2011 at 18:46 James G says:
I think that’s normal.
05/01/2011 at 19:02 ArthurBarnhouse says:
Ha! Stats nerds.
05/01/2011 at 19:13 Hastur says:
You’re all a bunch o’ deviants.
05/01/2011 at 20:46 Confidence interval says:
The deviation is no more than is standard.
05/01/2011 at 23:14 Starky says:
Seems people have an expected value for money when it comes to hardware and steam games.
The First moment prices drop that will drift upwards.
06/01/2011 at 08:55 Lightbulb says:
How can you possibly take a mean of a discrete piece of data? The mean of single, dual and quad core CPU’s. What would that even suggest?
The Mode is the most common value.
Is the mean of a ATi and nVidia Voodoo?
Now RAM could be a mean…
I’ll get me coat.
06/01/2011 at 11:49 Optimaximal says:
I’m going to make it my mission to sin and cosine any petition to get such jokes banned from RPS.
Also, stop taking this thread off on a tangent!
05/01/2011 at 18:29 Rich says:
Edit: Gah! Wrong thread.
05/01/2011 at 18:33 Paul says:
“DirectX 10 NVIDIA graphics card, run the 64 bit version of Windows 7, have an Intel dual core CPU, 4GB of RAM and speak English?”
That is EXACTLY me, average.
But not for much longer, Sandy Bridge, new MOBO + RAM + GTX 570, you are mine! Next month.
BTW I have Office 2010 Pro, the most expensive version, and I got it legally for 13 euros because our huge multinational corporation has a deal with MS for its employees :P
I use uTorrent for TV Shows only.
I have GFWL because I own about 13 games that use it. I am not happy about it.
05/01/2011 at 18:34 bob_d says:
I can understand the small percentage of Mac users – there isn’t a huge amount of choice, and except for those developed by Valve, bigger games aren’t available at all. Their policy whereby you buy once and can download for any platform available through Steam means that plenty of the bigger Mac games are unlikely to ever make it to Steam, even though the Windows versions are already there. Most of the big games like Bioshock and Dragon Age had their Mac versions developed by third parties; the agreements made with those doing the porting I’m sure make it impossible. Oddly, I notice that even some indie titles like “The Path” that were released on the Mac aren’t so available through Steam at this point. The few Mac users who do use Steam are probably more likely to be doing the survey while running Windows.
05/01/2011 at 20:54 Tom Camfield says:
I’m one of the Mac users and I’m not sure RPS are interpreting the figures correctly…
If I have 96 Windows users and 4 Mac users, Mac users make up 4% of the survey.
If next year I have 106 Windows users and 4 Mac users, Mac users make up 3.6% of the survey.
This isn’t a drop in the number of Mac users, and yet it appears as a drop in the percentage of Mac users.
Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?
06/01/2011 at 08:52 bob_d says:
@Tom Camfield: Yeah, it may be the case that the number of Windows users grew while the number of Mac users stayed static, since Valve doesn’t seem to be releasing any absolute numbers. RPS just pointed out that the relative percentage of Mac users dropped. As a service that’s new on the Mac, the percentage of Mac users should have grown – if Steam was offering great stuff, you’d think the number of Mac users would be increasing more quickly than the number of Windows users. In other words, you’d expect that proportion to have grown since release, or at the very least to have stayed the same if they were also, at the same time, attracting a lot of new Windows users. Instead we see a (proportional) drop, which indicates a lack of enthusiasm by Mac users at best (i.e. no new users), at worse it shows existing Mac users had no reason to keep using Steam/have gone back to Windows Steam. It makes sense since the biggest games they have on the Mac side not only weren’t new when Mac Steam started, but after Valve finally ported over their recent catalog, there hasn’t been anything big to attract Mac users.
05/01/2011 at 18:35 Dominic White says:
I’d be completely average, if I didn’t have an ATI card. Still, average is perfectly good for most games out at the moment. There’s only a couple out there that really strain this system, and it hasn’t gotten a serious upgrade for years.
05/01/2011 at 18:35 Heliosicle says:
Wow I’m very average! Apart from having a 5700 series card and a quad core, everything else is me I think.
