Steam has just released their July 2010 hardware and Software survey, giving us a great cross-section of the segment of the PC gaming market that is using Steam.<\/p>\n
PC Video Cards<\/strong><\/p>\n As is to be expected, Nvidia and ATI lead the PC video card charts, with Nvidia representing 59.11% and ATI 32.98% of the total video card pool.<\/p>\n Intel snagged 6.22%, and 1.69% was attributed to ‘Other.’ The ATI Radeon HD 4800 series of cards was the most common range among users, with 7.55% of survey participants owning a card in this range.<\/p>\n Steam splits the DirectX version statistics according to platform, since Windows 7 is the only DirectX 11 capable operating system. As of may 2010, only 5.6% of the total hardware pool was DirectX 11 capable. DirectX 10 dominates with 56.36% on Windows 7. A combination of DX10 and DX11 cards on Windows XP makes up 16.76% of the GPU hardware pool. <\/p>\n CPUs<\/strong><\/p>\n Between December 2008 and May 2010, users adopting a 4 CPU system increased by 15.45%. At the end of July 2010, the number of quad core users made up 27.63% of the hardware pool. Dual cores still dominate with 55% and single core systems make up 15.89% of systems. Six and eight core users have started to make a mark in the figures, holding 0.34% and 0.06% respectively.<\/p>\n Intel dominates with 72.37% followed by their only competitor, AMD with 27.63%. The majority of Intel users, 26.02%, are running processors at speeds between 2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz, whilst the majority of AMD users, 8.34%, are running at 2.0 Ghz to 2.29 Ghz.<\/p>\n Mac <\/strong><\/p>\n The introduction of Steam to Mac OS has provided to opportunity to gather some data on this segment of the gaming market. 46.78% of Mac users are running a Macbook Pro. 23.18% are running an iMac. 20.25% are running a regular Macbook. Bringing up the rear is Mac Pro and Mac Mini with 5.41% and 3.44% respectively. <\/p>\n 53.61% of Mac users have 4GB or RAM, followed by 31.15% with 2GB. 7.99% are running 5+GB.<\/p>\n Software<\/strong><\/p>\n Currently only representing Windows, with Mac stats on the way soon. <\/p>\n Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat were the most common applications to be found on Steam user’s PCs, with 96.79% and 73.18% respectively. <\/p>\n Firefox is the most popular browser, found on 63.05% of users PCs. Internet Explorer is only used by 19.82% of Steam users, and Chrome by 11.56%.<\/p>\n Windows Live messenger is the most popular messenger program, found on 52.58% of systems, followed by Skype on 41.75%.<\/p>\n µTorrent can be found on 29.41% of systems, followed by Vuze (Azureus) on 4.37% and BitTorrent on 5.28%.<\/p>\n For a detailed breakdown of all these statistics, be sure to visit the Steam survey page<\/a>.<\/p>\n