A few months ago I listed
a high-level breakdown showing what the typical client PC specifications from the users of my WPF mind-mapper
thoughtex.
Valve software, makers of games like half-life etc have
much more detailed results from a survey of theirs, which (not surprisingly) has a lot more data points - almost 1 million. I find data like this great, because it allows you to plan more objectively around what the real world looks like, and not personal biases (I always think of that cartoon in chapter 8 of “don't make me think“ - “People don't like pulldown menus“). I wasn't able to find any more information on how the data was collected (via the Steam client perhaps), and who the sample was made up of but it provides some interesting info. For example I can't believe only 3% of people have multi-monitor setups, or is there some kind of gaming bias there, since many games don't work too well with multiple monitors? Nobody is moving to Vista? - not according to the Valve survey, which give vista a 7% market share. And who are the two lucky samples with 4-way SLI graphics rigs?