What just happened? Remember when the Steam survey's top GPU would remain unchanged for months or even years? In 2025, we've seen the number one graphics product change almost every month, and September was no different. Elsewhere, AMD has bounced back from a rare decline to reach its highest user share ever.
Things have changed a lot since the GTX 1060 topped the Steam survey GPU chart for around five years (2017 – 2022). This year has seen a frequently changing number one GPU among survey participants, as the RTX 3060, RTX 4060, and RTX 4060 Laptop regularly swap places. The RTX 4060 knocked the RTX 3060 off the top in August, but the Lovelace desktop card was replaced by its mobile variant last month.
In April, the RTX 4060 laptop became the first laptop GPU to top the chart in over three years. It only lasted a month in first place, but shot back to number one in June – again, though, it was there for only a month. September marks the third time in 2025 that the RTX 4060 laptop has sat above all the other GPUs.
Looking at AMD, its highest dedicated GPU, the Radeon RX 6600, is in 29th place. None of Team Red's RX 9000-series RDNA 4 GPUs have made it onto the chart, which Nvidia continues to dominate with a 74% share vs. AMD's 18%.
It's better news in the CPU section for Lisa Su. Last month saw AMD bounce back from a very rare fall in user share to reach an all-time high of 41.3% while Intel fell to 58%. If this trend continues, we could see more AMD processor users on the Steam survey than Intel users in under a year. Given the popularity of AMD X3D processors for gaming – and Intel's underwhelming recent CPU releases – this isn't too surprising.
Elsewhere on the survey, Windows 11 continues to gain users at Windows 10's expense. The older OS, which will soon reach its end of support date, is down to 32% while its successor has increased in 63%. It's a similar story globally: Windows 10 held the lead up until June this year, according to Statcounter, but Windows 11 has since remained ahead – though Statcounter's methods of collecting its data have been called into question recently.
Another new number one on the survey is in the VR headset section. The Oculus Quest 2, which has topped this category since March 2021, has been replaced by its successor, the Meta Quest 3.
AMD hits record CPU share in latest Steam hardware survey – new top GPU and VR headset revealed