05/01/2011 at 22:01 Urael says:
That’s you and me too. Want to be Hardware buddies? :D
05/01/2011 at 18:36 lethu says:
I thought Mr Average would have opted for ATI / AMD by now, because of the averageness of their price compared to the performance. Mr Average decidedly remains quite mysterious…
05/01/2011 at 18:37 Alaric says:
Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Vastly above average!
05/01/2011 at 18:43 Rich says:
So where do you live, and when are you away next?
Also, could you please leave the door unlocked?
05/01/2011 at 20:06 Haywire says:
2 gigs of ram but i try harder
05/01/2011 at 21:11 Alaric says:
Stay away, you! I have a rifle and I load it with hollow-points! >:-[
You can, however, lust after my computer from afar. =)
CPU: Intel Core i7 950Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth X58RAM: Corsair Dominator (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600Video: Crossfire of two XFX Radeon HD 5870 1GBSystem Drive: OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SATA II MLC SSDStorage Drive: Western Digital Raptor 150Gb SATA 10,000 RPMOptical: ASUS DVD-RW SATA, Dual Layer, LightScribePower Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower 850W Modular w/APFC EPSCase: CoolerMaster HAF 932Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP 30" @ 2560x1600OS: Windows 7 Professional 6405/01/2011 at 22:03 Urael says:
I see lots of high-falutin brand names there, Alaric. Who do you think you are? Marks and Spencers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHFKE6PD_6U
05/01/2011 at 22:11 Alaric says:
I have YouTube blocked at work! What’s in that video?! TELL ME IT!!! =)
05/01/2011 at 23:31 Zombat says:
It starts off with pink flaps of meat, with a dollop of white sauce in the middle
06/01/2011 at 02:49 honolululu says:
What happens in the end?
08/01/2011 at 19:03 Droopy The Dog says:
Things start to get very hot then it fades to black, it’s just an advert afterall.
05/01/2011 at 18:37 Ergates_Antius says:
Lies, Damn lies and Statistics.
Years ago one of the Red-Tops did a survey of their readers – (in the days when it would have involved ticking boxes on a bit of people then sticking it in an envelope and posting it)
One of their conclusions was that about 85% of people like filling in surveys………
I’ve often wondered about the other 15%.
05/01/2011 at 19:46 Delusibeta says:
To be fair, Steam just pops up a box “You have been selected for next month’s Steam Hardware Survey. If you accept, we will send your hardware and software details anonymously to Valve automatically. Do you accept this survey Y/N?” and that’s about it for your end.
06/01/2011 at 17:10 Fumarole says:
I’m more curious as to what it says about the 85% who send bits of people through the mail.
05/01/2011 at 18:38 Sweedums says:
I’m curious, why all the hate for internet explorer? I’ve used it my entire life and never had a problem with it that didnt also occur on firefox, at least not that i can remember…
someone once told me that its “less secure”… but I don’t see how its the case, I’ve never had virus problems… am I lucky? Or is the IE hate becuase its microsoft..?
Also, OpenOffice for the win.
05/01/2011 at 18:55 James G says:
Well one reason people hate IE is that its rendering engine used to have so many bugs, that web developers had to either develop for IE and screw everyone else, or insert lots of work around to ensure it worked fine for IE users. It built resentment. (To be fair, with IE7 Microsoft actually began to address these problems, and IE9 is actually making a fairly decent crack at it.
Similarly, earlier versions of IE did have some notable security holes, especially with the default settings. This allowed it to easily perform drive by installs. Things aren’t as bad as the used to be, but reputations stick. (I think it still tends to have the most vulnerabilities when you check securnia but this varies from day to day as exploits are found and patched)
05/01/2011 at 19:30 Jake says:
IE6 was awful and it’s legacy still haunts the internet and a lot of developers just resent the time we wasted catering for it and sometimes still do waste, IE7 was a bit better but still required special treatment. The latest IE is decent but Firefox is nicer, it looks better, has useful addons and is fast. Chrome is also good, that’s mostly personal preference.
05/01/2011 at 20:09 Turin Turambar says:
Speed, features.
