Steam Hardware Survey Shows Quad Core Dominance But Bad News for AMD

As the pre-eminent gaming platform, Steam offers a great insight into the gaming market. Through their hardware and software survey, we get a glimpse of what systems gamers are using. The latest survey, June shows some interesting trends for hardware and software. Unfortautnely, it looks like AMD still has some way to go before their comeback takes place. By the same token, Intel and Nvidia can rest easy for now.

Before we delve deeply into the vendor specific data, there are some interesting trends that have started to emerge. For one, Windows 10 has finally solidified its gains. After a slight dip in numbers last round, Windows 10 64bit has secured more than 50% of OS marketshare. This marks the end of an era, with the latest OS being fully dominant at last. Another nice trend is the growth in 4 core and above CPUs. Quad cores now make up 52% of the CPUs so game developers will hopefully put in the effort to improve multi-threading.

AMD Marketshare Slips on Both Fronts

On the hardware front, AMD is facing a struggle in both the GPU and CPU side. For GPU marketshare, Nvidia has now climbed to 63.6% and AMD is down to 20.5%. This is no doubt due to a low in supply as a result of mining and lack of high-end offerings until Vega arrives. The RX 500 which was just a minor refresh likely did not help as well.

For the CPU front, AMD marketshare has continued to slip, down to 19% while Intel is up to 80.99%. Since this survey covers part of the Ryzen launch, it looks like gamers haven’t completely flocked over to AMD. Part of the reason is that CPUs and motherboard upgrades take place over relatively long time frames. Many slightly aged CPUs are still quite capable as well. Intel also has dominance over the mobile market which is increasingly playing a bigger role in Steam usage.

With Ryzen more established on the market and Vega on its way, AMD has a lot of potential. Given their recent product launches, the company is on the right path. However, it faces a tough road before it can regain significant marketshare.