Steam’s New Hardware Survey Shows Big Changes To GPU, RAM And OS Configs

While not perfect, Steam’s hardware and software survey, which is updated every month, is one of the quickest and easiest ways to gauge what kind of systems gamers are using at any given point in time. You just have to take the results with a grain of salt. If you don’t, you’ll end up thinking that most gamers are running a gaming PC with a GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card, 32GB of RAM, and Windows 10.

All three metrics jumped to the top of the charts in their individual categories for February 2025. But is that really the most popular gaming PC configuration on Steam? Before answering that question, important caveats about Steam’s methodology abound.

The biggest and most important caveat is that the monthly survey is not a snapshot of every system that accesses Steam. Valve doesn’t get into the weeds of how the survey is conducted, but we do know that it’s a supposedly random sample of systems. If you’re chosen to participate in any given month, you’ll be given the option to participate (opt-in) or not. Participating means Steam will collect vitals about your rig and use that data to put together its results.

“Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data about what kinds of computer hardware and software our customers are using. Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous. The information gathered is incredibly helpful to us as we make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer,” Steam indicates on the survey page.

What this means is that the results can be skewed by trends in any given month. And for February, the “Language” category saw a big influx of Simplified Chinese, which rose 20.88% to account for just over half of all systems pinged. That put English in second place at 23.79%.

There are different reasons why we might see such a dramatic swing. One possible scenario is a big uptick in gaming at Chinese internet cafes. It could also be a bug in Steam’s survey, though we’re not aware of that being a frequent issue.

Caveats aside, the latest survey shows the GeForce RTX 4060 supplanting the GeForce RTX 3060 as the most popular GPU on Steam, with an 8.57% share (up 3.97%) versus 6.87% (up 1.67%). Rounding out the top five, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (6.56%), GeForcle RTX 4070 (5.34%), and GeForce RTX 3070 (4.27%) are the most widely-used GPUs, according to the latest results.

While the top GPU is certainly debatable given the circumstances, one thing that remains clear is that the vast majority of gamers own midrange and lower end graphics cards, rather than flagship SKUs. For example, you have to scroll past cards like the GeForce GTX 1060, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, and even integrated graphics before encountering a once-flagship model, that being the GeForce RTX 4090 (0.72%).

As for RAM allocations, the survey shows that 32GB configurations leaped 13.73% in February to end the month with a 46.94% share of all gaming PCs pinged. While possible, we doubt that 32GB went from a third to nearly half of all gaming PCs in a single month.

Likewise, Windows 10 increased its share by 10.47% to supposedly account for 53.34% of gaming PCs on Steam, which if taken at face value, it would mean a rash of Windows 11 users downgraded (or a bunch of Windows 10 users suddenly started using Steam).

You can hit up Steam’s survey page for all of the results, and then check again at the beginning of April to see if this month’s movement returns the results to closer where they had been.

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