Valve published the May 2026 Steam Hardware Survey a few days late after brief server issues, but the data was worth waiting for. AMD has reached 44.97% CPU share on Windows gaming PCs, its highest figure yet on the platform. Intel sits at 55.02%, down 0.79 points from April. AMD has been steadily chipping away at Intel’s installed base for over a year, and AMD’s own senior marketing director SaÅ¡a Marinković made sure to celebrate the milestone publicly on X. For context, AMD held 43.34% of the Windows CPU share on Steam as recently as January 2026, meaning Team Red has added nearly 1.7 percentage points in just five months.
Ryzen X3D processors continue to dominate gaming CPU sales charts, with the Ryzen 9 9800X3D consistently outselling Intel’s top gaming options at major retailers despite carrying a higher price tag. The Computex announcements of the Ryzen 7 7700X3D and the re-release of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition will push AMD further up these charts over the coming months, as both represent direct plays for the AM5 and AM4 installed bases. Intel’s Nova Lake refresh will need to deliver meaningfully better gaming performance to slow this trend.
On the GPU side, the RTX 3060 leads all discrete GPUs at 4.02%, unchanged in its essential dominance. The RTX 4060 Laptop GPU sits at 3.99%, the RTX 4060 desktop at 3.74%, and the RTX 3050 at 3.28%. The RTX 5070, NVIDIA’s most popular Blackwell card, is at 3.09% and inching upward. The RTX 5060 Ti is the fastest riser among the newer Blackwell cards, gaining 0.16 points to reach 2.06%. No AMD RDNA 4 cards crack the top tier yet, though the RX 9070 series continues to accrue small but real share as supply expands globally.
These GPU trends are a direct continuation of what we tracked in March and April. March was a statistically messy month: Linux briefly shot to 5.33%, Windows 11 behaved anomalously, and the 16 GB RAM tier jumped in ways inconsistent with organic hardware churn. April corrected most of that, and May looks like a clean read. Linux landed at 3.99% in May, down from April’s corrected 4.52% but still well above the sub-2% baseline that was the norm before the Steam Deck and Steam Machine shifted the Linux gaming population. macOS holds at 2.16%.
System RAM distribution shows 16 GB still most popular at 40.95%, with 32 GB at 37.93% and declining slightly month over month. The gap between the two tiers continues to compress. On the OS side, Windows 11 is at 74.33%, up 2.53 points, while Windows 10 drops to 25.57%. The EOL pressure on Windows 10 is clearly working, however gradually.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →Re: 3060
Honestly, if you were out to replace it today, what would you replace it with? The direct replacement 5060 is a VRAM downgrade. You get... DLSS 4, but less VRAM to run it with. Yeah, an upgrade, but not an impactful one, and not an upgrade across the board.
I actually got the survey request on all 3 of my machines last week and was happy to join. It was the first in as long as I can remember and I think the last time was on a machine with a pair of GTX 500 series GPUs in SLI.
Yea haven't been hit here yet.
I've had them a few times, but it's never been on whatever main gaming rig I have at the time. It's always my secondary or laptop setup. Pisses me off. lol
The following doesn't work for me, but it may for others:
Follow these steps to refresh your hardware poll:
I have only been surveyed once a year or two ago in like 20+ years.
I was honestly surprised since it had been around ten+ years since the last time.