Each and every month, Steam conducts a survey to collect data about what kinds of computer hardware and software its customers are using. And according to the September hardware survey, Microsoft’s Windows 10 64bit – while still remaining the most popular OS – seems to be losing its steam. And unexpectedly, NVIDIA and Intel have – once again – slightly increased their dominance.
According to the survey, 57.8% of Steam users are using an NVIDIA GPU, while 24.06% are using an AMD/ATI GPU. Moreover 17.7% of Steam users are using an Intel integrated GPU. Compared to August’s numbers, NVIDIA got a 0.24% increase, AMD saw a 0.38% decrease and – surprisingly enough – Intel saw a 0.14% increase.
Moving on to the CPU side, 77.77% of the survey-takers prefer Intel’s CPUs, while 22.23% prefer AMD’s CPUs. In other words, Intel saw a 0.37% increase and AMD saw a similar decrease.
Regarding the CPU configurations that Steam-survey takers use, 46.7% of them own a quad-core CPU, while 46.73% own a dual-core CPU. Only 4.54% has a CPU with more than four CPU cores, and 2.03% is still on a single-core CPU.
Furthermore, 33% of the survey-takers own 8GB of RAM, 34% still use GPUs with 1GB of VRAM, and the 37% use 1080p as their native resolution.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Free period is over, so it’s expected right?
I’d assume the Anniversary update troubles would be enough for a bunch to roll back to what they had before as well.
Forgot about that, even I that usually don’t downgrade the OS went back to 8.1. -.-)’
There were problems with the Anniversary update? Mine actually gave me general improvements. On my weaker laptop at least.
Isn’t that because most of the people who wanted Win10 already have it? Like with Pokémon GO?
That too, but as Nagato pointed out, the annyversary update also screwed up some systems so ¯_(?)_/¯
Also, we need to point out the conjecture that exists in discussing the steam hardware survey, not everyone participates in so while is good for discussion, it is kind of muddy to set it in stone as a fact.
It is more like guidelines, just to give us a generalized idea of how things are going right?
By the way, I’m not going to install the Anniversary Update till they give us the option to move that new, annoying notification icon which moves the clock to the left. And, of course, fix the screwage of people’s PCs, but I’m sure they will do it.
Only thing that screwed of for me was that out of nowhere the firewall was permanently disabled. Spend a day using what I know to try and fix, nothing. All right, to google then, going crazy, experimenting with all solutions, again nothing. Then the PC stop recognizing the usb wi-fi thing and I can’t connect to the internet.
F*ck, what now? Oh well, restore the bloody Windows to default state.
Ooopsies the new options control panel refuses to open, can’t reach the restore options nor can boot in Safe Mode. F*CK THIS F*CKING OS GAWDAMMIT!
Lol, you got so screwed by them. I, personally, just clicked on a proper button and it rolled back to the older version without any problems.
But hey, doesn’t the moved clock bother you? Because I couldn’t stand this change since it’s always been the rightmost element of the task bar. Of course it’s possible to hide the notification icon and press Windows + A but it seems like a half-????? solution to the problem (especially jarring given that MS is such a rich company).
The UI stuff doesn’t never bothered me that much because from XP onwards I knew that MS wouldn’t let us personalize the system much, at least not on the level that we could with XP (good times).
I think XP isn’t so customizable. As far as I remember, there are three themes – blue, silver and olive, plus that grey one which is similar to Windows 95.
But I also had Windows ME in which you could change the color of the bar to whatever you liked.
Windows 8 was satisfyingly good at it, since you could change the hue, saturation and opacity of the bar color. But I don’t get why those options have been cut out from Windows 10. Microsoft actually put work into making the system worse!
I still can’t understand why they cut Aero. I mean, sure, I get that Apple shifted away from the more “Classic” glass theme towards a more “futuristic” flat-as-hell theme, but so what? No, really, what, the Windows 8 monotone bullsh*t wasn’t controversial enough?