05/01/2011 at 20:36 Tom Camfield says:
Speed, add-ons. Does IE do add-ons? I used to use Netscape, so I shun IE out of habit.
05/01/2011 at 21:19 Vague-rant says:
OPERA. Just thought it deserved a mention.
06/01/2011 at 06:58 Andrei Sebastian says:
At some point in my life I had to use IE… what for?… TO GET FIREFOX! duh.
Well, needless to say I got virused in 2 minutes.
I’m just saying.
06/01/2011 at 07:30 PeopleLikeFrank says:
IE was also way behind the times in general usability for ages since IE 6 stuck around for so long without major changes. In-line search, tabbed browsing, were a couple major features that come to mind, though I’m sure there were plenty others.
But mainly it was security holes and the total lack of standards support. I’m a web developer, and having to cater to IE’s various bugs when every single other browser would render the same code in more or less the same way was awful. The day one of the clients I work for regularly decided to drop IE 6 support was a happy day indeed. (Almost as good: when I used to do some IT support, and in the course of upgrading a whole office’s computers, inserting KillDisk in the last old computer with Windows 98 on it.)
06/01/2011 at 17:47 Sweedums says:
ok so it seems to be resentment from developers who had to work with it, coupled with a bad reputation from older versions…. fair enough, I guess I’ll keep using it as one guy mentioned, its moslty personal preference and im just used to it now. I do keep firefox installed at all times though just incase, though i have never had to switch over yet so all is well!
07/01/2011 at 02:41 daf says:
After releasing IE6 microsoft had the defacto browser with 90%+ market share so they sat on it doing little to no improvement on it (just security patches). By the time I started to use firefox (at the time called phoenix 0.5) IE6 was slow, prone to infiltration of nasty malware that would do bad things to your computer, had no protection against popup attacks (sites would open popups that would open more popus when closed making it a living hell) or support for the then advanced feature called tabbed browsing.
So like IE took over from Netscape for being better browser, firefox and friends took over IE for the same reason as feed up users looked for something better.
Additionally some websites had been designed for ie and only ie, so people that chose not to use it were still forced to start it up to use the site, allot of the time without alternative as many government agencies, banks and other institutions suffered from this problem further aggravating the issue.
Today IE9 is pretty decent, but without firefox, opera and webkit (safari, chrome, etc) there likely wouldn’t ever have been an ie7.
05/01/2011 at 18:38 UW says:
Yeah, that perfectly describes my PC – except substituting the word “Dual” for “Quad”.
And “speak” for “mumble”.
05/01/2011 at 18:40 propjoe says:
I’ve got Games for Windows… not because I want it, because it seems like every time I go to uninstall it, a new game I bought from Steam requires it.
05/01/2011 at 20:20 Bfox says:
Amen. :C
05/01/2011 at 18:40 Meneth says:
Nah, I have a AMD quad-core, an AMD DirectX 11 GPU, and 8 GB of RAM ;)
Whoo, not average!
05/01/2011 at 18:42 TheApologist says:
I am slightly above the modal points in the various categories.
/nods slowly
05/01/2011 at 22:30 PUKED says:
*golf clap*
05/01/2011 at 18:43 Neoviper says:
Only reason I have GFWL is because it’s required to play dawn of war 2, which is a lovely game. Otherwise, I’d delete it right this very moment.
05/01/2011 at 19:33 symmetrian says:
I totally should have read all comments before adding one myself.
Me too. And with the expansion coming I don’t even care that it’s GFWL.
FOR THE EMPEROR!
05/01/2011 at 18:48 wererogue says:
My guess on that Office stat means that over half of respondents ran the survey on their work computer.
05/01/2011 at 18:49 mod the world says:
Only average people speak English.
05/01/2011 at 18:52 skinlo says:
I have a Quadcore, 6gb of RAM and an ATI card. So there!
05/01/2011 at 18:52 Teddy Leach says:
I now feel very below average with my geforce 8800, single core pentium processor, XP using system. Bugger progress!
05/01/2011 at 19:00 Serenegoose says:
Pretty much exactly average. Actually, this is a good thing, overall. My apparently ‘average’ system can run almost all games on maximum graphics – and some of those games are pretty staggeringly pretty. Better than the bad ol’ days of Crysis, when only a tiny amount of people could have the pretty.
