Steam Statistics Show Significant Windows Power Change

More and more gamers are using a gaming PC with Windows 11. This is shown by the current hardware and software survey from Steam. Microsoft’s latest operating system is quickly approaching the favorite Windows 10 and will soon leave it behind.

Windows 11 is becoming increasingly popular among gamers

In August, Windows 11’s market share among PC users on Steam increased again by 2.55 percentage points to almost 40 percent. Accordingly, Windows 10 (-1.89 percent) in particular had to give up. If the trend continues, Windows 11 could replace Windows 10 as the most used operating system for gamers in four to five months. Windows 7 and Windows 8, however, are hardly worth mentioning with shares of 1.1 percent and 0.22 percent.

More than 96 percent of Steam players rely on Windows systems. However, less than four percent are distributed between Apple MacOS and Linux. The latter is experiencing its second spring in the gaming sector, especially since the release of the Steam Deck handheld, which is clearly visible in a SteamOS Holo market share of over 44 percent among the platform’s Linux users.

Intel and Nvidia are the clear favorites

The hardware trends from July will continue in August 2023. For example, more and more gamers are equipping their computers with 16 GB or 32 GB of working memory (RAM). Processors with more than 6 cores are slowly but surely increasing, even if they still make up the majority at over 32 percent.

In the CPU and GPU area, the situation has been clear for years. Nvidia graphics cards dominate among Steam gamers with around 74.9 percent ahead of AMD (15.9 percent) and Intel (8.8 percent), while Intel with 65.8 percent ahead of AMD (34.2 percent) is the first choice for processors. In 2023, gamers will continue to rely primarily on a Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), not even closely followed by the QHD format (2560 x 1440 pixels).

Last but not least, there has been little change in the ranking of the most popular graphics cards on Steam. The statistics are also led in August by the three desktop GPUs Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, RTX 3060, and GTX 1060. The first current generations follow with the RTX 4060 laptop in 16th place and the RTX 4070 Ti in 31st place. At AMD and Intel, however, the CPU-internal Radeon and Iris Xe graphics units are in the lead.