GamesFPSHalf-Life 2Valve first came up with the Steam Hardware Survey more than 20 years ago because it wanted to know what specs it should target for Half-Life 2When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesFPSHalf-Life 2Valve first came up with the Steam Hardware Survey more than 20 years ago because it wanted to know what specs it should target for Half-Life 2When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Valve)
That’s something that often seems forgotten when people pine for the good old days of PC hardware: There were exciting graphical breakthroughs all the time, but compatibility was not a given like it is today, with 3Dfx, ATI, Nvidia, 3DLabs, Xabre, and Matrox cards all floating around in the late ’90s and early ’00s and rarely playing nice with every single game. Obsolescence came on much faster as well—you canstillget away with a10-year-old GTX 970 in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Now imagine trying to run Half-Life 2 on hardware from 1994.
“But at the time, we had no real data on the hardware our customers were using,” Stelly continued. “What CPUs and GPUs did they have? How much RAM? Which version of Windows? We reached out to Microsoft, hoping they might know answers to questions like, ‘How many DX7 cards are in use? Or DX8?’ Unfortunately, they didn’t have the data either.
“Realizing we were at risk of making bad decisions without these insights, we developed an analysis tool that allowed players to report their hardware specs to us, and integrated it into the early version of Steam. The data was so useful that we decided to make it public, launching the Steam Hardware Survey in April 2003. It’s been helping us—and hopefully other developers—make informed decisions ever since.”
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The most important tool in Remedy’s new co-op FPS is the shower: ‘Saving water is essential’
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