Let’s even leave aside the massive Ribbon UI’s, & focus on just that alone – you can’t even get Windows 7-style Aero Glass on Windows 8-10 with 3rd party modifications (I’ve checked). At best you’ll get the same buttons & window frames (depending on the program used), & a modified, semi-opaque shade of Aero Glass, but that’s it.
What the f*ck?
Ribbon>the previous one for me though.
Much easier and practical. u.u
It’s definitely practical, I agree, but it’s also MASSIVE. Like, seriously MASSIVE.
What do you mean, takes too much of the screen?
Yeah, the icons are huge, no? Maybe it’s just me.
Well, some of them are, but I guess it’s the fact that it remains hidden doesn’t bother me that much.
Good point 😛
I’ve never experienced Aero but when I had XP I craved Windows 7 because of it. Then, when I got a new PC, Windows 8.1 was the newest system so I skipped Windows 7 completely. Shame that it’s gone in the new versions.
Anyways, blur reminiscent of Aero can be found in Win 10 in the Start Menu, calendar and the notification center.
My favourite design touch was that the icons on the task bar were highlighted according to their main colors, e.g, Firefox was highlighted in orange. It was in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, but shamefully MS cut it out from Windows 10 for some reason.
You were on XP until a couple of years ago? Damn O.O
But yeah, the new visual style has its moments, at times.
Yeah, I still have Windows XP installed on my secondary PC :). I bought the new one in like March 2014. It’s weird because I feel like I have it for ages.
Oh it was, well the default options where @rse but there was those packs that where gooooood. I’ve learned to use Vista/7 through XP because of them.
Hell I can’t even change the system font anymore? F that.
Ah, yes, if you like custom fonts it sucks.
“the default options where @rse but there was those packs”
You mean modifications made by third-party developers? But they shouldn’t count as they can be made for every system, I think?
Yeah, but with XP they fundamentally changed the interaction with the system (especially with the help of the tweaks/customization already available by default). Granted Vista had already launched by the time the really good packs where available but still.
The third party packs and the customization available now are mostly visual where on XP it was another thing entirely, at least in my experience.
What GPU even has 1 GB VRAM at the moment?
Define “modern”.
Lets say something that released in the last 3 years.
Yeah, but that will be recent or latest, modern would imply something else.
I’m being picky I know. :p
250X came out in 2014, I even think we had a few 1GB 750’s. 1GB of Vram should be enough for 720P gaming IMO.
Probably that 30-35% are people with old PC (players of MOBA i CS GO):
– 34% still use GPUs with 1GB of VRAM
– 46.73% still use dual-core CPU
– 36.38 sill use more than 7 years old Windows 7
– Which is ridiculous, I agree, but that’s their ridiculous choice to make.
– Which has me wondering; how useful is multi-threading going to be, exactly, when only so many people can even, actually take proper advantage of it in the first place? I mean, sure, theoretically, multi-threading even across “just” 2 cores is still a boost, but realistically? Hm.
– Which is apparently growing in popularity, despite being “old”! Hm! Well, look at the bright side; maybe Microsoft will finally pull their heads out of their *sses long enough to figure out what the f*ck they’ve been doing wrong for the last few years.*
*Though I seriously doubt it. These idiots insist on following fixed paths until they run that path into the ground, no matter what it costs them.
GTX 970 11% of Steam lel
3.5GB of RAM FTW
Nvidia increase and AMD decrease. Their 480x did actually nothing. Sad.
Well, I’d say that’s thanks to the price gouging/lack of stock, the 1060 being faster (not on DX12 though) and Nvidia’s omnipresence in marketing. Add to that the concept people have when they say “Nvidia is better” (even my brother bought that crap) and you have a recipe for disaster.
Hopefully things start to pick up in the coming years with DX12/Vulkan adoption where AMD can show what they are capable of. That and them continuing to improve their drivers.
I guess by then NV will catch up on DX12 performance so the “element of surprise” won’t be there anymore.
In any case, upcoming years will br interesting.
Call it wishful thinking, but I don’t think Nvidia has much interest in improving their DX12/Vulkan performance. I mean, they know they have the consumer base and a competition that shows no sign of becoming a threat to them. I can easily see them going through the same path a few years from now.
