(Credit: Steam; Shutterstock/EKKAPHAN CHIMPALEE)
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Each month, Valve releases its Steam hardware survey, which details the types of computer hardware and software its customers are using. However, despite Windows 10 reaching end-of-life status on Oct. 14, over 31% of the Steam user base is still using the aging OS.
That's down a little over 1% from the previous month, but considering the cliff-edge of support that the older OS was facing, we expected it to be more dramatic. Perhaps a lot of people took advantage of Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.
The official count now shows Windows 11 at 63.57% of the entire Steam gaming audience, while Windows 10 is at 31.14%. Ironically, Windows 7 use actually increased following Windows 10's demise, up 0.02% to 0.09%. Apple's various versions of macOS are at 2.11%, while Linux has risen to over 3% for the first time, driven by strong support for portable gaming systems.
(Credit: Valve)Elsewhere, the Nvidia RTX 3060 is back at the top spot as the most popular GPU, narrowly beating out the RTX 4060 and the RTX 4060 mobile. Despite nearly a year of RTX 50 GPUs being somewhat available, the top 10 is still dominated by mid-tier and entry-level RTX 30 and 40 GPUs, with the GTX 1650 still holding on strong at over 3% of all Steam gaming PCs.
The RTX 5070 is the best-performing of Nvidia's latest GPUs, now holding close to 2% of the overall Steam audience. Other standouts, such as the RTX 5060 (despite its 8GB of VRAM), the 5060 laptop, and the 5060 Ti, have around 1% each.
AMD's onboard graphics continue to be its biggest contributor to the charts, with the RX 6600 and RX 7800 XT the most popular standalone cards at less than 1% of the population each.
AMD is doing far better on the CPU front, though. It continues the multi-quarter growth trend, clawing back market share from Intel with another 0.78% of the market gained this month. It's now just under 15% behind Intel and showing every sign of one day catching and surpassing it if the trend continues.
Graphics cards with 8GB of VRAM continue to be the most popular on Steam, with a third using them, and another third running GPUs with even less. The stink we've kicked up over 8GB VRAM in 2025 is worth it, but this shows there's a long way to go before everyone can benefit from the new cards with more VRAM support.