In brief: Microsoft continues to nag, push, and try to force more Windows 10 users onto Windows 11, but is it working? Not particularly, as global surveys show Windows 10 is still found in almost 7 out of 10 PCs. Windows 11 has been doing well in the Steam survey, though, but last month saw its predecessor's user share leap almost 3 points.
February's Steam survey bucks a few of the trends we've seen over the last few months. Windows 11 has been gaining ground on Windows 10 for a while now, reaching an all-time-high user share of 44.2% in January as Windows 10 dropped to 51.4%.
Despite Microsoft reviving its aggressive Windows 11 upgrade campaign along with some intrusive popups in February, Windows 10's user share increased by 2.76% among those who participated in Valve's survey. Windows 11, meanwhile, dropped by 2.2%.
Moving over to the GPU section, the RTX 3060 cemented its position at the top of the chart with a 1.19% increase. The mid-range Ampere offering was also the month's best performer.
Looking at the user share increases for February, we're seeing more cards from Nvidia's current and previous generation making gains. The RTX 2060 and its Super variant remain popular, too. The only products older than the 2000-series in the top 20 are the GTX 1060 – a former number one – and the GTX 1660. No AMD cards experienced gains last month, while Team Red's highest position in the main chart is the Radeon RX 580 just outside of the top 30, several places below the very expensive RTX 4090.
The CPU chart has been pretty consistent since last November. Intel tends to keep its share at about 65-66% as AMD seems to consistently add and then lose users, hovering around 33-34%. February, was no different, with Intel up 2.2% as AMD fell by the same amount.
The Steam survey often contains an unexpected result - sometimes it has a lot of them. February's wierdness was in the most popular languages section, where every language bar one saw declines. Only Simplified Chinese was up, by 7.6%, pushing it ahead of English to become the most commonly spoken language on the platform. This has happened on several occasions in the past, and English has always regained its position at the top soon after.
Elsewhere in the survey, six physical CPUs is by far the most common among participants, while most people have 8GB in their rigs, play in 1080p, and have more than 1TB of hard drive space.