Steam survey: one in five users now on Windows 11, Intel retakes CPU share from AMD

What just happened? Valve’s monthly Steam survey has landed. We’re usually more interested in which graphics cards are found in participants’ PCs, but the interesting parts of June’s results come from the operating system and CPU sections. In the case of the former, it seems the initial pushback against Windows 11 is easing as the OS passes the 20% user-share milestone.

Several recent reports have shown that Windows 11 is slowly but surely making gains on its predecessor, and more Steam users are embracing the newer operating system with its gaming-focused features: Windows 11 was found on 19.59% of users’ PCs in May, a figure that climbed to 21.23%, or more than one in five, during June. Windows 10 (64-bit), meanwhile, was down -2.63%.

Most popular Windows versions among Steam survey participants: more people started using Windows 7 last month!

Moving onto CPUs, June was another month in which Intel beat AMD as team blue jumped up 1.28%. AMD chipping away at its rival’s lead had become a regular sight on the Steam survey, but the release of Alder Lake has seen Chipzilla come out on top now and again—the last time was March.

Click table to expand

It’ll certainly be interesting to see how the Steam chart’s processor section changes following the launch of Raptor Lake and Zen 4. Intel’s next CPUs will offer DDR4-memory support—unlike Zen 4—an appealing prospect for those wanting to take their DDR4 modules with them when they upgrade. AMD’s new platform, meanwhile, promises a 35% performance hike over Zen 3.

The Steam survey’s graphics card results show that the desktop and laptop variants of the RTX 3060 continue to enjoy success. Both were the top performers last month as the desktop version moved up two spots on the main chart to eighth place. The RTX 3050 also had a good month with a +0.18% gain.

The more expensive Ampere series didn’t perform too well, though—could this be a sign of consumers reigning in their spending during these challenging economic times, something that has reportedly prompted Nvidia to cut TSMC wafer orders for its RTX 4000 series?

The best-performing graphics cards last month

As for the rest of the Steam survey, 1920 x 1080 remains the most popular resolution by far, despite the falling price of 1440p and 4K displays, and the Oculus Quest 2 is now 0.98% away from being the headset owned by half of all VR users.

Despite a slight decline, English remains the most common language among Steam users (36.73%), as simplified Chinese jumped from 2.5% to 24.75%. That’s still some way off October 2017, when the Asian language was spoken by more than half the participants, mostly due to PUBG’s popularity in the country.