New Steam survey results

[neliz]

That said, I still grade Vista higher than both XP and Win7 just due to the far superior UI. Been using Win7 for a week now and I STILL don't like many of the absolutely idiotic UI changes.

Have to disagree with you there, when used to Win7 and 2008R2, you actually feel hampered by going back to Vista/2008 machines. It took a lot less time to get used to Win7, maybe I prepared better this time.

Oh wait there is one thing that XP is WAY slower than both Vista and Win7. Startup time. Since sleep mode is still generally broken on my XP installs, I have to shutdown and boot rather than just put those machines to sleep.

If you want to have fun, take a notebook with Vista on it and a ReadyBoost stick plugged in. Put the machine in sleepmode and unplug the USB Drive.

HURAH!

On a related note, 4800's still rising the fastest this month, making it the #1 card on Vista/7 machines and only 1% behind the 8800's next two months would make it the first #1 ATI card since the 9600/9800. AMD's shares fell another 0.3% on the CPU side and the uptake of Win7 is massive! 14% of the OS'es and 64-bit being used 2 to 1, exactly opposite of Vista's 2 to 1 32<->64bit numbers.

Next month is the end of DX9/XP! It dropped 2.22% with Vista/7 narrowing the gap to 1.2% 49.88% vs. 48.68%

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Have to disagree with you there, when used to Win7 and 2008R2, you actually feel hampered by going back to Vista/2008 machines. It took a lot less time to get used to Win7, maybe I prepared better this time.

Not really for the first time ever I think I'm going to be forced to replace the Windows Explorer shell. Windows Explorer for Win7 is absolutely useless.

Prior to this I haven't had a need to modify the basic features of windows since moving from Win 3.11 as each successive iteration of Windows improved or at least maintained the useablility of the last.

Win7 however has regressed and made certain basic windows features absolutely worthless and un-useable.

This isn't to say there aren't improvements in other areas, but it's like for every step forward Win7 took, it also took two steps backwards. It's not enough to make me ditch Win7 on my gaming desktop, but I'll be keeping Vista installed on the rest of my machines until the support for it is EOL'd.

And that in itself is a rather drastic change. Prior to this I enjoyed moving to a new iteration of their platform and UI as it had always been the case that while things may have changed and it would take some time to get used to them, the end result was greater ease of use and greater useablility.

That just isn't the case at least with regards to Windows Explorer. The verdict is still out on some of the other changes. Pinning items to the taskbar for example would have been infinitely more useable if they also allowed you to arbitrarily pin an item to any toolbar you had configured. You can, of course, put a shortcut in those other toolbars folders, but that breaks the functionality of a pinned item (right click menu).

Regards,
SB

 

[Gubbi]

I have a feeling that inclusion of driver models into Ring 0 were a combination of decisions from MS and IBM. Likely for performance reasons, sure, but since Ring swaps from user to kernel mode take many hundreds (or thousands) of cycles to complete, and we're talking about the days of 386 and 486 hardware, I think it was less of a "benchmark" win and more of a "making the OS fundamentally responsive" win.

If it was for performance reason it was an attempt to speed up a fundamentally flawed design concept.

Notice how we've come full circle with graphics-drivers back in user-space, - just like the OpenGL for NT always was (and back then it was faster too).

It is easy to understand that all servers shipped with super low end 2D graphics adapters: To keep the number of BSODs to a minimum.

Cheers

 

[Albuquerque]

If it was for performance reason it was an attempt to speed up a fundamentally flawed design concept.

Notice how we've come full circle with graphics-drivers back in user-space, - just like the OpenGL for NT always was (and back then it was faster too).

Well, context switches really do have a measurable overhead, and slower hardware will have less clockcycles to spare. So while "fundamentally flawed" might still be at least part of the problem, it's also at least partially due to limitations of the hardware at the time.

And indeed, we've come full circle. But now we have billions of clockcycles at our disposal, and hardware that can swap contexts faster. We also have more memory available to queue up work, so we can get more work effort for each context switch. Essentially, we have more than enough processing power now to fully utilize the security options we've had available for decades.

Other OS'es beat Windows to the punch eons ago, so Microsoft is still behind the eight-ball. But looking back, when Microsoft made the switch to kernel-mode drivers, they too were still behind the eight ball even then. Pretty much every consumer and commercial PC OS was already in kernel mode; Microsoft switched to catch up. Bad idea? Possibly. Keeping up with the Jones'es? Yup.

