The results of Valve's latest Steam hardware survey, begun on May 30, have just been released to the public. Over 330,000 unique samples have been received so far, and the results—while self-selecting—are useful to anyone interested in the type of computing hardware a typical PC gamer is sporting these days and his or her OS of choice.

Valve has been running these surveys over Steam since 2004 and has always provided the results back to the public. The 2007 version reveals that only 2.08 percent of users are still chugging away on a 56k modem, with the majority (33.43 percent) enjoying broadband with speeds over 2Mbps. In terms of CPU power, 21.71 percent of respondents had two CPUs available (either two sockets or dual-core chips) with only 0.20 percent boasting quad CPU goodness. The line was split fairly evenly between Intel and AMD, with 51.37 percent using the former and 48.63 percent using the latter.

The rivalry between ATI and NVIDIA was more one-sided, with 58.58 people using NVIDIA graphics cards compared to only 36.38 percent with ATI. Integrated graphics chipsets comprised a mere 5.03 percent of users. 53.19 percent of gamers had a graphics card which defaulted to DirectX 9's Shader Model 3 (GeForce 6xxx and above, ATI Radeon X1xx and above) while only 21.67 percent defaulted to the older DX9 Shader Model 2 (older ATI Radeons) and gamers limited to DirectX 8 and 7 paths represented only 15.5 and 6.01 percent of the total, respectively. DirectX 10? Only 1.21 percent of users have both DirectX10 and a DirectX 10-capable video card.

In terms of operating systems, Windows XP again led the pack with 93 percent. Only 5.27 percent of respondents had upgraded to Windows Vista, with the rest on Windows 2000 or Server 2003. The low uptake of Vista even among high-end gamers will undoubtedly make some developers rethink whether or not to invest heavily in DirectX 10, which is Vista-only. Many gamers reported that they tested Vista but went back to XP for various reasons—when DirectX 10-capable graphics cards become more mainstream and Vista graphics drivers achieve higher levels of maturity, the Vista numbers should increase.

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. Not good news for Creative, who have been struggling as of late. 76.86 percent of users reported having microphones installed, which should be an indication to the PC gaming industry that it is probably time to include integrated voice chat support across the board.

Gamers love their large displays, but the uptake of widescreen monitors has so far been relatively modest (13 percent of the total) and even for standard 4:3 displays, the majority of units are of the 17-inch category (50.54 percent). Only 2.82 percent of respondents are using multiple monitors. 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. Fully 37.64 percent are still hanging on at 1024 x 768.