06/01/2011 at 11:54 Optimaximal says:
…for all of two days until it was revealed that effects that were locked to DX10 could happily run in DX9.
05/01/2011 at 19:04 Baf says:
For what it’s worth, I’m among the 36.63% who has Games for Windows installed, and the only reason I installed it was to play a game that I bought on Steam. (Specifically, Arkham Asylum.) I suspect there are more than a few others like me.
06/01/2011 at 10:27 Wonko the Sane says:
Possibly majority? I had to install it to run Red Faction: Guerilla (Steam sale), and that was only after trying to skip installation and discovering I couldn’t save the game. Perhaps a measure of what % of the Steam user base have games installed that force this would be illuminating.
05/01/2011 at 19:24 terry says:
0.69 people are still webdesigning like it’s 1995.
05/01/2011 at 19:25 Orvanis says:
Booya I am in the upper %10 for most of those.
Windows 7 x64
12 GB of RAM
Core i7 – Overclocked at 4.3 GHz
ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series (Also overclocked)
Total HDD Space 10TB
Sadly my internet speed is lacking… Only running 5 Mbps DSL, all that’s available in my area :-/ Also, the massive storage space is because this is also my media hub.
05/01/2011 at 21:05 Alaric says:
How does having 12 GB of RAM benefit you in the slightest? And you are horribly bottlenecked by using an HDD as opposed to an SSD.
05/01/2011 at 22:27 Urael says:
Fiiiiiight!
05/01/2011 at 22:31 Starky says:
I’d wager that with that much RAM and HDD space he does a lot of video/photo editing in which case yes, yes he does need 12GB and that much space, especially if dealing with HD encoding.
Oh and FYI, when it comes to actually playing games and FPS, SSD offers little to no benefit, only helps with initial loading times. It’s not a bottleneck.
Even the slowest Eco drive you can get these days is MORE than fast enough to stream any game content/textures while in game.
Granted using an SSD for your OS and most used programs will make your PC feel faster (opening programs, boot time, etc) – and makes a system under use feel quicker – it doesn’t add very much to game performance.
Oh, and SSD £/GB is still stupidly high when compared to the performance boost – needs a few more years before it becomes truly worthwhile imo – When a TB of SSD costs less than mid-high end graphics card.
Until then I’m happy with 4 1TB drives (2x Samsung HD103SJ’s probably the best 7200 speed HD, and 2x Samsung HS103SI’s probably the best 5400 eco drive).
I’ve had a 60GB OCZ SSD and it was nice, but it wasn’t a massive difference at all. Wasn’t worth the price (which was £200) at the time. Sold it for more than I paid for it though, which was nice.
05/01/2011 at 19:27 ArthurBarnhouse says:
I was going to install 64 Bit on my new computer, but I read comments from people on various forums that their games did not work with 64-bit windows, so I stuck with 32 bit. At this stage I’d be unexcited about reinstalling the OS and all my games, but it might be worth it for the extra RAM. Does anyone know if this is really a problem?
05/01/2011 at 19:49 Poindexter says:
It shouldn’t really be a problem anymore. Most of the issues surrounding games in 64-bit not working was because of lack of proper 64-bit drivers. All of the driver issues have been worked out for well over a year now and I have had no real problems running any number of games in 64-bit Windows 7.
05/01/2011 at 20:02 ArthurBarnhouse says:
What about older stuff like Dark Forces?
05/01/2011 at 20:23 Sic says:
There is no difference between 32 and 64 bit Win7 in terms of running non-native executables.
Really, the old farts complaining about drivers mainly complained about rubbish that the average gamer would never need. True, relevant drivers (like graphics card drivers) were not awesome in the beginning, but it was never really a huge problem.
If you’re going to play DOS games, either boot up in DOS, run DOSBox, or try any of the compatibility modes. It usually works.
06/01/2011 at 00:15 Znea says:
The problem with running many older games on 64 bit XP and Vista was that they generally have 16 bit installers or settings programs which are unsupported.
