The Steam hardware and software review results for January 2024 have been released. This month is not suitable for buying graphics cards, but it seems that some people have switched to buying AMD processors. Compared with Intel, the user share of AMD processors has reached an all-time high. At the same time, Windows 11 is increasingly appearing on gamers' PCs.
Despite the announcement of Intel's new 14th-generation chips during CES, Intel lost user share to AMD in last month's Steam survey. AMD's user share increased by 0.59% to 34.25%, the highest level in history.
In the graphics card section of Valve's survey, the RTX 3060 still topped the list despite its share falling by 0.31% last month. Almost all of the top ten graphics cards experienced declines in January. Most of these are older graphics cards, so this could be a result of people upgrading to newer models.
January’s data illustrates the growing popularity of gaming laptops. The RTX 4060 laptop GPU performed the best, rising 0.58%, followed by the RTX 3060 laptop GPU (up 0.38%). The RTX4080 notebook GPU ranks fifth, and the RTX4050 notebook GPU ranks ninth.
The RTX4060 is the best-performing desktop graphics card, and the RTX4060Ti is no less impressive. All RTX 4000 series saw growth except the RTX 4070 (down 0.03%), but it remained the most popular desktop series among participants.
Microsoft will be happy to see that Windows 11 excels in at least one area of the Steam survey. The latest version of the operating system reached a record 44.2% of users in the survey, while Windows 10 fell 2 points to 51.4%. It seems it won't be long before half of the participants will be using Windows 11. This is a far cry from the global survey results: Windows 11 has a global share of 26.5%, while Windows 10 has a 67.4% share.
Elsewhere in the survey, 16GB of RAM is now the top choice for nearly 50% of respondents, followed by 32GB (23%). Although more and more monitors are launching with resolutions above FHD, the majority of respondents (59.7%) still use 1920x1080 resolution, with 1440p in second place accounting for only 16%.
Finally, the increase in game installations is likely the reason most people have between 100GB and 249GB of remaining free hard drive space; most participants had more than 1TB of total space.