August Steam survey: AMD loses CPU ground to Intel, top GPU changes again

[midian182]

In brief: August's Steam survey has arrived, and there's been a trend reversal we've not seen since February: AMD lost ground to Intel in the CPU section. It was also another month where the top GPU changed, while Windows 11 continues to pull ahead in the OS category.

2025 has seen Steam survey participants' most popular GPU alternate between the RTX 3060, RTX 4060, and RTX 4060 laptop. The RTX 3060 took the lead again in July, but its Lovelace successor regained the top spot in August. The RTX 4060 also saw the largest gains of the month (0.46%).

The top 11 GPUs are made up of xx60 and xx70 products and their variants, with the only outliers being the RTX 3050 in fifth and the GTX 1650's enduring popularity keeping it in fourth place.

Most popular GPUs among Steam survey participants in August

Looking at user-share gains for the month, the RTX 5060 sits behind the RTX 4060 with a 0.41% increase, while the 4060's laptop version is in third place. AMD's best performers were the RX 7800 XT (0.08%) and RX 7600 XT (0.07%) in 14th and 15th place, respectively. Team Red's highest dedicated GPU in the main chart is the Radeon RX 6600 in 30th position.

Top-performing GPUs among Steam survey participants in August

The section remains dominated by Nvidia, with just under 75% of all GPUs from Team Green, while AMD holds a 17.3% share.

One area where AMD has been making huge strides is the Steam survey's CPU section. With gamers loving the company's Ryzen 7 9800X3D chip – combined with Intel's disappointing Arrow Lake desktop series – AMD has seen its user share shoot up past 40% in recent months. But for the first time since February, AMD's CPU share dropped in August (by 0.23%) while Intel made gains.

According to Statcounter, Windows 11 had a rare fall in global users last month as Windows 10 made gains. But the newer OS continued its surge in the Steam survey, increasing another 0.49% to take it to 60.39% overall. Windows 10 fell slightly to 35.09%, a trend expected to continue now that we're just over a month away from its October 14 end-of-support date.

Looking at the rest of the survey, 8GB remains the most popular amount of VRAM, though games are increasingly calling for more if you want higher resolution/graphics settings. 16GB is the most common amount of RAM, but it looks as if 32GB will take its place at some point in the next 12 months.

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August Steam survey: AMD loses CPU ground to Intel, top GPU changes again

 

[wiyosaya]

Nothing to worry about. Intel is still trying to BS market their CPUs, and I'm sure enthusiasts will catch on.

 

[Burty117]

Who on earth is buying Intel these days? I get businesses will be still, as Intel is practically forced on them, but gaming PC's and custom builds? Pre-builts are probably still Intel, since I'm sure Intel give a little kickback for using them.

I guess proof that if you produce the catagorically better product, you still might not win the majority of the market if the market is just a duopoly.

 

[godrilla]

Who on earth is buying Intel these days? I get businesses will be still, as Intel is practically forced on them, but gaming PC's and custom builds? Pre-builts are probably still Intel, since I'm sure Intel give a little kickback for using them.

I guess proof that if you produce the catagorically better product, you still might not win the majority of the market if the market is just a duopoly.

High-end laptops are still exclusive to Intel in terms of features, latest displays, Thunderbolt 5 and wifi 7 capabilities. Latest Xess is also superior to rdna 3.5 with fsr 3.5 in latest AMD apus which will not get an upgrade till 2028 to fsr 4 via rdna4 or better.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Who on earth is buying Intel these days? I get businesses will be still, as Intel is practically forced on them, but gaming PC's and custom builds? Pre-builts are probably still Intel, since I'm sure Intel give a little kickback for using them.

I guess proof that if you produce the catagorically better product, you still might not win the majority of the market if the market is just a duopoly.

Majority of business laptops are intel only. For DIY intel has been running some pretty sweet sales. $230 for a 265kf is pretty sweet, when you have to go $450+ with a 9800x3d to beat it.

 

[opckieran]

Intel was running deep discounts on CPUs recently (still are?). They should consider offering CPU/GPU bundles too, or platform bundles.

 

[WaltC3]

The Steam Survey is voluntary, not automatic. I have AMD, but rarely if ever bother to take their voluntary-only hardware survey. I'm certain I'm not alone... That's why the survey results are anything but definitive, even for Steam's customer base.

 

[antiproduct]

Next month it'll bounce back the other way. This isn't really news.

 

[Eldrach]

There's been massive campaigns from Intel on the pre-built market. 12700kf, 13700kf etc. are being a thrown the market to sell out old stocks - massive lift of sales due to that. If we were to look at Intel margins for these, that would probably be in a solid minus

 

[redgarl]

Using Steam Survey is only covering about 130 millions users.

Making parallel to the CPU market is a joke. If you want to know the real numbers, you go and check the Client Computing Group, and even there, it is mixed with the numbers from mobile chips. The same with AMD.

The numbers don't lie, Intel is in decline and AMD is on the rise.

 

[arrowflash]

Intel has the OEM market by the balls, and this probably won't change anytime soon.

I wish we had a bigger selection of AMD laptops.

 

[AnilD]

Windows 7 holding onto 3.5% in 2025 is hilarious. Somewhere out there, someone is still running a 2009 Dell laptop like it’s the family heirloom. Also, Chrome at 70% is insane.

 

[Liranan]

Over the past years I've only been asked to take part in the survey once and I have three AMD machines (laptop, NUC and desktop).

The only two machines that don't run Steam are my router (x64 OpenWRT) and media server (Linux Mint).

