Steam fixes its hardware survey system. Now shows large changes in OS, CPU and more.

[GoodBytes]

Valve announces that it has fixed its Steam hardware survey by reworking its system that evaluate when to perform one.

The company explains that before, Steam was doing its hardware survey once per year, but the tracking was done on the client-side and not server side. This meant that cyber coffee, where sending their surveys multi-times as each user that logins would have the account generated, and doesn't store any changes from the last session once logoff, as the account is removed. This results in Steam thinking that it never did the survey and does it again.

Quote

The latest Steam Hardware Survey incorporates a number of fixes that address over counting of cyber cafe customers that occurred during the prior seven months.

Historically, the survey used a client-side method to ensure that systems were counted only once per year, in order to provide an accurate picture of the entire Steam user population. It turns out, however, that many cyber cafes manage their hardware in a way that was causing their customers to be over counted.

 

As Valve explains, as cyber cafe are quiet popular in many regions in Asia, it boosted things like Windows 7 OS popularity, Quad Core CPUs and Simplified Chinese system language.

Quote

[We] started seeing larger-than-usual movement in certain stats, notably an increase in Windows 7 usage, an increase in quad-core CPU usage, as well as changes in CPU and GPU market share. This period also saw a large increase in the use of Simplified Chinese. All of these coincided with an increase in Steam usage in cyber cafes in Asia, whose customers were being over counted in the survey.

 

As a result, there is a big jump in this latest survey. Here are some highlights:

 

• Windows 10 64-bit is up 17.41% (now is: 53.10%)
• Windows 7 64-bit is down 20.90% (now is: 36.15%)
• 1080p resolution is down 10.62% (now is: 61.39%)
• English is up 11.23%  (now is: 34.37%)
• Simplified Chinese is down 21.89%  (now is: 30.35%)
• Dual Core CPU is up 5.79% (now is: 31.26%)
• Quad Core CPU is down 8.16% (now is: 61.22%)

 

Source and full stats: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

 

 

Although not mentioned, I suspect that system re-installs would also trigger a double dip in doing the hardware survey, as it might think it has never done it before. Although, I don't think it contributed a lot. Mind you, 16 core CPUs are up 0.01%. I suspect Linus doings. You can't hide Linus! We know what is coming for your next videos!

 

The stats also explain the strange behaviors where tech forum would indicates that Windows 10 is growing in usage by people buying new system and getting the latest Windows OS, but Steam was indicate this constant tight race between Windows 10 and 7, where some months Windows 10 was winning by a hair, and other months being bellow Win7 by a hair. Now it is more clear on why this behavior was happening, and the real number shows. Similarly, but to a lesser extent 1080p screen. Many gamers are opting with high resolution screens, and more and more laptops have higher resolution screens, yet 1080p was pushing forward. Now, while 1080p is still the predominant resolution, it dropped a lot, reflecting more reality.

[linustouchtips]

dual core went up what?

[GoodBytes]

1 minute ago, linustouchtips said:

dual core went up what?

Ultarbooks and many laptops are powered by Intel's U series CPUs which, beside this new 8th gen Intel CPU models, are dual core CPUs.

[BristolBrick]

I'm quite surprised Windows 7 64bit lost so much, and literally every other single type of windows is up. XP, Win 7 32bit, hell even that piece of crap windows 8 is up.

[Nocte]

2 minutes ago, linustouchtips said:

dual core went up what?

Several laptops are still dualcores, but many consumers are not aware of this as they are labelled as "quad-cores" because of hyper-threading (or probably they do not even know what cores are/do ).

[Blebekblebek]

I still have 5 machines Pentium that run most steam games perfectly.

 

The AMD vs The world graph is quite disheartening. Though maybe only in gaming, in other news, AMD GPU are very popular for mining.

[Nocte]

1 minute ago, BristolBrick said:

I'm quite surprised Windows 7 64bit lost so much, and literally every other single type of windows is up. XP, Win 7 32bit, hell even that piece of crap windows 8 is up.

The others are up by only 0.something per cent... Barely any difference.

I am not surprised that it is down by so much. I am actually surprised that it is still sitting at 36% considering that it's almost 10-years old.

[Nocte]

2 minutes ago, Blebekblebek said:

The AMD vs The world graph is quite disheartening.

Are you only talking about graphics or also CPUs?

CPU they have been gaining ground since Ryzen (not surprising imo):

[BristolBrick]

Just now, Eibe said:

The others are up by only 0.something per cent... Barely any difference.

I am not surprised that it is down by so much. I am actually surprised that it is still sitting at 36% considering that it's almost 10-years old.

