AMD's Rapid Growth Among Steam Gamers While Memory Upgrades Surge

The latest Steam Hardware Survey from Valve for December paints a fascinating picture of the gaming hardware landscape. Despite soaring memory prices and global chip shortages, the PC gaming community continues to invest in upgrades. One of the standout trends involves the rising dominance of AMD processors among the platform’s users.

As of December, AMD CPUs accounted for an impressive 47.27% share, marking a notable increase of 4.66 points in just one month. Over the past four months, AMD’s total gain has reached nearly 7 percentage points, following its earlier step past the 40% threshold during the third quarter. Intel still holds the lead with 55.47%, though its share continues to narrow with every passing survey.

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Factors Driving the Shift

Analysts believe that this upward trajectory for AMD is tied to its decision to move entirely to DDR5 memory on the AM5 platform, discontinuing DDR4 support. In contrast, Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh series continues to support both DDR4 and DDR5, giving users flexibility but potentially slowing complete adoption of newer technologies. This strategic contrast highlights how platform decisions influence user upgrade patterns.

RAM Capacities Reaching New Heights

The survey also highlights a major evolution on the memory side. Even with global supply constraints and memory chip price spikes caused by high AI sector demand, gamers are still expanding their setups. The percentage of users equipped with 32 GB of RAM has surged to 39.07%, closely following the 40.14% share of systems running on 16 GB. Many experts suggest that users are upgrading sooner to stay ahead of future price climbs.

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When it comes to other components, the market has remained relatively stable. Windows 11 now powers about 70.83% of Steam systems, reinforcing its position as the dominant operating system. Meanwhile, the affordable and widely popular NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 continues to be the top graphics card among players, holding a 6.26% share.

Altogether, December’s data reflects both the resilience and adaptability of PC gamers, who keep evolving their setups even amid price volatility and hardware market challenges.