Sounds like Win7 64 has improved on this (by improving compatibility mode), but problems do still exist. Some stuff works, and other stuff does not, so it’s still a gamble as to whether your old copy of Submarine Titans will install (in a friendly manner), or whether you’ll actually be able to turn off auto-aim in Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior.
06/01/2011 at 07:33 DigitalSignalX says:
I recently made the switch from XP to Win 7 and I must say, am quite impressed. I’d held off quite a bit for all the horrible reviews VISTA garnered, and then finally broke after hearing how low-spec friendly Win7 was if you fiddle with it some. It also lends itself to optimization quite a bit though the GUI takes some getting used to. The program file directories are broken into two where native 64bit and then everything else gets installed. Any compatibility questions so far have been easily solved by a right click “run in compatibility mode for xxx.”
I have almost a dozen AAA game titles installed without a hitch so far, but have yet to try older 16 bit apps yet. Dual boot is pretty easy, I still have an XP partition I used to test out some video card drivers to see if it could solve a hardware problem (got 2 bad HD6850 cards in a row …. ).
05/01/2011 at 19:27 symmetrian says:
I’d totally uninstall Games for Windows Live if I didn’t have such complete man-love for Dawn of War 2.
And to contribute to the conversation, I think I’m probably sub-par, but I don’t care much. I’m running a 4 gig, windows 7-64bit laptop with an ATI mobile graphics card. Probably underpowered, but it runs WoW and my Dawn of War 2 and everything else I need it to without a problem. Maybe in a few years I’ll upgrade, but only if they release more games I actually care about.
06/01/2011 at 00:30 ArthurBarnhouse says:
Same for me but with Dead Rising 2.
06/01/2011 at 09:47 Stephen Roberts says:
I have an ‘uncomfortable pissed off silence after a big argument’ with Dawn of War 2. We’re either going to have unbelievable make up sex or get a divorce.
05/01/2011 at 19:30 Dozer says:
I have a 3ghz Pentium 4, a GeForce 7300GT, and Windows XP. Because it’s still 2007 really. And I don’t have Steam or GFWL, the only game I have is X-Plane v9.63, which has roughly 50% Windows users, roughly 50% Mac users, and roughly 2% Linux users. All those numbers are probably higher when you consider many users have more than one system. I do speak excessivey-verbose English though.
05/01/2011 at 21:02 TechRogue says:
X-Plane comes for Linux?
It appears so.
Must buy.
05/01/2011 at 19:53 CMaster says:
I got MS office for £30 or so as part of the Ultimate Steal (Microsoft student offer). I imagine lots of people acquired office in similar discounted ways or got some variant of it with their PC.
Apart from that, average save for the DX10 ATI card, but thats not really a significant difference.
05/01/2011 at 19:55 WMain00 says:
Dare i do the Spec Pimp Walk?
Yes!
Bought the main bulk of this computer in 2007 and have upgraded pieces of it since then, but generally the main parts are the same; Q6600 Quad Core overclocked to 3ghz, BFG 8800GT OC2 and 4gb DDR3 RAM. Running Windows 7.
I haven’t encountered a game yet that this computer doesn’t smoothly, which really makes me smile, but I sense the days of this continuing are probably now running short. Still i’m very proud of what I managed to create in a reasonable budget at the time.
God help computer building for the future though thanks to wacky “VAT” changes.
05/01/2011 at 20:00 EthZee says:
Intel Pentium M processor (1.86ghz)
0.99GB RAM
Intel 915GM integrated graphics.
*dons sunglasses*
06/01/2011 at 07:52 steviesteveo says:
The Pentium M was a fine range of processors. One of those saw me through my degree.
05/01/2011 at 20:13 Soon says:
I don’t know a word of English.
07/01/2011 at 03:26 daf says:
I see what you did there =).
05/01/2011 at 20:20 Pani says:
The only reason I have games for windows live is cause it made me. I’m a slave to the man.
Been playing GTA4, DoW2 and Fallout3 within the past couple of months.
05/01/2011 at 20:26 geldonyetich says:
Remember when the next DirectX version wasn’t just a gimmick to get you to upgrade your computer hardware? Those were good times… good times.