 

[Richard]

October results: 64-bit and Windows 6.x climbed 3% this month in contrast to near flat from last month. Also, this was mostly due to Win7 since Vista (either arch) lost share. I expected it would take longer to flip the marketshare between 5.x and 6.x but it seems like next month will be it.

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

Is there anywhere where u can find software sales numbers through steam? I'm interested to see how popular it is, personally I much prefer a steam account to boxed copies (easier to keep track of your games) I wonder if that's the case in general.

 

[neliz]

Is there anywhere where u can find software sales numbers through steam? I'm interested to see how popular it is, personally I much prefer a steam account to boxed copies (easier to keep track of your games) I wonder if that's the case in general.

End of last year they did kind of a "one time thingy" over at Gamasutra.. not sure if they did it after that or we have to wait another month vor V2.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21319

After describing 32 million copies of various games, they end with:

Because of this, and because of the general lack of more detailed public information, it is unclear how much Valve's unit sales are boosted by digital distribution, but it is undoubtedly by a considerable margin.

 

[kyniskos]

I don't get it though, with such a high uptake of Vista and 7, why is the 64-bit-versions still trailing so badly the 32-bits. To a point I can understand driver-issues, but this is nonsense. People are knowingly gimping their systems for what?

 

[neliz]

I don't get it though, with such a high uptake of Vista and 7, why is the 64-bit-versions still trailing so badly the 32-bits. To a point I can understand driver-issues, but this is nonsense. People are knowingly gimping their systems for what?

Because "we" aren't showing the 32-bit crowd proper benchmarks?
how many 64-bit executables have you seen for games? Only Far Cry comes to mind.
Apps like Photoshop CS4 generally show faster processing on 32-bit systems as long as there's no memory limits involved.
The only company that actively pushes those benchmarks is Corsair and even they like to limit themselves to artificial limits (3 vs. 6GB RAM) to demonstrate their intentions instead of using real 32/64-bit benchmarks.

If someone can prove me wrong.. please do.. after 25 years it's time for Win32 to die.

 

[Richard]

I don't get it though, with such a high uptake of Vista and 7, why is the 64-bit-versions still trailing so badly the 32-bits. To a point I can understand driver-issues, but this is nonsense. People are knowingly gimping their systems for what?

If you just consider Windows 7/Vista then 64-bit is showing healthy numbers.

Most people acquire Windows through a new computer and many of them still come with the 32-bit version installed (I saw this first-hand when a week ago I bought a laptop for my father). Because you can't do an in-place upgrade to 64-bit many just don't bother with it. Often you don't get a Windows DVD with both versions but a recovery partition and have to order the disc yourself so that's another reason people don't bother.

As for benchmarks, I've mentioned it before but if you use WinRar then you're going to get a nice bump using the 64-bit version.

 

[neliz]

As for benchmarks, I've mentioned it before but if you use WinRar then you're going to get a nice bump using the 64-bit version.

Unfortunately, not everyone runs WinRAR 24/7

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's too bad they couldn't have done something similar to the Win3.x -> Win95 switch. And just switched the OS to 64-bit.

Because of that, 32 bit apps and the 32 bit versions of the OS are going to linger far longer than 16 bit apps and the 16 bit version of Windows did.

Regards,
SB

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

It's too bad they couldn't have done something similar to the Win3.x -> Win95 switch. And just switched the OS to 64-bit.

I wish they did this with Vista actually but I guess Microsoft is in "trying not to piss anyone off" mode as of late I can understand where they're coming from, but at this point is probably best just to drag the rest of the 32-bit crowd over the line. I suspect many of them simply haven't gotten 64-bit out of ignorance or misplaced concerns, with a small minority actually having issues with 16-bit software, old drivers, etc.

 

[Richard]

Unfortunately, not everyone runs WinRAR 24/7

Do you run any of the common CPU benchmarks, like movie encoding, in real life 24/7? If that's all you care about then perhaps reviews should only include distributed computing benchmarks?

I do use WinRar multiple times per day and it always locks my dual core at 60-80%, anything that makes it faster is a real productivity improvement for me.

 

[HawkeyeGnu]

Okay, I'll hold up my hand and admit I loaded 32bit Windows 7

I'm not a great multi-tasker, and my PC is used mainly for gaming including a lot of old games. A quick Google before I took the plunge revealed some issues with old games like NOLF, and that was enough to put me off 64bit. I also thought that 32 bit programs running in 64bit will still only use 2GB of memory regardless of the extra memory available to 64 bit systems? I don't think I have any native 64 bit applications.

