Steam survey results expose the state of PC hardware
A glimpse inside the computers of 1.7 million Steam users
2: Intel CPUs are leading AMD by 58% (1,024,018) to 41% (725,577). Thirty-six percent of all CPUs are dual core, and four percent are quad core.
This isn’t surprising - Intel has been kicking butt ever since the Core 2 lineup hit, stealing back a lot of the ground that AMD gained against the Pentium 3 and 4. The fact that more than a third of gamers are rocking multi-core CPUs is great news, since it’s getting hard to get by without one these days.
3: Thirty-eight percent (669,871) have at least 2GB of RAM in their systems. Thirty percent (528,900) have 1GB.
DDR2 RAM has never been cheaper, and more RAM is the easiest way to smooth out your computer’s speed. Frankly there’s no reason you shouldn’t have 2GB in your system, unless it’s so old it doesn’t support DDR2 at all.
4: Nvidia drivers are running on 62% (1,086,597), compared to ATI’s 30% (533,495).
Yeah, Nvidia’s cards have been rocking for the past three years, and ATI has been struggling to keep up. They’ve shown a little life lately with aggressive pricing on the HD 3870 X2 cards - but the Steam survey shows that only a handful of gamers have taken them up on the offer so far.
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