Wirth's law dictates that software becomes slower more rapidly than hardware gets faster. That logic can explain why games today look mostly the same as they did a decade ago, yet require a lot more resources to run comfortably. That sentiment is now reflected in Steam's latest hardware survey as well, where 8-core CPUs have overtaken 6-core CPUs for the first time ever, and GPUs with 16GB of VRAM have become the most common on the platform.
The results for July 2026 show that 16GB GPUs now represent 25.9% of all Steam users, just edging out 8GB GPUs that sit at 25.32% adoption. In June, 16GB GPUs were at 24.50%, so they gained 1.4 points in a month, while 8GB GPUs lost 0.32 points in the same time. This is the first month in the storefront's history where 8GB of VRAM is no longer considered enough, closing the book on this debate in a rather definitive way. Keep in mind that these numbers combine all Steam instances across Windows, Linux, and Mac.
