Steam hardware stats: how does your PC compare?

Steam has released its hardware survey statistics for December 2013, so this is a good time to look at the most common gaming setup among Steam users to get an idea of the PC gaming hardware landscape as we head into 2014.

Below is an overview of the most common setup among Steam users:

Video card GPU types

DirectX 11 – 67.76%
DirectX 10 – 28.58%
DirectX 9 Shader Model 2b and 3.0 – 1.78%
DirectX 9 Shader Model 2.0 – 1.01%
DirectX 8 and below – 0.87%

PC processor manufacturer

Intel – 74.11%
AMD – 25.89

CPU count

1 CPU – 3.53%
2 CPUs – 48.19%
4 CPUs- 43.63%
Other- 4.64%

There are also a few Mac specific stats:

Mac Ownership breakdown

MacBook Pro – 53.83%
iMac – 23.51%
MacBook – 16.89%
MacPro – 2.14%
MacMini – 3.62%
Other – 0.02%

Mac System RAM

1GB – 0.34%
2GB – 5.44%
3GB – 0.42%
4GB – 45.77%
5+GB – 48.01%

Below is an overview of the most common hardware setup among Steam users.

Note that the Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip is integrated into CPUs which may account for its prevalence although it is not a particularly great GPU for heavy gaming.

The most popular ‘gaming grade’ cards are the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 at 2.29%; the most popular AMD card is the Radeon HD 7850 at 1.30%; while the Intel HD Graphics 4000 dominates in 4.03% of systems.

The full breakdown of GPUs among Steam users can be found here: Steam Hardware & Software Survey

Steam Hardware Stats December 2013

It is interesting to compare the above average hardware setup to the specifications of the Steam Machine prototypes that are now in the hands of the first 300 testers.

There is no single specification that manufacturing partners will have to adhere to, but a certain minimum performance level will be required.

As you can see below, the prototypes vary a lot in the CPU and GPU department.