Valve published its June 2026 Steam Hardware & Software Survey on July 1, revealing that Windows 11 has cleared the 70% mark for the first time among surveyed Steam machines — while a sizable cohort of players remains on an operating system Microsoft stopped supporting eight months ago, and AMD continues its methodical march toward CPU parity with Intel in the gaming market.

Windows 11 Reaches 70%: What the Numbers Mean for Players Still on Windows 10

Windows 11 now sits at 70.44% of surveyed Steam systems, up 0.68 percentage points from May — the first time the OS has cleared the 70% bar across all platforms since its launch in late 2021. The corresponding drop in Windows 10's share, down 0.43 points to 23.56%, may look incremental, but the context matters: Microsoft ended all free security support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. That 23.56% — roughly one in four Steam users — represents machines that have received no security patches for new vulnerabilities discovered since that date.

For those users, the practical exposure is direct: any flaw discovered in Windows 10 after October 2025 remains permanently unpatched unless the user has enrolled in Microsoft's Extended Security Updates program. That program costs $30 per device per year, or nothing for users who sign in with a Microsoft account and sync their PC settings — and it runs only through October 12, 2027. After that date, no security updates arrive for Windows 10 at any price.

The full Windows platform holds 94.10% of the Steam user base. macOS edged up slightly to 2.21%, while Linux slipped to 3.69% after a record March linked to the Steam Machine launch and Simplified Chinese user activity. SteamOS Holo, Valve's Steam Deck distribution, remained the most common Linux flavor at 0.84%.

Why AMD Is Gaining on Intel: The Cache Technology Closing the Gap

Intel retains the top position at 54.01% of Steam CPU share, but AMD's climb to 45.99% represents a competitive shift that no hardware analyst is dismissing. In January 2025, Intel held roughly 68.8% of the Steam CPU segment. In less than 18 months, AMD has reclaimed nearly 14 percentage points in one of the largest real-world consumer hardware datasets available.

The technical engine behind that shift is AMD's 3D V-Cache architecture, branded on consumer chips as the X3D series. Instead of expanding the processor's L3 cache horizontally — constrained by silicon die area — AMD stacks additional cache memory vertically on top of the compute die using copper-to-copper hybrid bonding and through-silicon vias. The result on current Ryzen 9000X3D chips is a total L3 cache of up to 128MB, accessible at roughly 49 CPU cycles of latency compared to approximately 354 cycles for DDR5 system memory — roughly five to ten times faster for the data the CPU requests most often in gaming: world-state, physics calculations, and AI pathfinding.

Intel has no equivalent stacked cache technology. Its competing approach emphasizes higher clock speeds and more CPU cores, which delivers strong productivity performance but does not close the gap in the cache-sensitive workloads that determine frame rates in CPU-limited games. Third-party benchmarking consistently places AMD's Ryzen X3D chips 15 to 25% ahead of comparable Intel parts in gaming frame rates, with the advantage reaching 30% in simulation and strategy titles where large world-state data must be held in fast cache.

A second factor is amplifying AMD's advantage in 2026 specifically: the global DRAM shortage driven by AI data center investment. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have redirected production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators, driving consumer DDR5 prices up more than 170% year-on-year. AMD's X3D chips are unusually insulated from this pressure because their massive on-die cache reduces dependence on fast system memory: AMD has confirmed that Ryzen X3D chips show virtually no performance variation across common memory configurations, meaning a builder can pair one with a slower, cheaper DDR5 kit and pay virtually no frame-rate penalty. For buyers already stretched by high RAM prices, that insulation is a meaningful cost advantage.

Intel's forthcoming Nova Lake architecture, expected in the second half of 2026, will be the clearest test of whether that gap can be closed without a stacked-cache equivalent. AMD's own Zen 6-based generation is also in development. Both launches arrive into a gaming market where AMD has fundamentally reset what buyers expect from a high-performance CPU.

What the GPU Data Says About Slow Generational Refresh

The GPU chart's headline is a milestone that reflects how long generational transitions take on Steam: the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU edged past the desktop RTX 3060 to become the single most common card at 3.81%, with the RTX 3060 slipping to 3.73%. Both figures are a window onto an install base still dominated by hardware released two to three years ago.

