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Valve hardware survey shows gamers yet to embrace Vista

arstechnica.com — The latest results for Valve's Steam hardware survey are in, and they provide a valuable look at the types of systems most gamers are using. They also show a much lower uptake of Windows Vista than Microsoft will likely be happy with.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 5, 2007

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  • GawtMilk, on 10/11/2007, -3/+426% is higher than I thought. NVidia drivers are currently awful for Vista, and around 60% of Steam users are NVidia users, according to the statistics.
  • brufleth, on 10/11/2007, -5/+42I like Windows XP on my home machine. I just don't have a desire to install Vista. What's the big advantage? The slick UI doesn't matter when I'm just booting up a game anyway.

    Most of that 5.36% is probably people who have bought newer computers that came with Vista.

    I could maybe see the reason to upgrade if you use the OS UI extensively (I wouldn't mind it at work) but on a machine primarily for gaming it only make sense to upgrade when it is required or offers significant in game enhancements which don't exists yet.
  • jackpot, on 10/11/2007, -1/+34I feel sorry for the 12 guys who run steam on an 11" screen
  • NeoOfTheSith, on 10/11/2007, -7/+33Stats - Blog = http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
  • Detritus, on 10/11/2007, -11/+28Hmm I didn't read the blogspam, so forgive me if this is mentioned there... but I thought this was interesting at the source: http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

    Windows Vista 19,707 5.36 %
    but the people with Vista that can actually use DX10 is only:
    DirectX10 Systems (Vista with DirectX10 GPU) - 1.24% of users

    I'm sitting on a 8800 in XP because the performance is so much better in XP, when Vista and the Drivers get their ***** together (by SP1) I'll consider the switch. I don't care about Crysis or Shadowrun. ET: Quake Wars and TF2 both support DX9.
  • dn11, on 10/11/2007, -6/+20arstechnica = one of the most respected tech news/analysis sources on the web that brought the data to our attention with informed commentary and a link in the first sentence

    you = lamer
  • Paktu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14"The most popular primary display resolution was 1280 x 800 at 41.79 percent, although given the relative paucity of widescreen monitors, it seems likely that this was a typo in the results, and the real value is 1280 x 1024."

    Actually I'll bet this is not a typo. 1280x800 is a very common laptop resolution.
  • bemenaker, on 10/11/2007, -5/+16@Blacknkight,

    "Just because Valve has a server that shows a low adoption rate for gamers doesn't mean much. "

    Uhm, WHAT?! A sampling of 300,000 users is a pretty damn large sample size, and is extremely telling of the market as a whole. That sample size is 100x's what common public opinion surveys use.

    Vista adoption is slow because of a few things:
    1) MS has a reputation of releasing a buggy OS's, and if you're smart you wait til first service pack, (actually, what OS doesn't fit this)
    2) What compelling features are there too warrant it when it cost so freakin much, and XP works just fine, is stable, has drivers
    3) Driver support is still shaky as hell in Vista
    4) There is no HAVE TO HAVE program that is Vista only, be it games or apps or super duper ultra realistic 3-d pr0n
  • catalysis, on 10/11/2007, -3/+14He didn't say vista is buggy, he said people have not moved to it because "things don't work right." The reason why I and many others uninstalled vista is because of driver and device incompatibility.

    I am an end-user. I don't care who's fault it is, it either works or it doesn't.
  • Dalrek, on 10/11/2007, -6/+17*cough*http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116213 *cough*

    Home Basic is $160 retail, and Ultimate is $350 retail... but you can get them for $95 and $190 OEM, respectively
  • ayeroxor, on 10/11/2007, -3/+13dn11: "Blogspam" is used for any linked-to page that references an article but is usually mostly comprised of some *****'s unwanted opinion about the article, and does not actually contain the majority of the article. The reader then has to click on another link to get the entire article.

    Welcome to teh internets.
  • Negyxo, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10they're probably running steam on their carputers, so don't feel too bad.
  • GawtMilk, on 10/11/2007, -13/+21"...don't have to shell out hundreds..."

