STEAM Client Update, Fall Survey Now Live
Valve has released a new STEAM client update tonight, with mostly fixes for ‘Friends’-related issues.
More importantly, the developer has made public its popular STEAM Hardware Survey, which displays a smattering of scandalous details regarding users’ computers, like how current their videocard drivers are.
Of the 3624 STEAM users sampled at time of publication, the following tidbits were gleaned:
- A small majority, 51% of users, have 2GB of RAM or more. About 28% are packing between 1 and 1.5GB
- Intel CPU’s beat out AMD’s processors: 57.37% and 42.63%, respectively
- The majority of users have only one physical processor (52%), but they’ve got only a small margin over those with 2 CPU’s (43%)
- Most Intel owners have processor speeds in the range of 2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz. Most AMD fans enjoy their processors at 2.0 Ghz to 2.29 Ghz
- The most videocards fall under the mysterious ‘Other’ category. The most popular choices after that are nVidia’s GeForce 8800, 7600, and 7900 series cards
- 38% of users have screens that have an optimal resolution of 1280×960, while 25% and 14% enjoy their monitors at 1024×768 and 1680×1050, respectively
- Vista still isn’t getting much love from gamers: 80% still run XP, while only 18% have Microsoft’s latest operating system installed. This number is up from 8% this spring/summer, however
PC gaming junkies, get your fill of infoporn at the official results page.
Please note that the page is dynamically generated and updated, so stats are bound to fluctuate slightly over time.
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2 Responses to “STEAM Client Update, Fall Survey Now Live”
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The sample size is still much too small to start drawing conclusions or reporting on these numbers.
I suspect the stats are bound to fluctuate dramatically actually - since the first responses are typically the more hardcore gamers with higher end systems. As less frequent gamers who log on to Steam more rarely start sending in the reports you’ll probably see the average system level drop.
You probably shouldn’t start looking at results until the same set gets up around 100,000 users.
Statistical analysis can accommodate sample sizes as low as 5 using Chi Square analysis. The sample size is actually too large. Results don’t change much after a few thousand sampled in a particular group. While this survey most accurately describes Steam users, you can’t use the survey for other users such as causal internet use, video/audio editing, etc.