The combined RTX 40- and 50-series share across Steam remains below 30% of all discrete GPUs — a reflection of the sustained premium pricing that characterized both launches. VRAM is moving slowly upward: the 16GB tier reached 24.50%, up 0.45 points from May, driven by newer laptop GPUs and mid-range desktop cards shipping with larger buffers. But 8GB remains the modal VRAM allocation, meaning developers targeting the Steam audience still need to optimize for 8GB budgets to reach the majority of their players.

The laptop card's arrival at the top of the GPU chart matters for a second reason: a laptop RTX 4060 and a desktop RTX 4060 share a name but not a power budget. Laptop GPU variants operate under thermal and power ceilings — typically 60 to 80 watts rather than the desktop card's 115 to 165 watts — that meaningfully reduce real-world performance. Steam's aggregate GPU share figures do not distinguish between the two, which means the "most common card" is actually a range of performance levels packaged under one name.

Resolution and RAM: 1080p and 16GB Hold Steady

Display resolution and system memory tell a consistent story. 1920×1080 remains the choice of just over half of all Steam users, with 2560×1440 continuing a slow upward trend as monitor prices have fallen. On the memory side, 16GB of RAM accounts for 41.57% of surveyed systems — the modal configuration and one that has barely shifted in months. The gaming PC market has effectively converged on 16GB as its standard.

What the Steam Hardware Survey Actually Measures

One interpretive note belongs here before drawing conclusions. The Steam Hardware Survey is a voluntary, randomly sampled telemetry collection — not a census of the full PC market. Valve samples approximately one-twelfth of its active user base per month, with each individual user typically asked to participate once per year. The survey reflects gaming-focused consumer PCs and skews toward hardware capable of running games; enterprise, workstation, and ultrabook markets are not well represented.

Seasonal effects and regional participation shifts — particularly large waves of Simplified Chinese users, which drove an anomalous Linux spike to 5.33% in March before it normalized — can produce month-to-month movements that do not reflect real underlying trends. For OS adoption and CPU share, the directional signal across multiple months is what counts; any single month's figure is one data point within that trend.

With those caveats, the June 2026 data tells a coherent story: the Windows 10 holdout population is shrinking but remains large enough to represent a real security liability. AMD's X3D-driven CPU gains are real, sustained, and grounded in a specific architectural advantage Intel has not yet countered. And the GPU market's reluctance to refresh confirms that Steam's audience makes purchasing decisions on price-performance discipline — not on the promise of a new generation alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it safe to still be using Windows 10 on my gaming PC?

Windows 10 reached its end of support on October 14, 2025. Microsoft no longer provides free security updates, meaning any vulnerability discovered in the OS after that date remains unpatched on your system. Your PC will continue to work, but the security exposure grows over time. Microsoft offers an Extended Security Updates program for $30 per device per year — or free for users who sign in with a Microsoft account and sync their PC settings — providing patches through October 12, 2027. Upgrading to Windows 11 or enrolling in the ESU program before that window closes is the recommended path for anyone who cannot or does not want to upgrade immediately.

Why has AMD gained so much CPU share on Steam in the past year?

AMD's Ryzen X3D processors use a stacked L3 cache technology called 3D V-Cache, which adds up to 64MB of additional cache memory directly on top of the CPU die using copper-to-copper bonding. That cache operates at roughly 49 CPU cycles of latency — five to ten times faster than DDR5 system memory. In gaming, where the CPU frequently fetches world-state and AI data, the performance advantage over Intel's non-stacked chips is consistently 15 to 25%. The global DDR5 price surge has strengthened AMD's position further: X3D chips' large cache reduces their dependence on fast RAM, making them more cost-competitive in a year when memory is historically expensive.

What percentage of Steam users are still on Windows 10?

According to the June 2026 Steam Hardware Survey, 23.56% of surveyed Steam systems — roughly one in four — still run Windows 10. That figure has been declining steadily month over month, but at the current pace, a significant minority of the Steam audience will remain on the unsupported OS through at least the end of 2026.

What is the most popular GPU on Steam right now?

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU is the single most common graphics card in the June 2026 Steam Hardware Survey, appearing in 3.81% of surveyed systems — edging past the desktop RTX 3060 at 3.73% for the first time. Both are mainstream-tier cards, reflecting Steam's broader audience of gaming laptops and budget-to-mid-range desktop builds rather than flagship hardware.