So what tangible benefits are there for me to choose 64 bit? I'm willing to be persuaded - please help the ignorant :smile:

 

[neliz]

Do you run any of the common CPU benchmarks, like movie encoding, in real life 24/7? If that's all you care about then perhaps reviews should only include distributed computing benchmarks?

I do use WinRar multiple times per day and it always locks my dual core at 60-80%, anything that makes it faster is a real productivity improvement for me.

That's not my point

I do use WinRAR a coupe of times a day, and I'm happy it's faster in those situations. but my other applications Firefox (64-bit is a crime) Photoshop (slower when you're not memory limited) and general office applications either just don't show any improvement or tend to be limited by them being 32-bit in a 64-bit environment.
I want 32-bit to die yesterday but there are enough apps/games that simply don't benefit from a 64-bit environment and because of that offer no benefits for users to switch from "ye olde" to something a bit more commonplace in todays CPU architecture.

 

[Tchock]

Err... as a digital artist, I can definitely say that PSCS3/4 in 64-bit is an absolute increase in speed, especially when you're working with big brushes with quite some shape dynamics.

The speedup is... rather orgasmic. The reason why I stick with PS for all my digipainting needs.

General viewport handling is also faster, almost w/o latency. Could be a very clean set of code at work!

Charcoal still works fastest for me though

 

[Richard]

A quick Google before I took the plunge revealed some issues with old games like NOLF, and that was enough to put me off 64bit. I also thought that 32 bit programs running in 64bit will still only use 2GB of memory regardless of the extra memory available to 64 bit systems?

For 32-bit applications compiled with Large Address Aware, as an example ETQW is, they can use up to 4Gb on a 64-bit Windows.

You also get your full 4gb's worth of physical ram available without the final 750MB< of addresses being reserved for hardware.

As for convincing you, I think you should always move to 64-bit unless:

a) you have essential hardware that doesn't work/has problems.
b) you have essential software that doesn't work/has (performance) problems.

but my other applications Firefox (64-bit is a crime) Photoshop (slower when you're not memory limited) and general office applications either just don't show any improvement or tend to be limited by them being 32-bit in a 64-bit environment.

I don't use Photoshop so I can't comment but neither Firefox nor Office should be taxing, regardless of the architecture. Looking for improvements there wouldn't be fruitful. Examples of native 64-bit apps I use that don't benefit because they're already light: Zune, KeePass, Tortoise, Windows 7 Firewall Control, SyncToy.

Examples of native 64-bit apps I use that show a benefit/were already taxing in 32-bit: WinRar, SQLServer for my dev environment: I'm waiting for a 64-bit version of Visual Studio that hopefully improves compile times.

I want 32-bit to die yesterday but there are enough apps/games that simply don't benefit from a 64-bit environment and because of that offer no benefits for users to switch from "ye olde" to something a bit more commonplace in todays CPU architecture.

Like I mention to HawkeyeGnu above, I don't require reasons to upgrade to 64-bit: I tend to view these things from the opposite view: what reasons are there to NOT upgrade.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I have to say that so far I absolutely love being able to use 64 bit WMP and 64 bit MPC. I certainly might be a placebo effect, but in general it feels much snappier to me when parsing media media files looking for certain scenes to edit. I only wish GOM Player had a 64 bit version, as it has a nice point A -> point B replay feature that I haven't found/noticed in either WMP or MPC. Only drawback is that 64 bit playback of Quicktime files is lacking. But still better than the situation with Vista, where 64 bit codecs were seriously lacking.

Likewise 64 bit IE is a dream to use. The lack of a 64 bit flash plugin is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I hate flash, a curse because I occasionally have to load up 32 bit IE to display a website. BTW - did I ever mention that I absolutely HATE all web deverlopers that have a flash only version of their website?

I wish there were more 64 bit native applications. But I fear until MS takes the plunge and just doesn't release a 32 bit OS, it's going to be happen at an incredibly slow snails pace. 32-bit apps didn't replace 16-bit apps overnight when Win95 launched, but adoption was greatly accelerated with there only being a 32 bit OS. Something I had hoped the successor to Vista (a bridge OS so to speak) would have done with 64 bit.

Regards,
SB

 

[Lightman]

I can add to 64bit software list almost any 3D rendering application! 64-bit counterparts are significantly faster (15%-30%) and obviously not limited to 4GB

Also to add one game I can't believe neliz forgot --> Crysis!