    You don't have to shell out hundreds. It's not a stranglehold. Do you want DX10? Buy Vista. Do you care? Don't buy Vista. WOW MONOPOLY!

    And plus, what DRM is there on Vista? There's the capability to run files that won't run on other operating system. Vista never removes functionality that is available on other operating systems. Can your Linux-based PC play HD-DVDs? Thanks to the "OMG LEAKED KEY!" it can. However, this is what Vista could do out of the box. Microsoft paid licensing fees to get that capability.
  • emorgoch, on 10/11/2007, -3/+11@betterth

    I have an Athlon X2 4200+, 2GB of OCZ Platinum RAM, and a nV 7800GTX in my system. Playing CS 1.6 on XP, I get 60 fps no questions asked, but playing it on Vista, I will drop to 20 fps when there's more than 2 players on the screen.

    I'm not saying Vista is bad. I thoroughly enjoy it as a productivity OS, and am using it as my primary. However, there are still a lot of application compatibility problems that exist with it, and there is a performance hit with games, which is why I also keep my XP install around for a dual-boot.
  • carpespasm, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9same as doc here. I'm pretty OS ambiguous, but macs does video editing with less hassle than other systems, so i use a mac. I'm on windows right now and use ubuntu on all my older machines. i just used whatever works best for the situation.
  • dn11, on 10/11/2007, -10/+17"Hmm I didn't read the blogspam"
    WTF? any article submitted to digg now = blogspam? why do you even come to digg, it is all blogspam!
  • Terc, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8doctorsax, thank you for handling that so maturely. I miss the days when digg saw comments like your more often.

    I have to say, I administrate Windows and Linux machines. While I have a Windows desktop at home, I prefer using my Mac Mini because at the end of the day, I just want to do basic computing tasks in relative comfort
  • puto, on 10/11/2007, -4/+10I have the new 8800GTS and I will not install vista (Har!) until TF2 comes out supporting DX10.

  • CompIsMyRx, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8People using Wine default to Windows 2000 because of how WINE's system works (it officially emulates Windows 2000 by default).
  • radu79, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9We have a small online game, and only about 3% of the visitors on our website use Vista. About 10% use Linux, 2% use Win 2K, 1.5% use OSX, and the rest use XP.
    When we had a poll on our forums about the OSes people use, the results were quite different, about 30% using a non MS OS (mostly Linux and some OSX and *BSD).
  • securegeek, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7"Surprisingly, the leading sound "card" in the survey was the lowly Realtek AC97 integrated audio chipset (24.21 percent), with the once-proud Sound Blaster line living on in less than ten percent of gamers' PCs"

    Funny they found this surpising.
    It's not like the early days when audio cards made a major difference in sound quality.
    The few frames per second you gain by using a Audigy sound card, is negated when you sink the $100-$150 the card would cost you on a better video card, or more memory.
  • estvir, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6The truth is that ATI/Nvidia have both been dragging their feet but with Nvidia for a lot of people their drivers have been fine since the early 10x.xx range.

    Also, another truth is that they're are morons who blame Vista for slack hardware vendors.
  • Sirocco, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7You can dig him down, but he's nailed it. You'll note in the "Games For Windows" specifications that Xbox360 gamepad support as well as widescreen display support are mandatory. Sound familiar? "Games For Windows" is Microsoft's way of pushing developers to Vista and 360 by forcing them to support common features. This is hardly surprising.

    http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173456.aspx
  • doubleblack, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7I've been running Steam on Vista since Thanksgiving, no issues or anything - I am pretty satisfied with Valve's Vista Support...don't be afraid! Some other providers might not support Vista as well, and Valve can still optimize a thing or two...but I'm satisfied :)
  • selrahc, on 10/11/2007, -4/+9"If you want to play PC games in a few years, you'll need Vista."

    Yes, and you have to buy next generation consoles to play new games too. Just play your old games if you don't want to upgrade.
  • dn11, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8it was far below threshold
  • BrandonMills, on 10/11/2007, -5/+9Is there a 'gamer boot' mode in Vista? I know there was talk about this during developing, and it would make so much sense that I'd pick up a copy today if it exists.

