Steam’s latest hardware stats are out, painting an interesting picture of the PC gaming landscape.
The stats are drawn from hundreds of thousands of users who choose to participate in Steam’s automated PC specs hardware survey.
Below is a summary of the most popular PC configurations used by Steam gamers on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
Does your system match or beat the most popular configurations?
Most popular Windows PC configuration – Steam Hardware Stats February 2014 |
||
| Windows Version | Windows 7 64 bit | 53.11% |
| System RAM | 8 GB | 27.35% |
| Processor Vendor | Intel | 74.17% |
| AMD | 25.82% | |
| Intel CPU Speeds | 2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz | 20.65% |
| AMD CPU Speeds | 3.0 Ghz to 3.29 Ghz | 5.13% |
| Physical CPUs | 2 CPUs | 46.97% |
| 4 CPUs | 44.67% | |
| DirectX 11 Systems (Vista/Win7/Win8 & DX 11 GPU) | Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 | 2.49% |
| AMD Radeon HD 7850 | 1.31% | |
| DirectX 10.x Systems (Vista/Win7/Win8 & DX 10.x GPU) | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 | 2.49% |
| AMD Radeon HD 7850 | 1.31% | |
| VRAM | 1024 MB | 36.66% |
| Primary Display Resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 33.52% |
| Total Hard Drive Space | 250 GB to 499 GB | 33.12% |
| Free Hard Drive Space | 250 GB to 499 GB | 25.39% |
Most popular Mac OSX configuration – Steam Hardware Stats February 2014 |
||
| Hardware Model | MacBookPro | 53.16% |
| OSX version | MacOS 10.9.1 64 bit | 58.58% |
| System RAM | 4 GB | 44.98% |
| Intel CPU Speeds | 2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz | 50.00% |
| Physical CPUs | 2 CPUs | 61.45% |
| 4 CPUs | 37.76% | |
| Video Card Description | AMD Radeon HD 6750M | 5.38% |
| Nvidia GeForce 320M | 5.03% | |
| VRAM | 1024 MB | 38.71% |
| Primary Display Resolution | 1280 x 800 | 29.94% |
| Total Hard Drive Space | 250 GB to 499 GB | 35.64% |
| Free Hard Drive Space | 10 GB to 99 GB | 29.57% |
Most popular Linux configuration – Steam Hardware Stats February 2014 |
||
| Linux version | Ubuntu 13.10 64 bit | 27.18% |
| System RAM | 3 GB | 18.83% |
| Processor vendor | Intel | 76.71% |
| AMD | 23.28% | |
| Intel CPU Speeds | 2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz | 22.76% |
| AMD CPU Speeds | 3.0 Ghz to 3.29 Ghz | 5.01% |
| Physical CPUs | 2 CPUs | 48.81% |
| 4 CPUs | 39.40% | |
| Video Card Description | Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 | 2.02% |
| AMD Radeon HD 6850 | 0.96% | |
| VRAM | 1024 MB | 33.15% |
| Primary Display Resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 32.56% |
| Total Hard Drive Space | 100 GB to 249 GB | 30.28% |
| Free Hard Drive Space | 10 GB to 99 GB | 40.92% |
Intel CPUs clearly rule the gaming roost, although there are a few things to note here. For example, on Windows Intel has a 74.17% share, and the only other option being AMD, they secure 25.82%. Apple Mac computers are entirely Intel based.
This leads to a red herring in the GPU stats. On most platforms Intel’s GPU chips dominate due to their integration into modern Intel CPUs. It is highly unlikely that a serious gamer will be using only Intel HD Graphics without another discrete GPU in their system. Therefore we have removed Intel’s integrated GPUs from the list to show which discrete GPUs are top.
It is interesting to note that overall, Windows has a 95.17% share among Steam users; Mac OSX has 3.42%, and Linux 1.30%.
While Windows 7 64-bit is the most popular OS with 50.55% share, Windows 8.1 64-bit saw the biggest growth month-on-month out of measured operating systems, gaining 1.41% share to reach 11.82%.
More gaming news
Epic (and expensive) gaming PCs built in SA
SSD prices in SA: what to expect
Loading ...
i7 4770k
EVGA Z7 MOBO
3 way SLI EVGA GTX 780 TI
16GB Kingston 2133mhz RAM
Custom loop
Corsair AX 1200i
1TB Samsung Evo SSD
2TB WD HDD