A couple of days ago Valve released the results of their Steam hardware survey, which collects data on the computers of more than 1.7 million Steam users who opted-in (don’t worry, Valve isn’t spying on you unless you give permission). This isn’t the end-all-be-all of PC gaming statistics, but it’s an excellent sample of the hardware we game on.



Key points:

1: Only three percent (55,092) reported being on dialup access. Forty-seven percent (839,122) have connections of 1 megabit or faster. The largest group (543,809) are on 2Mb connections.
It’s always surprising to hear that someone out there is still dialing in to the internet at speeds slower than many of us get on our cell phones, but we have to remember that certain rural areas of the US still don’t offer broadband service. On the bright side, it’s awesome to see so many people on high-speed broadband.

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.