    So much crap is turned on by default during a normal Windows boot. The reason consoles like the 360 can get away with running fast on slower hardware is because they don't have as much OS bloat to deal with. Even XP has a considerable amount of bloat. How about a boot option that lets me boot with only features needed for gaming?
  • catalysis, on 10/11/2007, -6/+10Sound blaster cards lose some of their functionality. My podXT live guitar processor has issues, as well as my firewire mic preamp. I have several other devices that lack full-features on vista or are totally non-functional.
  • naio, on 10/11/2007, -12/+16Oh please OBKenobi... STFU!. You are making assertions that you can't back up. Try to be a better troll in the future.
  • bigfatdummy, on 10/11/2007, -13/+17The fact is that people haven't moved to Vista because things just don't work correctly yet.

  • Trixrox, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4No surprise, Vista is an expensive upgrade, and most gamers don't really need to buy a new PC to play any games Available on Steam.

    Vista works nicely for gaming though, at least if you have ATI.
  • nsjoker, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5XP has another 2 good years left I think.
  • chris9902, on 10/11/2007, -7/+11It's still 100% more than Macs.
  • StephenCIreland, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5whatt decent gamer buys a stock pc ? building your own is half the adventure
  • estvir, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4> Vista is not OpenGL friendly.

    Yes, yes it is, but drivers from ATI/Nvidia originally weren't. The first bunch of drivers from Nvidia were horrible, at first I couldn't even run 1.6 than soon after I could but there would be artifacts, bizarre problems, slow performance, etc but for months now OpenGL games, like 1.6, have worked perfectly.

    I also mostly went back to XP/Ubuntu till the Nvidia drivers were sorted out for me and that was months ago, I've been playing games perfectly (From games like CS to SupCom, CoH, etc) for months now on my 7600GT.

    > Honestly, I'm not trying to start a flame war, but I just don't understand why CS is still so popular.

    In all honestly, I think BF sucks. I played 1942 at LANs, mostly just a mate and myself flying in helicopters in Desert Combat and I've tried getting into the online scene for BF2 but personally I find the game horrible.

    There hasn't really been a good FPS to displace CS, well, there have been lots of good ones (DoD:S, HL2DM, etc which I tend to play more than 1.6 these days), but none which have caught on because let's face it, they didn't manage to capture the CS gamers attention for whatever reason. It also doesn't help that Q4 sucked and aside from ET:QW there isn't much else coming out.
  • troglodytejb, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6Specs for gaming on vista actually aren't that bad; the majority of the issues people have are poor vista drivers combined with legacy DX9 support. A machine running DX10 in a designed-for-dx10 game is far MORE efficient than DX9- or will be when they're available.

    As for memory, Vista idles high, at about 400-500 megs of RAM used for system idle. The rest of the memory usage is for active caching of commonly used apps- which is instantly dumped as soon as you need it.
  • f4nt0m4s, on 10/11/2007, -5/+8Counter-Strike 1.6 (aka the old CS) is built on OpenGL.

    More Steam users play CS 1.6 than CS Source.

    Vista is not OpenGL friendly.

    I know I had a few issues getting my nVidia card to run CS the right way in Vista...and simple things like smoke grenades tie down my system a bit. Not to mention the 8 year old game is running up my processors a lot more than i think it should be. Everyone is waving bye to OpenGL...except Counter-Strike. The Hardware and Direct3d Options suck ass to play CS in too.

    And ***** source, don't even mention that I should just upgrade and play that.

  • pcp777, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6When I built my rig in late March I had the choice of Vista Basic or XP Home, same price of $99 at Fry's ( FYI-You get a special if you tell them its for a rig you're building)

    Went with XP as I don't want to mess with driver and software compatibility issues.

    When I decide I want to buy a DX10 game I will consider it and an 8800 series card, pretty much holding out for SP1 before I do anything...and it better be a BAD ASS game for me to shell out that kinda money.



    ABIT NF-MNS
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
    1022MB RAM Corsair
    300 GB Seagate SATA
    PNY NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT 512 MB
    SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio Gamer's Edition
    USB Saitek Eclipse
    USB Emprex
    Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)

  • estvir, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4> No one here sees the problem with needing a gaming rig to run an OS?