AMD needs, IMO, to invest in PR to clean their image, to build more partnerships, more game devs using GPUOpen, more OEMs using their parts, especially high-end (for gaming laptops and workstations) and then, start to beef up their driver based features like Nvidia’s Ansel and the likes. Although I see this as an uphill battle, considering the power and influence Nvidia has amassed over ther years.
Nvidia is either planning on recycling the same Architecture for the foreseeable future until marketplace losses force them to unveil their next “Big Thing”, IMO, or they’re planning something huge, & they’re just currently stalling with all these rehashed releases in order to buy more time for R&D.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t put the former past them in the least, as much as I really hope it is the latter.
AMD on the other hand, can easily regain at least a sizeable, even if not outright majority stake in the marketplace if they simply push harder, I agree, but they seem to prefer focusing on the mid-range segment rather than the high-end segment, so Nvidia continues to appear “stronger” because there’s no real competition for their high-end cards, no matter how much better AMD’s mid-end cards may be.
DX12 &/or Vulkan technologies will also help either bridge or extend the gap, IMO. If DX12 manages to shape up & stop being a joke, there’s a chance AMD’s better DX12 implementation will help it gain ground with the Windows 10 crowd, whereas if Nvidia shifts over to a Vulkan focus, they can have real API & hardware competition as they both strive to prove their supremacy, rather than just Nvidia annually showing off how much better DX11 runs on their hardware compared to AMD.
But yeah, it’s a lot of moving parts.
“Nvidia is either planning on recycling the same Architecture for the foreseeable future until marketplace losses force them to unveil their next “Big Thing”, IMO”
This is something i do not agree with how on earth can you or anyone say this when Nvidia has been changing their design way more then Amd has. Maxwell is a great example GCN can’t even touch it in performance per watt. Amd has done very little to improve their design where Nvidia does a lot for example they do a lot with compression. I did see Amd just did that this generation as well. Nvidia is always a step ahead of Amd in software. If i’m correct i still think Amd has zero hardware built in for recording gameplay where shadowplay does not hurt performance at all. Also many other areas of software that Amd still doesn’t have. Nvidia was first to make a optimization option for games Amd followed.
Amd does not have the money to compete with Nvidia head on anymore. With Zen coming which is a more important product as it could make them millions if its competitive in servers.
Wasn’t even trying to be anti-Amd(Pascal is a lot like maxwell) but i’m not going to let people just make claims like Nvidia hasn’t changed their design when clearly they have been and Amd is the one who really needs to change things to improve their performance per watt. Polaris on 14nm basically has the same performance per watt as Maxwell on 28nm.
Edit and if Nvidia did do it then good for Amd they can kick them right back ha ha. Just seems dumb for Nvidia to do such a thing. I actually think Amd is going to be in a good position soon. With moore’s law basically being dead it gives Amd time to catch up to Intel and Nvidia. Gonna be a sad time for us tech guys. With moore’s law dying.
Well, yes, Maxwell itself was a big push forward, but let’s be honest, that was years ago now, & Pascal, while in turn quite impressive, was/is not another push forward, as much as it was just a “had to do something new, because [reasons]” push.
Between Maxwell lineups all they’ve done is tweaked the architecture (at best), all while purposefully crippling it (& extensively misdirecting us in regards to the crippling) in order to make as much money as possible from each respective GPU release, etc, & Pascal, like I said, while impressive, seems to just be further Maxwell tweaks, except, on a grander scale. I mean, would it really be untrue to call Pascal “Maxwell 2.0”, “Maxwell Revisited” or “Maxwell Redux”?
In that regard, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Volta” also turns out to be more extensive Maxwell/Pascal modifications combined into a “new” architecture, instead of something “from-the-ground-up-balls-to-the-wall” new.
AMD’s taken great strides forwards in regards to Drivers in recent years, but yeah, they still have no viable competitor for GeForce Experience, I agree.
AMD has likewise definitely been holding onto GCN for too long, but at the same time, it is (arguably) worth nothing, while it falters on the high-end, their cards do perform quite well around the mid-end segment, which it seems is what AMD is primarily focusing on right now.
