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Valve's regular Steam Hardware Survey results have been published for August 2026, bringing an interesting collection of new data that charts the course of the PC gaming space - or at least, the portion of it that is running Steam.
The big findings this month are that the RX 9070 XT continues to grow as the most popular named AMD graphics card; Windows 11 has continued its capture of Windows 10, macOS and Linux users; and amongst Windows users, 16GB and 32GB RAM systems have combined for 0.72 percent growth despite the ongoing flash memory price crisis.
The RX 9070 XT news is interesting, as though the card has only reached 1.37 percent of survey participants overall, it's a higher 1.46 percent figure if we look at Windows only and makes up 2.70 percent of Linux respondents - although it's admittedly lumped in with the RX 9070 and RX 9070 GRE. Still, the 2.7 percent figure is higher than any other named desktop GPU.
Remaining in Linux land, two GPU entries that correspond to the Steam Deck sit at a mighty 9.28 percent and 10.48 percent, suggesting that around one in five Linux users on Steam is on a Steam Deck. The Steam Machine, if you're curious, makes up a paltry 0.28 percent of Linux Steam users, which is understandable given that the devices have only recently started shipping.
Returning to that OS news, the Windows 11 adoption train continues to pick up pace, with just over 75 percent of Windows users using the latest version, with 24 percent on Windows 10 and less than one percent on Windows 7 or other versions. That's good for a 71 percent market share in the combined results, coincidentally also a rise of 0.71 percent versus last month's figures, with corresponding losses from Windows 10 (-0.4 percent), macOS (-0.2 percent) and Linux (-0.1 percent).
Finally, the RAM news. Despite the sky-high prices of DDR5 (and knock-on effects to the DDR4 market), 16GB systems rose by 0.30 percent and 32GB systems rose by 0.44 percent, showing that there's still a progression to higher-end systems. The number of 8GB systems showed the largest drop, at 0.5 percent. The current percentages are 8GB at seven percent, 16GB at 41 percent and 32GB at 38 percent, though a stunning 4.5 percent of systems have 64GB of RAM or more.
As always, we invite you to take a look at the data yourself and draw your own conclusions. If you find anything interesting, let us know in the comments below!