Valve’s latest Steam Hardware Survey for September reveals interesting shifts in PC gamers’ hardware choices. The data highlights the continued rise of AMD Ryzen CPUs, the dominance of NVIDIA’s RTX 4060 in graphics cards, and—perhaps most notably—a decline in 8GB VRAM GPUs among players.
8GB GPUs Losing Ground
For years, PC gamers have debated whether 8GB of VRAM is enough for modern titles, especially those targeting higher resolutions like 1440p or 4K. Now, Steam’s statistics reflect that sentiment. GPUs equipped with 8GB of VRAM dropped 1.37% in September, signalling that players are gradually moving away from this configuration.
Roughly half of that share shifted toward 16GB GPUs, which are becoming increasingly common in mid-range models from recent generations. Interestingly, even 32GB GPUs saw a small uptick of 0.52%, a number likely driven by high-end cards such as NVIDIA’s RTX 5090, currently one of the few gaming GPUs offering that much memory.
Despite the decline, 8GB models still hold the largest market share at 33.66%, followed by 12GB cards at 18.99%—a group that includes popular models like the RTX 4070, RTX 5070, and AMD’s RX 7700 XT.
The drop in 8GB GPUs coincides with the continued decline of Full HD (1920×1080) gaming. The resolution, long considered the sweet spot for performance, fell 1.21% to 53.23% of all Steam users. Meanwhile, 1440p and 1600p resolutions both grew by 0.70%, suggesting that more gamers are upgrading their displays alongside their hardware.
AMD Continues to Close the Gap
On the CPU front, AMD continues to gain momentum. The company’s processors grew 1.15% in September, reaching a 41.31% share of the market, while Intel fell slightly to 58.61%.
RTX 4060 Still Leads the Pack
As for GPUs, the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU remains the most popular on Steam with 4.84% usage, followed by the RTX 3060 and RTX 4060 desktop versions.
Taken together, the data paints a clear picture of where PC gaming is heading: higher resolutions, more VRAM, and stronger competition between AMD and Intel. As modern titles demand more graphical power and memory, gamers are gradually leaving behind the 8GB era in favour of setups better suited for 1440p and beyond.
Source: Steam
