Valve published the June 2026 Steam Hardware Survey on July 1, and three headline figures immediately stand out: Windows 11 has cleared 70% for the first time, AMD has narrowed the CPU gap with Intel to under nine percentage points, and for the first time in the survey’s history, a laptop graphics card has claimed the top spot on the GPU chart. Each of those numbers tells a different story about where PC gaming hardware actually is in mid-2026 (or, perhaps where the sampling error lies).
GPU: A Laptop Card Leads the Chart
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU now sits at 3.81% of all surveyed Steam systems, edging past the desktop RTX 3060 at 3.73%. The RTX 5060 follows at 2.66%. The desktop RTX 3060, which had been the chart’s anchor tenant for well over a year, is now second.
When a laptop GPU claims the top spot, it reflects something about where PC gaming is moving: handheld gaming PCs, ultraportable laptops, and portable systems are claiming a growing share of real-world gaming time. The RTX 4060 Laptop GPU is a family of chips that share a name but operate across very different power envelopes, from around 60 to 115 watts depending on manufacturer tuning. Steam’s aggregate data doesn’t split those apart, so the “most popular GPU” is actually a range of performance levels in one bucket.
On the AMD side, AMD GPU tracking has been genuinely improving in accuracy, with the RX 9070 XT now appearing at 1.27% and AMD’s overall discrete GPU share at 19.13%, up from a low of 10.6% in recent quarters. NVIDIA holds approximately 72% overall. The gap hasn’t moved dramatically, but AMD is at least now visible with enough granularity to track.
CPU: AMD Within Single Digits of Parity
AMD sits at 45.99% of Windows gaming CPUs on Steam this month, with Intel at 54.01%. That narrows the gap to under nine points, a figure that would have been unthinkable five years ago. The driver remains AMD’s X3D V-Cache lineup: the 9800X3D in particular has dominated gaming CPU recommendation discussions for over a year, and its large L3 cache advantage reduces RAM latency dependence in ways that matter specifically under the current DDR5 pricing environment. Intel has not answered with a cache-stacking product in the same bracket.
At the current pace of monthly gain, AMD and Intel would reach CPU parity on Steam sometime in early-to-mid 2027. Monthly variance can swing that projection several months in either direction, but the underlying trend is consistent and has been for over a year.
OS: Windows 11 Crosses 70%, Windows 10 Ticking Down
Windows 11 reached 70.44% of surveyed Steam systems in June, up 0.68 points. Windows 10 sits at 23.56% and continues its slow decline toward Microsoft’s October 2025 end-of-support line that has already passed. About one in four Steam users is still running an OS Microsoft no longer patches, which is a meaningful security exposure for that segment of the community. Windows 10 reached its support deadline in October 2025. That holdout population is shrinking, but not quickly.
The Memory Market’s Shadow
The memory market that has made new desktop builds significantly more expensive. 16GB RAM remains the modal configuration at 41.57% of systems, a figure that has barely moved in months despite the high-end pushing toward 32GB. The GPU refresh cycle is stalling at the consumer level because completing a new build costs more than it did two years ago. The laptop GPU at the top of the chart is partly a reflection of that: laptops and handhelds are shipping complete, and complete systems are what people are actually buying right now.
The survey is voluntary, anonymous, and subject to regional sampling variance. Monthly figures are directional. But the consistent multi-month trends: AMD CPU gains, Windows 11 adoption, laptop-form-factor growth are all real.