Over the weekend, Valve released an unexpectedly fascinating piece of information: the specs of the machines sitting on desks across Valve HQ, which are used for development of both games and the Steam platform.

According to a news post over on Steam, Valve change the spcs of their development units every 18 months or so. See how close you are to their current rigs:

* EVGA 780i SLI FTW Intel Motherboard
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz Quad-Core Processor
* 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 1066MHz ram
(Crucial Ballistix, Kingston ValueRam)
* 1 x NVidia GTX280 1GB - OR - ATI 4870 1GB graphics card
* 1 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD
(Seagate, Western Digital)
* 1 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD
(Seagate, Western Digital)
* Antec Sonata III desktop case
* Zalman CPU Cooler
* 850W Antec power supply
* 1 x Dell 3008FPW-HC 30" LCD - OR - 2 x Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD monitors
* Windows XP 32bit

Now see how far away you are from the new generation of machines the company is "currently transitioning to":

* EVGA X58 3X SLI Intel Motherboard
* Intel Corei7 940 2.93GHz Quad-Core Processor
* 12GB PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz ram
(Crucial Ballistix, Kingston ValueRam)
* 1 x NVidia GTX285 1GB - OR - ATI 4870 1GB graphics card
* 1 x 250GB 7200RPM SATA HD
* (Seagate, Western Digital) 1 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD
* (Seagate, Western Digital) Lian Li P60-F Case
* Intel CPU Cooler
* 850W Antec power supply
* 1 x Dell 3008FPW-HC 30" LCD - OR - 2 x Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD monitors
* Windows Vista 64bit

That's a lot of cores and a lot of GBs.

[Steam]

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