James Delahunty
23 Jan 2010 19:37
Data acquired by Valve's Steam gaming delivery service shows that a large portion of its users have already decided to switch to Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7. Although it can be installed on Windows Vista, Microsoft has essentially tied DirectX 11 to the new operating system by working with Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to maximize its potential for more realistic graphics, improved multimedia performance and other features in Windows 7.
Microsoft sees the potential in Windows 7 offloading tasks to graphics hardware to take the load off of the CPU; certainly not a new concept at all, but one that the Redmond-giant wants to give a bigger role to for even common tasks. Valve data gotten directly from users' computers show that around 23 percent of its users have moved to Windows 7.
Combined with Vista users, about half of all Valve users are capable of installing DirectX 11 on the software side, although Steam is not keeping track of users with DirectX 11 hardware installed yet.
The data also shows that users are installing the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 as opposed to the 32-bit versions. Over 80 percent of Steam users are using multi-core system, with 24 percent running quad-core chips. This data guides Steam in making programming decisions, and is useful for game developers to have in hand. DirectX 11-capable cards haven't been on the market for too long, but ATI claims to have sold over 2 million already.