Regardless, I agree, & do look forward to seeing them (finally) moving on from their extensive GCN tweaking onto something new – hopefully something that’s capable of challenging Nvidia’s “Maxcal” to the point wherein “Volta” will by necessity also be something “from the ground up” new rather than more modifications, as stated above.
I agree with you as well and i would call Pascal 1.1 Maxwell really. But Nvidia would be dumb to not claim that Amd has a upper hand in directx 12. I’m not a fan of fanboys i hate it when Amd fans claim things are all great and i will say the same with Nvidia i really look at things from a benchmark perspective. Currently Amd has the upper hand but that doesn’t mean Nvidia won’t fight back remember tessellation? Things can always change and ATM Nvidia has the money and they don’t have to fight Intel. Its very hard for Amd ATM people like to make fun of Amd but they have a hard time they are fighting Nvidia and Intel. Intel makes more in a quarter then what Amd is worth and Nvidia is worth 5.8 times as much as Amd.
“Nvidia would be dumb to not claim that Amd has a upper hand in directx 12.”
Indeed, which is why I’m curious to see if they’ll shift over to advertising & promoting Vulkan instead, rather than relying on shifty DX12 benchmarks to prove their “superiority” over AMD’s cards in the upcoming year.
There’s actually a rumor that Nvidia will just refresh the Pascal architecture and only use a smaller node just like what they did to the Maxwell architecture
http://www.tweaktown . com/news/54144/nvidia-refresh-pascal-gpu-architecture-2017/index.html
Indeed, although I have to point out that, with the exception of Doom on the 1080 and a bit on the 1070, Vulkan is not really different performance-wise than DX12 on Nvidia hardware. But that’s still just one game, until another one arrives, I wouldn’t bet my money on Nvidia fully supporting Vulkan, especially considering AMD is the one who benefits more from it, given its OpenGL performance is lackluster.
As for AMD’s future, I think they are right aiming towards the mid-range crowd but they still need a solid high-end offering (now they know what are the capabilities of Pascal, I think they might be able to launch something to beat it) but their worst enemy right now is their (not entirely unearned but neither entirely justified) bad rap: the things about their drivers, their products’ quality, the power consumption, the refreshed architectures (funny, considering Nvidia did the same this year with Pascal just with a different process and higher clockspeeds), things that are more likely to scare the average Joe from their products, especially if, like in my country, every parts vendor comes up to you saying “I personally recommend Nvidia for they are better”.
“I wouldn’t bet my money on Nvidia fully supporting Vulkan, especially considering AMD is the one who benefits more from it, given its OpenGL performance is lackluster.”
Theoretically, yeah, but in practice results can vary wildly. Mantle was an AMD creation, after all, but even though Mantle forms the core of Vulkan, they’re having better performance with DX12, overall, for example. I didn’t see that one coming at all.
“I think they are right aiming towards the mid-range crowd but they still need a solid high-end offering”
Agreed. Problem is, so far, by the time they actually get their own version of the XX80 on the market, the XX80 Ti is either out, or coming out, & since they were more focused on beating the XX80 rather than the Ti, AMD’s “XX80” falls between the Nvidia XX80 & the XX80 Ti, just with a considerably better price tag, so, while they make a nice gain from it, they don’t bring in Nvidia’s numbers.
Also the thing about people constantly recommending Nvidia, that too. Though, AMD power consumption is pretty good in recent years, no? Or is that noise levels? I forget. I seem to recall GCN doing a lot to improve power & noise, no?
Well, I think it was noise that was more controlled. Power consumption is a tricky issue but, IMO, overblown. I don’t think it’s that big of deal but a 150W card with a brand new architecture right now? That’s neat.
Well maybe if Amd didn’t have to deal with Global foundrys yield issues and then maybe the 480 would be priced at 199.99$ day one like Amd promised.
Win 7 best stable os ever win 10 not so i have a lot of problems like windows store not opening ram issue i dont understand how win 10 eat 35-60% of my 16gb. every time i need to fix the windows registry when i do so im ram usage back to normal 11%
And fu.c.k DX12 qhy do we even need it we where happy with DX11 win 7 😀
Your high ram usage maybe due to preloading apps. I agree Win7 was great but as a developer I feel forced to have Win10 installed now. As far as DX12 goes, I’d rather see Vulkan grow.
