Steam Gamers Upgrading to 64-bit Win 7 Quickly
Intel and Nvidia hardware still leading the pack on Steam.
Each month, Steam collects data about what kinds of computer hardware its users are running. Besides just being interesting to us, the incredibly helpful to game developers in providing a picture of what its target audience is using as well as their upgrade habits.
While memory typically grows along with better and faster CPUs and GPUs, the numbers for January 2010 presented a notable milestone for Microsoft. Although Windows XP is still the predominant choice of operating system for Steam gamers, Windows 7 uptake amongst the group was so fast that the 64-bit of the new OS is now the second most popular on the system.
Windows XP is used by 42.15 percent of those on Steam, with Windows 7 64-bit at 19.2 percent, shooting past both versions of Windows Vista (32-bit at 19.09 percent and 64-bit at 8.82 percent). The 32-bit version of Windows 7 held 9.03 percent.
As usual, Nvidia and Intel held the majority of hardware parts at 65 percent and 69 percent, respectively.
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Well this is good news.... i guess but you gotta love steam
And I am just one of those people, awesome,
.
STeam works great with 7 to. I have it in my Start menu and can access anything of it including recently played games without ever opening Steam.
well DUH! anyone who plays any game that is on steam would have at least 4GB of ram. so they would upgrade to a 64 bit OS legally or not.
512mb of RAM is the most popular? Is everyone just playing CS 1.6?
Interesting statistics. Would have thought ATI would have had a larger share.
512mb of RAM is the most popular? Is everyone just playing CS 1.6?
That's VRAM, bro... Video RAM.
Nice data, Steam. Keep up the good work!
Cheers!
512mb of RAM is the most popular? Is everyone just playing CS 1.6?
That's GPU VRAM not System RAM.
See: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
The System RAM is 2GB. 512MB VRAM is fine for 1680*1050 or lower.
Windows Vista = Epic Fail,
A lot of people will bypass this steaming turd of an OS , our MIS department installs XP on Vista machines before it lets them out in the wild.
Surprising? No, will the adoption of dx11 outpace the adoption of dx10 is more the question. I find the whole thing humorous honestly.
Yeah, Steam identifies my Windows 7 x64, alright, but for some reason doesn't recognize my Crossfire setup
Steam was very broken on win7 64 bit until the February 4th client update. Another big issue is that many players expect old games to work on win7.
well DUH! anyone who plays any game that is on steam would have at least 4GB of ram. so they would upgrade to a 64 bit OS legally or not.
i play on steam every day and i have a ti4200, 1gb ram(1 gig went bad
Windows Vista = Epic Fail,A lot of people will bypass this steaming turd of an OS , our MIS department installs XP on Vista machines before it lets them out in the wild.
Uh yeah. The fact XP is installed by your MIS department probably has more to do with corporate applications than anything being actually wrong with Vista. We install XP instead of 7 due to issues with our e-mail application and internal sites being incompatible with anything beyond I.E. 6 (well not really, most of them work but we get no support).
There was nothing horribly wrong with Vista that could not be fixed by changing a couple settings (i.e. turning off UAC). Sure it was a little hardware intensive, other than that I really fail to see why everyone avoided it so much.
Look, Ma, I'm a statistic!
Anyone with the slightest interest in computers is a fool not to go with a 64 bit version of Windows 7! Yes yes, I know that a selected few are aware of their needs and wants and are fully content with x86 but seriously, any gamer or enthusiast who bought the x86 version of Windows7 is just silly!
wow I am a minority I guess. I used Vista 64 bit (built my computer a year ago and don't really feel like spending $100 to upgrade to 7) and I use an AMD quad core along with a 4830 ATI and I play on steam almost everyday.
I'm one of those people. I use Windows 7 64bit and Intel and Nvidia.
I've been an Nivida user for ages, but screw them, I'm going ati with my next card, they are just so much more professional.
I have a NVIDIA 8800GT on XP and a Core i5... I guess I am one of them, the "common-man"
I wonder how many of those XP users are really Linux users with WINE...
XP
The beast that refuses to bleed out
Why would anyone buy the 32 bit version of Win7? Everything 32 bit runs on 64 bit OS, guess they aren't aware of that, and all current CPUs are 64 bit. Folks everything is quickly moving to 32 bit! All you are doing is putting a hard limit on the amount of ram you can use and trust me you will be needing more than 3.5 gigs soon enough.
That's GPU VRAM not System RAM.See: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/The System RAM is 2GB. 512MB VRAM is fine for 1680*1050 or lower.
My bad, read too quickly.
@edilee
Most netbooks are 32bit.
I kinda wish I could let the survey run on all 3 of my computers. Instead I usually just happen to be on the one intel/nvidia I have when it pesters me.
FCMOV: 100%
funny bout that
Well, I use my Steam account on all 3 of my computers(desktop+2 notebooks). All three runs on Windows 7 ultimate 64-bit. I guess the count just drop to 15%.
Anyone with the slightest interest in computers is a fool not to go with a 64 bit version of Windows 7! Yes yes, I know that a selected few are aware of their needs and wants and are fully content with x86 but seriously, any gamer or enthusiast who bought the x86 version of Windows7 is just silly!
A lot of OEM's ship their systems with the 32-bit version installed mainly because the image used for those systems where created around during and just after the launch and they where afraid of running in to drivers and support problems.
Also while you do need a 64bit installation medium (either cd or downloaded image) you can use your key with any version you like ... you can even use any language you prefer as long as you do a clean installation. Most users dont know that and as long as their system runs they wont care.
A lot of the 32 bit users are upgrading from an older version the upgrade to 64 bit would force them to wipe while upgrading to another 32 bit system is peanuts (keep in mind those people dont know their tech
).
...and yet games support is being dropped by the devs little by little. Does that mean that most pc owners are getting rips? PLEASE buy the damn games!
Maybe its common in US to buy more console games, but in europe, particulary in my country most players buy PC games over consoles, hell I dont even know anyone buying consoles games except few exceptions, mostly because game is released only on console.
Last 18 months I bought over 30 games, 2 of them were for PS3 and i rarely even turn PS3 on.
I entirely boycot xbox360 and PS3 games buy only if i dont have other choice and really want that one particular game and as far as i can say everyone in my vicinity do same.
Wouldnt even think about buying PS3 either if it wasnt possible to use it as blueray/DVD player.