Your PC probably doesn’t suck: Steam’s Hardware Survey suggests

We’ve long talked about the expense of PC gaming.

It’s always been a relevant topic, but particularly in a day and age where PC gaming is just as lucrative to publishers and developers alike as consoles – EA and Ubisoft standing as prime examples.

And with so many tiers of hardware available, from entry-level to the sorts of rigs used to power starships, PC gaming has never been so good.

But just what is everyone running these days? We honestly have no idea, but Steam’s most recent Hardware Survey does a pretty good job of shedding light on the matter.

Steam Hardware Survey Overview - July 2015

Steam Hardware Survey Overview for July, 2015.

For the foreseeable future, PC gaming is all about the GPU. Games almost always hit your GPU’s wall long before they run into a CPU bottleneck. So we thought we’d take a look at the top 5 most used GPUs according to Steam.

Intel HD Graphics 4000
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
Intel HD Graphics 4400
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

Intel’s embedded HD Graphics 4000 solution is in virtually everything, so its position at the number one slot isn’t all that surprising – it’s been there for months now.

And just by the way, if you’re using an Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip to power your gaming experience, then you have our sympathies. It can’t be a very smooth or picturesque experience.

We will mention that the Intel HD Graphics 4000’s dominance at the top of the list may be down to the popularity of Intel’s Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs.

Steam’s survey software may simply be detecting the HD graphics solutions as components in use, even if a discrete GPU is being used.

Steam Hardware Survey Graphics - July 2015

Steam Hardware Survey Graphics for July, 2015.

Either way, what surprised us most, however, is that NVIDIA’s really rather capable GTX 970 is sitting at number two – it may even be number one if our HD Graphics theory holds up.

Keep in mind that it’s a $300+ card (and averaging at R5, 000 locally). That’s a lot of gamers using what is actually a rather pricey card.

Granted, it offers fantastic value for money, allowing you to play practically every game at maxed out settings at 1080p and even experience 4K gaming, but still.

What it means is that a lot of PC gamers have a solid gaming PC, a lot more than we expected.

Following on from the GTX 970 is the GTX 760, still quite a decent card but nowhere near as capable.

For those who are curious, AMD’s first entrant into the list is at the number six spot with one of the Radeon HD 7900 series – Steam doesn’t distinguish which.

Throw in the fact that the most popular RAM size is 8GB and that Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs are very popular, and we’re very impressed with where PC gamers have gotten to considering “how much cheaper console gaming is”.

Suffice it to say, your gaming PC probably doesn’t suck. Good going elitists. Keep that torch lit.