I checked the ram usage there is nothing to show what causing the issue its like eating the ram in stealth mode 🙂
I dont get it why we need vulkan or dx12 we have dx11 every developers know how its work just stick with dx12 is just a marketing for win 10 nothing more
Man Windows store really does suck i can not even believe i don’t hear more about it. My parents love it and i have to try and download stuff from it and it fails over and over again. Keeps asking the user to log in which is annoying for non-tech savvy parents of mine
Adoption of Windows 10 slows down”
Thats nice!!!!!!!
People will see the light one day… Anyways … Windowns 7 >all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX5tfRdkoY0
If I may be crass, adoption of Win10 is slowing down because all the morons already have it. We’ve reached peak moron.
Triggered by windows 10 lol
hey idiot you do realize you can roll back to windows 7/8 when ever you feel like it right?
What’s that got to do with anything?
*Mic drop.*
Also, as it turns out, there’s been a worldwide increase in Windows 7 as of June;
“For you Microsoft fans, however, the more interesting statistics come when looking at the specific Windows versions and the share associated with each of them. As has been the case since June, Windows 7 market share is continuing to increase. It went from 47.25% in August to 48.27% in September. Likewise, Windows 10 usage fell from 22.99% to 22.53%. Windows XP also decreased, from 9.36% to 9.11%, along with Windows 8.1, from 7.92% to 7.83%.”
Let’s see how far it goes ^^
You win!. You’re right. Some people don’t want DX12 so I think more single threaded DX11 games incoming in 2017 and 2018.
Yes, it’s such a shame the only two viable API’s in existence at this very moment are DX11 & DX12……
Oh, wait.
Besides, DX11 was going to continue into 2017, & most probably 2018, regardless. Believing it wouldn’t is akin to those delusions you had about DX12-exclusive Battlefield 1. A drop-off point was inevitable, it always is, because it always goes this way.
The only difference between this OS & the previous ones is that much like Windows 8, it sucks, & people are realising that.
As for the multi-threading thing; if you want to blame anyone for upcoming single-threaded games, blame Microsoft. They’re the ones who aren’t even porting DX11.3 to Windows 7, all in the name of their ridiculous, ardent “SPYWARE 10 OR BUST!” mindset.
Oh, but, right, I forgot…. “Windows 7 is old”…… >.>
“Yes, it’s such a shame the only two viable API’s in existence at this very moment are DX11 & DX12…”
You’re right. I forget about Apple Metal. Next month we will see benchmarks of DeusEx Mankind Divided on Metal API. Fight of all three versions of DeusEx: DX11, DX12 and Apple Metal
Do tell, what exactly is it about Vulkan that doesn’t permit it to qualify as a “viable” API? I mean, apart from the fact that it completely outclasses DX12 in almost every way right now, that is, and it doesn’t require a mandatory OS upgrade to use.
(Please, I beg you, say Multi-GPU)
But yes, you’re right, next time I’ll be more specific – “it’s such a shame that the only two viable Microsoft Windows-compatible API’s in existence at this very moment are DX11 & DX12… (& honestly, DX12 really shouldn’t even qualify at this point, & should continue to really not qualify as long as it continues to be a performance hit rather than a performance boost to use).
Oh, wait.”
Vulkan even converted me a bit with Doom it was a major improvement on all hardware. 12 seems to be highly disappointing even with Amd users that see a small improvement.
10 is probably what i’ll keep it boots very fast and say what you want it is more secure then the older OS’s. But i wish it had more of a 7 feel to it and i wish it didn’t have those darn spybots. Overall i’m not going to stick to an OS like people did with XP.
he’s in bed with phil
Does anyone know someone who said man i have to get one of those new Windows 10 PCs if they have a PC that is capable of running Windows 7 what’s the point in upgrading? Like others said the free upgrade is over.
i got survery for first time other day…guess what on win7 64