Once a month, the PC gaming mega-giant Valve opens an optional hardware and software survey for its Steam users to gauge trends and ultimately spotlight the world's most common components. Much of it is predictable and follows obvious patterns, such as the average amount of memory (RAM) increasing over time and discontinued parts falling off the graphs.
Still, some tidbits offer insight into buying habits and product adoption. In particular, the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for April 2026 shows that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 with 8GB of VRAM remains the most common discrete graphics card this year. For context, that GPU is now three and a half years old, and many gamers already debate the viability of 8GB cards in 2026.
It's a similar story for operating systems, as Windows holds an utterly dominant 93.47% adoption amongst Steam users, though it's divided between its two (technically) active versions. Windows 10 is in its End-of-Life phase, but Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program offers an extension through October 13, and it looks like 25% of Windows users have opted for it.
Linux and macOS fluctuated into ever-so-slight negatives, but the values were less than 1 percentage point and shouldn't be considered alarming. At the very least, Valve reports Arch Linux as the most-used "distro", which is the foundation for its in-house SteamOS rival to Windows 11, pre-installed on its four-year-old Steam Deck handheld and the upcoming Steam Machine PC.
Windows Central's take: Unaffordability is forcing a new norm for PC gamers
Again, it's the natural order of things for incremental hardware and software upgrades to be reflected in Steam's survey, but seeing a quarter of users holding on to Windows 10 is telling. While activists worldwide are staging mock funerals for Microsoft's OS, many PC gamers seemingly aren't willing to budge until the bitter end, possibly due to their device's incompatibility-led obsolescence.
That, and seeing the RTX 3060 clinging on for dear life, helps justify my frustrations with a lack of optimization in modern AAA games. This isn't even the 12GB version that's still going strong in my wife's PC; this is the entry-level 8GB model in NVIDIA's RTX 30 Series that lacks native FP8 support for cutting-edge DLSS tech. Your average gaming rig is two generations old.
PC gamers seemingly aren't willing to budge until the bitter end.
And against Microsoft's assurance that 32GB of RAM is the "no worries" count in a world of hilariously expensive DDR5 memory, there still hasn't been a significant shift away from 16GB as the most common count in Valve's latest survey. All of this keeps my hopes alive for the Steam Machine to come with "affordable" pricing.
That, and I'm suddenly checking up on friends and relatives who are stuck on Windows 10. We can always bypass the TPM 2.0 check and upgrade an unsupported computer to Windows 11 with a bit of extra work, but it's starting to feel tense for those who still outright refuse to move over. Are you still using Windows 10? What are your plans for October? Not long now.
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