By the way over what time-span are these numbers changing? And yes, the increase in other windows is small, but not compared to the following they already had. I am surprised given windows 7 works fine and 10 has been involved in a bunch of privacy scandals. Personally i hate the damn thing and will never again use 10, 7 until the wheels fall off then linux!

[Blebekblebek]

With rise of gaming cafe mostly in china I don't think it's big surprise that win 10 gaining more popularity, Win 7 support is going to end soon, it's not a wise choice to use (or even buy) an OS that going to be out of date soon, licensing isn't cheap.

[linustouchtips]

6 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Ultarbooks and many laptops are powered by Intel's U series CPUs which, beside this new 8th gen Intel CPU models, are dual core CPUs.

You would think there would be an identification for either a desktop or laptop that would be some useful info imo. 

[Nocte]

1 minute ago, BristolBrick said:

By the way over what time-span are these numbers changing? And yes, the increase in other windows is small, but not compared to the following they already had. I am surprised given windows 7 works fine and 10 has been involved in a bunch of privacy scandals. Personally i hate the damn thing and will never again use 10, 7 until the wheels fall off then linux!

The only "scandal" I heard of was the fact that it collected information about Microsoft Edge URLs and Microsoft Store apps activity. That's nothing considering to the data that you give to Facebook, Google, etc.

 

Windows 10 is just more stable than Windows 7 because it is more supported and compatible with newer technologies. I do not see any point of using an almost 10-year old OS, other than nostalgia/unwillingness to change for the sake of not changing.

[Doobeedoo]

What I'd like to see is Battle.net stats as well, though yeah not possible I guess. 

[asus killer]

the i5 and nvidia are still kings. 

[Princess Luna]

Can you force an entry? I wanted to joke around with my borrowed TITAN V

 

Last time I managed to do one of those I was still rocking my old i7 6700 + TITAN X Maxwell setup.

[Nocte]

9 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

What I'd like to see is Battle.net stats as well, though yeah not possible I guess. 

Blizzard does collect their users' system spec through Battle.net (in fact they removed the old system spec check software when b.net launcher was released). Whether they are ever going to release that data or not, that's another story .

[Guest The Viking]

still a bad system. I NEVER got the survey on my main PC, and only got it randomly, once, on my old, crappy laptop. Same with a lot of other people who use multiple devices.

 

Steam should just either collect the data by default and store it with some kind of identification number, and allow multiple systems per user to be registered, or stop sending the survey randomly and allow people to just send the data themselves via some opt-in method.

[Notional]

A few months ago, there was a huge influx of chinese users. Those are from the internetcafe's mentioned. They generally use Intel/NVidia builds with Windows 7. Now that the problem has been solved, those three things (and chinese language too), are all going down, like it should.

[Doobeedoo]

14 minutes ago, Eibe said:

Blizzard does collect their users' system spec through Battle.net (in fact they removed the old system spec check software when b.net launcher was released). Whether they are ever going to release that data or not, that's another story .

Yeah exactly. Really would like to see those stats, they have a huge playerbase. People tend to forget that, think only Steam exists. 

[GoldenLag]

37 minutes ago, asus killer said:

the i5 and nvidia are still kings. 

Wait nooooo........ Reeeaaaallyy?????

[Nocte]

32 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Yeah exactly. Really would like to see those stats, they have a huge playerbase. People tend to forget that, think only Steam exists. 

It's just that they only have a few titles for now (even though they are amazing and extremely popular).

The new Call of Duty should be on Battle.net as well, as Activision does not like to share its revenue with Steam (makes sense). We will probably see more Battle.net installs in the near future, and hopefully they will finally start sharing some unharmful data with us as well .

[Yoinkerman]

Yay I'm part of the 0.03% with a 16 core, go ryzen 1700!

 

Unless I'm part of the 8 CPU crowd.  In which case yay ryzen 1700

[Okjoek]

This is my first time even looking at a steam HW survey.

 

Surprised Linux is so low on OS usage.

 

I had no idea AMD's GPU market share among steam users was THAT bad. I mean 19th place for an AMD iGPU and no discrete GPU model until 26th place.

 

I kind of expected English, Russian and Spanish to be at or near top. definitely the biggest of the Germanic, Romantic and Slavic families. It surprises me to see Russian above Spanish though Spanish has a lot more native speakers, even more than English.

Wow man my ancestral homeland of Poland is up there too, didn't expect that.

Korean seems lower than I would expect. It's a lot easier than Chinese to learn and a lot of Esports comes from Korea.