I made an analysis of the Steam Hardware Survey as of today (2nd of October) just for fun, and later decided I may share it with you. Interesting stuff if you're interested in how the PC platform is evolving.
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The State of the PC
Windows XP 32 bit
XP32's user base is rapidly eroding, but it's sheer market share (more than 50%) will keep it on top for a while. It's interesting to observe that Windows 7 64 bit is growing most although it's not even officially released yet, hinting that 7 64 will become extremely popular, though XP32 is hard to beat.
2 GB RAM
2 GB popularity is waning, though surprisingly, perhaps, 4 GB is trailing behind 3 GB both in growth and market share as the next amount of RAM to program for.
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
Unsurprisingly, Intel dominates the market with it's dual-cores. AMD, solo- and dual-cores are in decline with Intel, quad- and (just barely) tri-cores growing.
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 512MB
The ATI Radeon HD 4800 series seems to be the next big thing with a healthy growth and large market share. The ATI Radeon HD 5800, NVIDIA Fermi and Intel Larrabee will probably steal some growth from the 4800, but most of their market share will probably come from 8800 upgraders, so we're seeing the 4800 dominating in the short-term future. 1024 MB VRAM is becoming increasingly common.
1280 x 1024 Display
1280 x 1024 is unsurprisingly in decline with the 16:9 format growing with 1366 x 768 and 1920 x 1080 being the dominating resolutions growth-wise.
Realtek High Definition Audio
I'm unsure here, but it seems Realtek HD is in decline with Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio) growing. It might be that the former represents desktop Realtek HD systems with the latter representing notebook Realtek HD systems, which would coincide with PC gaming increasingly moving to notebooks.
DVD-drive
Sadly, Steam doesn't measure Blu-Ray Disc adoption, but it's not really relevant. Most developers would rather use multiple DVDs than a single BD until BD becomes as popular as DVD is, and games distribution is increasingly moving online anyway. BD might even never take off.
Microphone
No surprises here, PC's without microphone are bcoming increasingly rare.
100 to 249 GB Hard Disk Drive with 10 to 99 GB of free space
The status quo is abysmal and is unsurprisingly in rapid decline. 250 to 499 GB is the next big thing, with big market share and the most growth. Interestingly, the segment above 1 TB is grows almost as much as 250 to 499 GB, indicating that most consumers may skip the space between the two segments. Free HDD space is moving to the 100 to 499 GB segment.
2 Mb Internet connection
With the largest market share and the largest growth 2 Mb reigns supreme.
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Any thoughts?
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The State of the PC
Windows XP 32 bit
XP32's user base is rapidly eroding, but it's sheer market share (more than 50%) will keep it on top for a while. It's interesting to observe that Windows 7 64 bit is growing most although it's not even officially released yet, hinting that 7 64 will become extremely popular, though XP32 is hard to beat.
2 GB RAM
2 GB popularity is waning, though surprisingly, perhaps, 4 GB is trailing behind 3 GB both in growth and market share as the next amount of RAM to program for.
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
Unsurprisingly, Intel dominates the market with it's dual-cores. AMD, solo- and dual-cores are in decline with Intel, quad- and (just barely) tri-cores growing.
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 512MB
The ATI Radeon HD 4800 series seems to be the next big thing with a healthy growth and large market share. The ATI Radeon HD 5800, NVIDIA Fermi and Intel Larrabee will probably steal some growth from the 4800, but most of their market share will probably come from 8800 upgraders, so we're seeing the 4800 dominating in the short-term future. 1024 MB VRAM is becoming increasingly common.
1280 x 1024 Display
1280 x 1024 is unsurprisingly in decline with the 16:9 format growing with 1366 x 768 and 1920 x 1080 being the dominating resolutions growth-wise.
Realtek High Definition Audio
I'm unsure here, but it seems Realtek HD is in decline with Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio) growing. It might be that the former represents desktop Realtek HD systems with the latter representing notebook Realtek HD systems, which would coincide with PC gaming increasingly moving to notebooks.
DVD-drive
Sadly, Steam doesn't measure Blu-Ray Disc adoption, but it's not really relevant. Most developers would rather use multiple DVDs than a single BD until BD becomes as popular as DVD is, and games distribution is increasingly moving online anyway. BD might even never take off.
Microphone
No surprises here, PC's without microphone are bcoming increasingly rare.
100 to 249 GB Hard Disk Drive with 10 to 99 GB of free space
The status quo is abysmal and is unsurprisingly in rapid decline. 250 to 499 GB is the next big thing, with big market share and the most growth. Interestingly, the segment above 1 TB is grows almost as much as 250 to 499 GB, indicating that most consumers may skip the space between the two segments. Free HDD space is moving to the 100 to 499 GB segment.
2 Mb Internet connection
With the largest market share and the largest growth 2 Mb reigns supreme.
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Any thoughts?
