Valve has published the latest results of its monthly Hardware & Software Survey, showing dominant preferences among Steam customers. According to the August 2022 report, Windows 11 is back climbing the ladder after a small dip in July 2022. Valve says Microsoft"s latest operating system has made a U-turn and gained 2.66 points, reaching an all-time high of 23.78%.
Disclaimer: The survey is not 100% accurate, since participation is optional.
It is too early to predict when Windows 11 will become the most popular operating system on Steam. Still, the gap between seven-year-old Windows 10 and relatively young Windows 11 is slowly decreasing. In August 2022, Windows 10 experienced a significant decrease, going down from 73.11% to 69.06% (-4.11 points).
About 2.6% of Steam users do not care that Microsoft stopped providing support for Windows 7 almost three years ago. Moreover, the good-old Windows 7 gained 0.56 points in August 2022, thus securing the third most popular OS title.
Overall, Windows holds 96.23% of Steam users (-0.8 points). Apple"s macOS has 2.5% (+0.76 points), and Linux is third with 1.27% (+0.04 points).
- Windows 10 64-bit – 69.06% (-4.11 points)
- Windows 11 – 23.78% (+2.66 points)
- Windows 7 – 2.6% (+0.56 points)
- macOS – 2.5% (+0.76 points)
- Linux – 1.27% (+0.04 points)
Now to the second part of the report—hardware. For the first time in a very long time, six-core processors are the most popular choice. Even though multicore processors from Intel and AMD are affordable like never before, two-thirds of surveyed customers use CPUs with six and four cores. It"s a similar picture with GPUs: the most popular graphics cards are mid-range and budget models from NVIDIA.
| Steam Hardware Survey – August 2022 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Processors | Intel | AMD | Microsoft |
| 67.91% (+1.65) | 32.6% (-1.67) | 0.02% (+0.01) | |
| Physical Cores | 6 cores | 4 cores | 8 cores |
| 33.04% (-0.72) | 31.29 (-0.65) | 18.97% (-0.53) | |
| Memory | 16 GB | 8 GB | 32 GB |
| 51.22% (-2.03) | 22.36% (+1.19) | 13.13% (-0.28) | |
| Graphics Cards | Nvidia | AMD | Intel |
| 76.21% | 14.67% | 8.92% | |
| Graphics Cards Models | NVIDIA GTX 1060 | NVIDIA GTX 1650 | NVIDIA RTX 2060 |
| 6.39% (-0.57) | 6.03% (-0.16) | 4.85% (-0.13%) | |
| Graphics Cards Memory | 8 GB | 6 GB | 4 GB |
| 25.22% (-0.8) | 20.84% (-0.3) | 16.09% (-1.15) | |
| Monitor Resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 2560 x 1440 | 1366 x 768 |
| 65.74% (-1.36) | 10.92% (-0.56) | 6.23% (+0.98) | |
You can find more information on the official Steam Hardware & Software Survey page.