Valve has released the findings of its hardware and software survey. This anonymous survey allows the company to gather data from willing participants as it relates to what hardware they’re using to play games via its Steam service.
This latest report includes data from September 2020 to February 2022, which is a timespan of 17 months. A big chunk of context for this specific timeframe is that it encompasses rigs gamers would’ve built/purchased, and/or have been using throughout the heat of the chip and GPU shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; a situation that started in mid 2020 and has which still has yet to be fully rectified.
Here are some highlights:
According to this survey, the most popular GPU being used by Steam customers is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060; a card that is now considered to be a mid-range, turning low-end option. It was released all the way back in 2015, so it’s certainly been chugging along for quite some time. Yet, possibly very much so due to the aforementioned GPU shortages, customers have yet to upgrade en mass. Thus, quite fittingly, it’s no surprise that the laptop edition of the GeForce RTX 3080 is currently the least popular option; but that’s primarily due to its newness.
Unsurprisingly, the 64-bit edition of Windows 10 leads the charge as the most popular OS of choice amongst the survey takers, followed by the still relatively-new Windows 11. These positions may shift in short order as Microsoft continues to roll out Windows 11 as a free update to its customers.
Intel CPUs are the most popular option in the processor category, with units that have clock speeds between 2.3Ghz to 2.69Ghz taking up the lions share.
Despite the tech world’s push to adopt 4K as the new true standard, it seems that gamers are still hanging onto their 1080p displays, as it remains the most popular option for primary display resolution. Considering the amount of power it takes to smoothly run titles at native 4K, there’s still going to be a swath of time ahead where 1080p displays keep kicking around. Not to mention that a good display can last for several years, so the need to upgrade is felt to a lesser extent than say an aging processor or GPU.
One other minor tidbit from this survey is that if you keep wondering “How much RAM do I really need?”, it seems that Steam users agree that 16GB is the least you should be rocking with, as it is the most popular option.
Valve doesn’t reveal the exact number of participants from this Steam hardware survey, but the data gathered does still provide some interesting insight into current hardware trends. Thus, it’s a decent marker for seeing how average (or above/below average) your own system’s components are.