05/01/2011 at 23:00 Starky says:
DirectX 10/11 isn’t a gimmick at all,it is a massive improvement over every previous DX in every way that possibly counts…
But in every way that counts for DEVELOPERS.
DX10/11 was never really about giving gamers better shineys to look at, but giving developers a better, slicker, more stable and standardized platform upon which to build.
It standardized hardware like never done before in DX9, DX10 hardware is much more uniform in features than DX9c cards ever were – with manufacturers adding and cutting hardware support for various DX9c features all the time across model ranges. “DX9c compatible” mean’t very little, “DX10/DX11″ compatible means it meets a strict hardware requirement.
the DX9 library was a monstrous thing like a Jengo tower built up over years that was constantly swaying and threatening to tumble, taking out your system most likely. Seriously the number of things that got hacked into DX9 and shoved into monthly updates was unbelievable.
DX10 was an attempt to fix all those issues, from a more solid library base, without all the optional components -but with expanded instruction sets and making it easier to code for.
06/01/2011 at 07:16 zipdrive says:
Starky, the mere fact you write DX10/11 and not DX11 is proof enough that the difference there is minute in the extreme.
06/01/2011 at 08:02 steviesteveo says:
You’re perfectly correct but I’ve always been a bit unmoved by those “it’s easier for developers” kind of arguments. For example, if I invented a particularly easy to use brick absolutely no one would be expected to upgrade their house. I think these things have to have advantages for both users and developers before the users upgrade.
Currently the reason for buying a DX11 card is Moore’s Law and I think if manufacturers want people to upgrade a little quicker than that a few new shineys in return is not a totally unreasonable request.
07/01/2011 at 01:41 Starky says:
@Zip, erm, no… I meant if you buy a DX card or a DX11 card you know that it will have hardware support for every feature of DX10 or 11 – there are no optional hardware configurations. In other words, anyone making a game for DX10 has a solid standard to work on, and don’t need to worry about some functions needing handled by software on cards that don’t have that capability.
Not that DX10/11 are the same – granted though they are, they are both built upon that solid foundation of code, rather than the sprawling hacked together over years of updates that DX9 was.
Hell the biggest advantage of DX10/11 onwards isn’t any features or hardware, it is the fact that the driver model it is built upon is perfectly integrated into the OS – for users it means cool little things like not needing to restart on installing new drivers – or if the driver crashes, it simply restarts rather than throwing out a BSOD.
For Gcard driver writers it means writing drivers is much easier, and much more stable.
I remember reading a statistic that 3rd part drivers were responsible for something like 80% of windows XP crashes, and graphics drivers were one of the main sources (due to the hack nature of them and DX9) – DX10/Vista and it’s new driver model was Microsoft’s effort to stop that.
@Stevie… Like any new technology I don’t think anyone expected anyone to update – it was always going to be a steady progression – just like the move from single core to quad+
Windows 7still runs with a DX9c card in it, DX9c games still run fine on windows 7, DX10/11 cards run DX9c games just fine as well.
So the only thing you’re locked out of is DX10+ only games – which is fair enough. If you want to play them you HAVE to upgrade, and that has always been the case., and always will be.
I remember been unable to play Deus Ex 2 because not having the right shader model.
Got to remember for every version of DX a Dev supports the more it costs to develop, for some it isn’t worth the added cost when DX9 is shrinking fast – and is massively complicated (requiring a LOT more testing/QOS) on the PC compared to DX10.
*Sidenote DX9 on the Xbox is easy, again because of total hardware/firmware/driver uniformity.
05/01/2011 at 20:43 Mephisto says:
0.01% have 12 CPU machines.
OK, who stole the Cray from work again…
06/01/2011 at 00:38 ArthurBarnhouse says:
Does that mean they have two six-core processors? Or are there really commercially available 12-core processors?
06/01/2011 at 07:10 BAReFOOt says:
1. Sets up a virtual machine with 1 million CPUs.
2. Install Windows and Steam.
3. Wait about 1 million years.
4. Take the survey.
5. PROFIT. ;)
05/01/2011 at 20:53 Josh Brandt says:
Um, my PC is 100% totally average, I guess. I’m even average on my MacBook Pro.
I used to have access to a 16-core AMD box. If I still did, I’d install Windows and Steam on it for just long enough to show up on the hardware survey…
05/01/2011 at 21:27 mashakos says:
where do i go to recieve my ePeen award?
It’s always around the time when most gamers have decent systems that the Illuminati activate the protocol to make everyone’s hardware obsolete within a single fiscal quarter. Remember when Intel uttered “Conroe” and Microsoft spoke the words “Unified Shaders” in 2006? All of a sudden you had a new motherboard architecture, new processor design, new memory kits, new graphics cards that ran on software that older cards were now unable to run … Took ppl 4 years to catch up!
I still can’t believe I spent $2000 at the time to join the dx10/core2duo bandwagon O_O
05/01/2011 at 21:54 Phoshi says:
Average? You can’t predict me, I’m a man, not a machine!
That, and I have an AMD processor. Take that, average! You got one point wrong! :(
05/01/2011 at 22:11 Kadayi says:
Ccleaner is good stuff. Also Chrome seems to be gradually moving up.
Now we seem to have hit a point where the PC is coming out on top again in terms of processing & graphical power Vs the 360 whether we might start to see a period of stagnation with no new console generation on the immediate horizon to push the hardware envelope (given the bulk of AAA sales are console led unfortunately). Good in some ways (no real need to upgrade the PC for ages), but not so great in others.
05/01/2011 at 22:33 Alaric says:
What do you mean “coming out?” 360 is five years old, and even as it was released there were PCs that were much more powerful. Right now the current generation of consoles is a joke, in fact it was a joke for quite a long time.
05/01/2011 at 23:12 Kadayi says:
@Alaric
I’m not disagreeing, merely pointing out that the differential is much more noticeable these days. Sure when it was released there were some more powerful PCs out there, but they weren’t common place.
The point is, with developers having to push their games through the constraints of the aging 360 hardware & legal restrictions (multi-disc licensing is prohibitive to the point it dissuades developers from making large games), there is a real risk of technological stagnation with AAA titles, until another console cycle begins.
05/01/2011 at 23:38 jaheira says:
I’d love to see a game pushing the latest hardware, but it ain’t gonna happen. No market for it.
06/01/2011 at 00:22 Kadayi says:
@jaheira
I’m hoping that whatever Valve comes up with next might start to push the boat out (it would be nice to see my quad core & GPU actually be challenged) , possibly with a cut down version made for the consoles, but yeah it’s unlikely, and kind of frustrating as a result.
06/01/2011 at 01:10 jaheira says:
Yeah, I suppose if there is any hope it lies with Valve. It’s pretty irritating when people refer to the technical stagnation of gaming as a good thing. Is there really no curiosity for what a hi-tech game would look (and play) like these days?
06/01/2011 at 11:36 Kadayi says:
@jaheira
Agreed. I recall back when Quad cores were coming on the scene a lot of talk about developers utilising the other processors to run specific functions like dedicated AI etc, etc, but whilst PC remains the sales underdog, that kind of thinking remains unrealised unfortunately.
05/01/2011 at 23:26 Initialised says:
It’s not the length, it’s the girth, I have a triple slot monster of a 4870×2 lurking in my system.
Tech stagnation seems to be setting in. I got a proper boner over Phenom II, X6 Thuban, 980-X, Nehalem, 5800 but lately I’ve been left flacid, 6000 series, AMD’s Phenom II drip feed, the GTX500 series and Sandybridge all seem to be more of the same. Hopefully, Bulldozer will get me hard again.
I guess it’s partly due to the expansion, divergence and fragmentation of the gaming market. Rage launching first on iPad kind of says it all.
05/01/2011 at 23:44 JohnnyMaverik says:
Well I guess I’m above average by 2 extra cores on my CPU and 2 GB of RAM.
06/01/2011 at 00:16 phenom_x8 says:
I’m below average with 2 gig of RAM, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+, and my shining HD6850.
At least always says thanks to God for what we’ve been able to get today, it’s keeps me sane until my next upgrade 3 years from now!
HAH!
