Valve Releases November Steam Hardware Survey: Vista, Multi-core CPUs Gain Ground

Valve has released the results of its November PC hardware survey, a compilation of statistics taken directly from users of its Steam digital distribution network.

Over the last four months, technologies that have gained statistical ground include: Intel CPUs (4% gain), multi-core CPUs (6%), ATI GPUs (2%), Vista (5%) and DirectX 10 GPUs (7%).

Nvidia and Intel both hold around a 65% share of their respective categories over competitors ATI and AMD, while 21.43% of machines are DirectX 10-capable.

The most common (median) user of Steam runs an Intel CPU in the 2.3-2.9GHz range (20%), with 2GB or more of RAM (56%), and an Nvidia GeForce 8800 (12%).

Display Highlights:

• 28.64% use 16:9 aspect primary displays, up over 25.70% in May

• 37.40% run their primary display at 1280 x 960

• 25.56% run their primary display at 1024 x 768

Hard Drive Highlights:

• 42.92% have more than 250GB in HDD capacity, up over 32.59% in May

• The most common amount of free HDD space was above 250 GB (13.97%)