    But.. you don't ?

    http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/vintagevista.ars
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=126

    And there's more.
  • bemenaker, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Normal? Not sure, gamer, very reflective.

    Gamers are supposed to be the tech adopters, we are normally the one's out on the front line of tech.
  • The_Dude, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I know what your saying about the high cost of entry to simply play a few upcoming DX10 titles with jaw-dropping settings. It's pretty high, but it just is what it is. Heck, it was pretty high a couple years ago when Doom III and all that came out. The only upside to PC FPS gaming is that it is moving so slowly now that you really don't need to build a new rig every few years.
  • grumbel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3These days you could most likely render CS1.6 via software rendering and it would run fine, CS isn't exactly the most hardware demanding game these days.
  • venom8599, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"Who wants to spend $200 on the basic version and $400 on the Ultimate version (which by the way is the only version that comes with the "game tweaker") when there are no real advantages at this time to upgrade?"

    I'm running Ultimate (no key eval period, just to see what the big deal was), and there's no "game tweaker"--at least not yet anyway. In fact, for most people, I'd imagine Home Premium or Business would be enough--either Media Center/360 Connectivity/HD Movie Maker is important, or Domain connectivity/small-business tools are more important. The only reason to get Ultimate is in the rare case that you need both, or you absolutely have to have the Ultimate Extras (Which is basically DreamScene and the Hold 'Em Poker game at the moment...)
  • estvir, on 10/11/2007, -16/+19Phony Vista sales figures = Prove it.
    .. the threats against Linux = Reminds me of the 'Go have a cry to your mummy' line and the hypocrisy is amazing.
    .. misrepresenting Vista hardware requirements = Please tell me you aren't talking about those morons who sued because their computers couldn't run all of Vista ?
    .. numerous other lies and exaggerations told in an effort to sabotage MS's competitors. = Prove it + FSF/Apple/Others never do this, right ?

    Hah.
  • Sirocco, on 10/11/2007, -4/+7>> Yes, and you have to buy next generation consoles to play new games too. Just play your old games if you don't want to upgrade.

    The point was that DX10 is Vista-only, which you seem to have missed entirely. DX10 locks you into a tight development path that basically points to two targets : Windows Vista and Xbox360. As a gamer, if you are perfectly happy running XP you'll be screwed when all you favorite games start coming out using DX10, which they will.

    I'm sure creative folks (read: bored college kids) will write a wrapper to get DX10 games working under XP, but the whole point is it's just Microsoft's way of forcing players as well as developers to either adopt Vista or the 360.
  • gcnaddict, on 10/11/2007, -5/+8"Windows Vista 20,097 5.37 %"

    That's still pretty good considering the ***** that graphics card manufacturers have been giving to Microsoft and the gamers. That's 20,000 upgraded gamers after 4 months... though most of them probably just came on board via OEMs.
  • naio, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I always thought that troubleshooting the OS was a karma exclusive to Linux users... ;-)
  • Sirocco, on 10/11/2007, -9/+12>> It's not a stranglehold. Do you want DX10? Buy Vista. Do you care? Don't buy Vista.

    If you want to play PC games in a few years, you'll need Vista.
  • TheG2, on 10/11/2007, -8/+11Things work perfectly fine for me. Tell me, what "things" don't work right for you?
  • Topher06, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4These days, nobody runs out and buys an OS when it comes out (except Mac users). What will hurt MS in the long run is the fact that nobody runs out and buys a new computer every 12 months either. Eventually Vista will be the standard installed base for PC's as people buy new and replace old computers, so it will happen in a couple of years, but it was the same story with XP. All this talk about people not needing XP when they had a perfectly good Windows 2000 box, now they won't get rid of XP for Vista. People have short memories these days.

    In the meantime nVidia and ATI should be working to improve driver performance under Vista so that there some compelling reason to even buy a new computer. Also, it would be nice if Valve came out with a new game more then a couple of times a decade. Nothing would drive a gamer to buy a whole new system and embrace Vista like HL3 using DX10, or even a reworked HL2 engine using DX10.
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