06/01/2011 at 01:23 Mechlord says:
Games for Windows Live Client.
Aka: The thing you installed to try to make ingame GFWL work…
06/01/2011 at 01:57 Big Murray says:
Do you own a DirectX 10 NVIDIA graphics card, run the 64 bit version of Windows 7, have an Intel dual core CPU, 4GB of RAM and speak English? Then you’re average. Sooooooooooooo average. How does that make you feel, Mr Average? Does it make you feel… average?
It … well … it’s a quad core CPU. In your face, Meer.
06/01/2011 at 02:03 Big Murray says:
Oh, also … I predict that the Mac users of Steam will sharply increase around about April …
06/01/2011 at 02:04 Big Murray says:
Removing the fail of duplicate posts.
06/01/2011 at 04:06 Jsnuk says:
Instead of talking about the size of my graphics card in a way humorously parralelling the way which I may be inclined to describe my penis I will in fact just say that I am dissapointed with my penis.
06/01/2011 at 06:13 MD says:
Me too! Sometimes in my dreams it’s larger, and, for some reason, curvier. It’s no big deal though! Best not to worry about it.
06/01/2011 at 05:07 drewski says:
Windows XP, single core CPU, Direct X 9 card, 1 GB of RAMs.
I feel so…inadequately not average.
06/01/2011 at 05:42 FlyingSquirrel says:
Woo average! Can’t complain as it cost me $150 and letting a friend stay over the summer :) Also, I’m apparently good at picking out popular video cards, as we’re running the top 3 Nvidia cards.
On the tech stagnation line item, i’m kinda surprised a 3 year old system with a year old video card is still this average. Guess we’re hitting that double edged sword; looking forward to not having to upgrade, but gosh dangit, i could afford to now :P
Oh, and willy waving time – my PC may be average, but how many of you have a Cat6 wired house, with a 4×1.5 TB raid 5 NAS? :D
06/01/2011 at 10:00 Stephen Roberts says:
Cat6, check (but not in my room!). And what’s a NAS? Is it some kind of robot?
I think it’s pretty cool that the technology drive has slowed the fuck down. For consumers, if not for the industry. Throughout my life it has been pretty standard to trash your current computer and get a brand new one about once every three years. My current computer is three years old and it’s certainly below average but it’s completely able to play anything new that comes along. It’s really nice to know I don’t have to update the hardware but that I can when I feel like treating myself or getting ontop of the pile again.
For the record I have some kind of amd athlon dual core, 4 gibbs of ram, windows 7 32 bots and 2x nvidia gtx 260 somethings. The motherboard is shite. I don’t think I was in the survey.
06/01/2011 at 05:44 FlyingSquirrel says:
how did you manage to connect the butterflies?
06/01/2011 at 10:43 juandemarco says:
iMac i7 w/ 8GB of RAM and ATI HD5750 which is, to my surprise, quite a good card. Maybe not the most kick-ass, but enough to make me install Windows 7 x64 on a tiny second partition and use Steam on it because, well, the games I have on Mac Steam are basically those of the Humble Indie Bundle and… is there anything else? :P
06/01/2011 at 11:34 Pop says:
I am 4.27%. I switched to Mac gaming after losing a bit too much of my life playing Day of Defeat and Counter Strike. Thought I’d be safe on a mac. They’ll never follow me to Cupertino!
Then Steam for Mac. I bought a mouse. I played Day of Defeat. I’ve been clean for three days now. Might switch to Linux. They’ll never follow me to Portland!
In the mean time I’ll stick to Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble and make sarcastic comments about indie devs who make Windows only releases: “Hah! So I hope that DirectX is working out for ya’! I bet if I had a screen the size of my house I could tell it wasn’t OpenGL! Hope it’s worth 4.27% of Steam players not buying your game! etc.”
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08/01/2011 at 07:54 Thermal Ions says:
As always, I’m truely amazed at the small % of survey respondents who are running any sort of antivirus protection.
Avast 16.01%
ESET 8.81%
Norton Antivirus 1.78%
There’s obviously some common one’s missing, but I can’t see them raising the combined figures anywhere near the 90+% mark that I’d have expected.