I find 64 bit Vista to be slower, probably because of the added overhead of WOW64 and all the 32bit code in there still running. Unless your running an SQL Server or AutoCAD and such, running a 64bit OS is pointless E-PEN IMO

Wow. So much ignorance in so little space.

"Do gamers still not realize how cheap 4GB RAM kits are these days?"

I do, and unless I start to run MORE than 4GB, the loss of a few 100 mb isn't much to worry about. Until games cease to run well on a 4gb machine, and start shipping with 64 bit executables, why bother? I find 64 bit Vista to be slower, probably because of the added overhead of WOW64 and all the 32bit code in there still running. Unless your running an SQL Server or AutoCAD and such, running a 64bit OS is pointless E-PEN IMO

"Perhaps PC vendors are to blame for continuing to ship 32-bit systems despite the improved driver support for Vista x64. "

x64 isn't anywhere close to 32-bit for legacy, hence why they push 32-bit. The OEM's don't want to deal with user backlash on non-working legacy devices.

Oh and they still aren't selling systems with 4+G yet to the majority of users.

1.73% of Steam users still cling to the now five-year-old Radeon 9600 series.

Am I the only one who read that and said aloud, "WOW". I had one... 6 years ago, I had one... wow. (At least I think it was 6 not 5 years ago)

"Creative's minuscule share compared to integrated audio in a demographic where they should dominate"

Creative's products just aren't as good as they're made out to be. Read most audiophile reviews (including TR's own audio reviews), the Asus Xonar and the older Stryker and Auzentech cards. A 7% performance increase for $100 is nothing worthwhile, particularly as Vista's new sound architecture "obviated the need for" (i.e. made incompatible) much of EAX, which now runs through OpenAL iirc.

Look on ebay for twice as much as creative's cards are actually worth. In my experience, they use cheap effects to make things sound better, and the build quality just isn't up to the competition. If you're looking for real sound cards, go for the ones above, or m-audio / digidesign / other professional kit.

"Sure, it helps that WoW is also one of the best-designed MMORPGs ever"

Care to back that up with anything resembling a fact?

'Why gamers would be migrating to XP x64 instead of Vista x64"
simple answer:

XP64 is still sold in white box stores where as XP32 is no longer being sold. If you don't want vista and you want to game you don't have much choice.

"One final note of interest in the Windows data is that there's another OS with a growing gamer user base: Windows XP 64-bit, which was up a minuscule 0.03% over the previous month. Why gamers would be migrating to XP x64 instead of Vista x64 is anyone's guess, because in my experience, Vista actually has better driver and application support. The minds of gamers truly work in mysterious ways."

Because try as they will, some people just plain hate Vista....... and no it's not always for 'silly reasons' - I for one find it horrendous.

"One final note of interest in the Windows data is that there's another OS with a growing gamer user base: Windows XP 64-bit, which was up a minuscule 0.03% over the previous month. Why gamers would be migrating to XP x64 instead of Vista x64 is anyone's guess"

Probably a bug in the reporting. Steam incorrectly reports me as using XP 64-bit when I'm actually running Vista 64.

Since I still can't activate The Orange Box
so I've bought more retail box games:
Far Cry 2, Dead Space, Assassin's Creed, Biohazard 4, etc.
and just a few hours ago, GTA IV and Company of Heroes Gold Edition
(these two will go to my niece, not for me.)
I totally forget to load Steam to play all HL 2 series and its bundles
and yeah, I was not included in the recent survey
and don't want to participate.
So the statistic is just from gamers who still use Steam.

Its Microsoft's most stable OS to date. Its running on the majority of 64-bit windows servers because its the same as Windows Server 2003 64-bit. If you cant set it up for your pc properly its not the OSs fault. That was response to #29.

This is not relevant. I'm not answering to any study.Probably the people how answer are casual gamers, with 1 Gb of ram max , and 1024 rezolution.

If you want to see real hardware results see how many bought Crysis, Assassins Creed, GTA4 etc. ( = high end market)
Or audiosurf, Darwinia, Audiosurf, Aquaria, WoW expantions etc(=low end market)

Does 49.27% constitute a majority, technically speaking?

Edit: beyond that, I think that Mr. Butrovich has made some strange assumptions. Whay does he think that Creative should rule among gamers? In the end, discreet audio is a pretty poor value, especially given that very very few people are audiophiles in even the slightest.

Any why should game developers push DX 10? What is in it for them? It seems to me that the ones that would benefit most from DX10 adoption among developers are Microsoft, ATI, and Nvidia, not the developers themselves.

Maybe it is the mind of Butrovich that works in mysterious ways?

My laptop is 1024x768.

I fail to see--particularly with all the killer games released this year (Sins of a Solar Empire, STALKER: CS, Fallout 3, et al)--how anyone can be disenfranchised with PC gaming, especially when you consider that you can build a pretty damn good gaming PC for $500.

PC Gaming: Dying since 1995, FTW!

If all my games ran in Wine I'd dump Windows altogether.
If Valve made a point of creating Linux ports for their own and third party stuff sold through Steam I'd be even happier.

1204x768 isn't native, it's just what's running. I find a distressing number of users running 1024x768 on a 1280x1024 panel and then telling me about how panels aren't as sharp as CRTs were.

I love how this blog posts says that developers should start programming for multiple cores because of the huge market share but also says that developers should start programming DX10 in order to get the low market share of Vista + DX10 GPU higher.

Develop for capabilities already present, develop for capabilities that are not readily present in order to increase them. That's some great advise there TR.

/sarcasm

Windows XP looks like the dominant operating system for PC gamers, with nearly 69% of Steam users holding on to it. However, its presence is on the decline (down 1.28% in November), while Windows Vista is up 1.36%. Vista runs almost exactly 30% of all surveyed Steam clients

?

I don't remember being solicited for this survey, but it's possible I did and ignored it by accident.

woops maybe im one of those still on an intel 865g chipset running CS1.6

it will be nice to compare gamer adoption of new iCore 7 processors and Windows Se7en OS next year on this survey, who knows, maybe it beats Vista's adoption, which has been lackluster if not less, considering ms had almost discontinued xp and it is practically impossible to acquire for example, a new laptop with xp, save for netbooks which hardly are gaming capable platforms.

laptop sales have overcome desktop sales for I don't know how long now, today more and more people are gaming on their laptops, and whichever gpu company wants to survive in the future, is going to need capable gpu design for a laptop envelope. to me, that's one of the reasons ati lost so much market share in the past quarters, where were the mobile 3870s?? gamers went on and purchased 8800 powered lappys

Edit: mistook bits for bytes.

hasnt nvidia always had a strong hold on the market?

Do you have to manual accept the steam hardware survey, of course its all auto detecting but do I still have to click some option to include my computer in the survey?

Or is it just automatic for all computers with the steam client installed?

If only for the selfish reason of increasing support for quad cores, 64 bit vista, and the 4800 series, I hope I'm included.

I believe they ask you the first time the survey runs on a given installed computer, and then you're auto-included for all subsequent ones on that installation.

Video cards: Nvidia is dominating AMD (referred to as ATI in Valve's data)

:/

'Why gamers would be migrating to XP x64 instead of Vista x64"
simple answer:

"lol i'm l33t i use more than 4gigs of RAM"
+
"lol i'm l33t i hate vista! vista sucks!"