 

[captaincranky]

Well, IIRC & AFAIK, Steam no longer supports Windows 7. Which begs the question, "why are any users at all reporting it as being their OS"?

 

[Burty117]

Majority of business laptops are intel only. For DIY intel has been running some pretty sweet sales. $230 for a 265kf is pretty sweet, when you have to go $450+ with a 9800x3d to beat it.

Didn't Techspot do an article on on the 265K recently?

https://www.techspot.com/review/3026-core-ultra-7-vs-ryzen-5-cpu-gpu-scaling/

It barely beats a 7600X and is consistently beaten by the 9700X, you definitely don't need a 9800X3D to beat it.

Edit: Just had a look and the 9700X is £5 cheaper than the 265K whilst consistently being better in gaming.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Didn't Techspot do an article on on the 265K recently?

https://www.techspot.com/review/3026-core-ultra-7-vs-ryzen-5-cpu-gpu-scaling/

It barely beats a 7600X and is consistently beaten by the 9700X, you definitely don't need a 9800X3D to beat it.

Edit: Just had a look and the 9700X is £5 cheaper than the 265K whilst consistently being better in gaming.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-ultra-7-265k/30.html

A whopping 0.4% slower than a 9700x. "consistently beaten" LMAO.

Do you play games at 720p? If not, there is no functional difference between a normal zen 5 chip and arrow lake.

Well, IIRC & AFAIK, Steam no longer supports Windows 7. Which begs the question, "why are any users at all reporting it as being their OS"?

It still runs on 7 but no longer updates.

Windows 7 holding onto 3.5% in 2025 is hilarious. Somewhere out there, someone is still running a 2009 Dell laptop like it’s the family heirloom. Also, Chrome at 70% is insane.

It is insane, but what is the alternative? Firefox is too busy miring itself in controversy to compete and safari is apple exclusive. Everything else is built on Chrome. They've got a very effective monopoly.

We just retired the last windows 7 pc at our office last week. Now we're talking about how long its going to take to retire the last windows 10 PC, likely another 5 years at least. I miss windows 7....

 

[whateversa]

I think the only people still buying Intel are people that have not been watching the news. AMD does not have a perfect track record in the last year either, but they were still doing better in terms of reliability overall.

 

[Loadedaxe]

I think the only people still buying Intel are people that have not been watching the news. AMD does not have a perfect track record in the last year either, but they were still doing better in terms of reliability overall.

Not all gamers want AMD. I will not own a AMD driven machine, I work with my PC and game as well, work is priority, that’s just me though but I am sure there are others. My Intel rig just works, that is what I need. So 10% on average less performance in games is ok with me.

 

[AndreV]

The Steam Survey is voluntary, not automatic. I have AMD, but rarely if ever bother to take their voluntary-only hardware survey. I'm certain I'm not alone... That's why the survey results are anything but definitive, even for Steam's customer base.

I've never done a Steam Survey and I had/have AMD for about 25 years. Only recently when Steam asked me if I want to participate to their survey I found out how it works.

 

[AndreV]

Not all gamers want AMD. I will not own a AMD driven machine, I work with my PC and game as well, work is priority, that’s just me though but I am sure there are others. My Intel rig just works, that is what I need. So 10% on average less performance in games is ok with me.

"just works, that is what I need" It might come as a surprise for you but AMD also works, and in fact it works very well in all scenarios, Intel...well...sometimes is stumbles.

 

[smol camel]

Who on earth is buying Intel these days? I get businesses will be still, as Intel is practically forced on them, but gaming PC's and custom builds? Pre-builts are probably still Intel, since I'm sure Intel give a little kickback for using them.

I guess proof that if you produce the catagorically better product, you still might not win the majority of the market if the market is just a duopoly.

Simple, price. Intel is so much better for the price. Did you see what 265k's go for these days?

I think you are just falling for the launch price based reviews.

 

[smol camel]

There's been massive campaigns from Intel on the pre-built market. 12700kf, 13700kf etc. are being a thrown the market to sell out old stocks - massive lift of sales due to that. If we were to look at Intel margins for these, that would probably be in a solid minus

Intel margins are about 40%, which is much lower than AMD's margins at nearly 70% indeed.

It means on average they are selling for half price compared to AMD.

Though you could say, AMD is milking their advantage instead of gaining market share as well.
(Also there is some AI stuff mixed in as there are no without AI margins announced.)

 

[GTvon]

I'm really not sure why anybody cares what other people are doing or what they are buying. It is absolutely no bearing on any decisions that I make.

 

[Burty117]

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-ultra-7-265k/30.html

A whopping 0.4% slower than a 9700x. "consistently beaten" LMAO.

Do you play games at 720p? If not, there is no functional difference between a normal zen 5 chip and arrow lake.

From all the pricing I can find, the 9700x is still cheaper, why would you pay more for the Intel?

Simple, price. Intel is so much better for the price. Did you see what 265k's go for these days?

I think you are just falling for the launch price based reviews.

Looked it up, 9700x is cheaper (if only slightly) why pay more? AMD uses less power as well, overtime, it’s just the better option.

 

[GTvon]

The Steam Survey is voluntary, not automatic. I have AMD, but rarely if ever bother to take their voluntary-only hardware survey. I'm certain I'm not alone... That's why the survey results are anything but definitive, even for Steam's customer base.

We have four Intel machines that we game on Plus a handheld that's AMD but we never do the surveys either. Why would I give up my privacy just to give away data for free?