Steam has published the results of its June 2012 hardware and software survey, providing some interesting – albeit hardly surprising – views at the technology people using Valve's digital distribution platform are relying on. When it comes to CPUs, for example, Intel is the undisputed leader with 72% usage compared to AMD's 28%. Almost half of Steam users have dual-core processors, while 38% are running quad-core parts, a 3.1% increase over the last 18 months according to the data.
When it comes to graphics cards, 47% of the surveyed computers were using an Nvidia GPU, while 35% used AMD and as much as 11% used Intel's integrated graphics chips. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 was the single most popular card followed by the Intel HD Graphics 3000. That may seem surprising but actually Intel makes up for three of the five top GPUs – Nvidia and AMD are segmented into many more models.
Counting only DirectX 11 GPUs the GTX 560 accounted for 10.28% market share, with the GTX 460 taking the second spot at 5.82% and the Radeon HD 5770 coming up third with 4.85%. The most popular display resolution is 1920 x 1080 or 3840 x 1080 for multi-monitor configurations.
On the software front, Windows 7 64-bit is by far the most popular operating system with a 54% share. Systems running Windows XP 32-bit came up third with 15% and outnumber both 32 and 64 installations of Vista combined. Meanwhile, Mac OS X still represents a tiny fraction of Steam usage at around 4%.
You can check out the full report on Steam's website. The information gathered from Steam users to have opted to participate in the anonymous survey and is used by the company to make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer.