What Computer Hardware are You Running?
After some great rounds of Team Fortress 2 this morning, I got one of those annoying Steam popups asking me to take a hardware survey. They promised to share the results with me, and I thought that was a pretty fair trade. What surprised me was the handy system info they were willing to share. Bare in mind, these are gamers, so there are a lot of high end computer systems in the mix, but it was still a great sampling of the current state of users’ computers and it has some things that should be considered when you start building your next project.
Primary Display Resolution
Out of 87,4450 Users
Resolution | #Users | %
800 x 600 | 13,848 | 1.58 %
1024 x 768 | 275,816 | 31.54 %
1280 x 960 | 351,374 | 40.18 %
1600 x 1200 | 16,094 | 1.84 %
1680 x 1050 | 77,349 | 8.85 %
1920 x 1200 | 19,795 | 2.26 %
Ahhh! 70% of the user base is running at 1024 x 768 & 1280 x 960 resolution. I would still consider those “low” resolutions. Only around 10% of the users are running what I would consider “high” resolution monitors.
Also interesting to note, are the operating systems that people are running.
Windows Version
Windows XP | 727,772 | 83.23 %
Windows Vista | 112,279 | 12.84 %
As you can see, Windows Vista is the gamer’s operating system of choice…
Physical CPUs
1 cpu 540,791 61.84
2 cpus 305,658 34.95 %
4 cpus 27,922 3.19 %
It is nice to see, that multi-core cpus are spreading quite nicely too.
I believe you can see the results of the Valve Hardware Survey without needing to take it.
I kinda wish it had more information. You know, random, non-important things like, usb ports, USB Hubs (and what they have plugged in), misc. devices, etc. I would just love to compare how much random junk other people have plugged into their computer compared to what I have floating around on my desk. 
Oh yeah, Happy New Year!
Thanks for sharing