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A couple of days ago I went to Valve's site to install the latest version of the Steam client for those free goodies mentioned earlier (Portal, HL2 Deathmatch, etc.).

During the download I've accepted the invitation to complete the short hardware survey started on November 13 last year, out of pure curiosity. The journo inside me crawled to the surface (again...that bastard...) and made me take some notes, which I'll share with you now, against your will...

According to the numbers, which you can see here, there are very few people with machines strong enough to run Windows Vista at its full potential (no to mention that Crysis is just a beautiful dream for these poor people...). Out of almost 1 million gamers that have completed the survey until now, more than 57% own an Intel CPU, while about 42% of them have an AMD installed. Most of these processors are clocked between 2.2GHz and 3.0GHz , the proportion of those using speedy chips (above 3.0GHz) dropping significantly when it comes to the Sunnyvale, CA-based Advanced Micro Devices.

But what is really significant (and this is the reason for the partnership between Valve and Nvidia mentioned earlier) is the overwhelming proportion of those using Nvidia-built GPUs. Most of them are included the "mainstream" category, which means that those who say PC gaming is dying might have a strong argument here.

Now let's just hope, for the sake of old times, that these numbers are wrong...