Major changes in the Steam survey: A new top GPU and language, Windows 11 crashes spectacularly

midian182

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What just happened? The latest Steam survey has landed with so many changes that one would be forgiven for thinking it was an April Fools' joke: a new graphics card heads the GPU section, Windows 11 crashes almost 10%, and English is no longer the most popular language.

It was only last November when the GTX 1060 lost its spot as the number one most popular card after five years, being replaced by the GTX 1650. But that Turing product is no longer at the top. The RTX 3060, a card that has been making massive gains over the last few months, now reigns supreme. It's followed by the RTX 2060, GTX 1060, and RTX 3070.

Looking at March's top performers, the RTX 3060 tops this section, too. With a couple of exceptions, Turing and Ampere dominate here, while AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX cards remain absent from the main GPU list.

The operating system section also looks different from usual. Windows 10 64-bit has seen its share fall consistently for months while Windows 11 gained users, but March reversed this trend in a big way: Windows 10 was up 11.62% while Windows 11 crashed -9.65%.

Windows 11 received an update that caused slow SSDs and WiFi connections, Blue Screens of Death, and more unwanted issues last month, but that happens all the time and wouldn't have resulted in so many people switching to its predecessor. We'll get to the more likely reason later.

Another significant change is in the most popular languages section. According to the latest survey, more than half the participants now speak simplified Chinese after it jumped a massive 25.3% - it rose just 2.47% the previous month - while English fell into second place with a -12.44% decline. The last time the Asian language was number one was back in 2020.

There are more notable increases in other categories: people with six physical CPUs went up 12.36%, those with CPU speeds between 2.7GHz and 2.99GHz leaped almost 12%, and users with more than 1TB of storage were up 18.9%.

So, what is behind the big changes? As we always point out, the Steam survey is an optional feature for the platform's millions of users, who must click the prompt to opt-in. The most likely explanation is that more people took part in March, perhaps due to Valve pushing out more prompts to new users. Either way, we now have a new top graphics card in the RTX 3060, which might result in developers upping the minimum/recommended specs for their games.

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AMD refusing to ship cards and being so completely non-competitive just gives Nvidia a license to price gouge. Since AMD is too inept to compete, hopefully Intel Arc starts climbing up that list. If it can get 3 of the top 10 that would be enough to shake things up.
 
After using windows 11 now for a couple months I never want to go back. I'm really considering typing up a guide on settings cause I swear once you go back and tweak a few things probably take 15 minutes it's like why didn't I do this sooner. Change isn't all bad.
 
After using windows 11 now for a couple months I never want to go back. I'm really considering typing up a guide on settings cause I swear once you go back and tweak a few things probably take 15 minutes it's like why didn't I do this sooner. Change isn't all bad.
No, but my loooong experience with Windows has taught me to only switch to the next version when you have no other choice. That way, all the bugs are worked out and the stupid crap that they wanted to try on us has already failed and has been removed.

It's just the "Path-of-Fewest-Headaches".
 
No, but my loooong experience with Windows has taught me to only switch to the next version when you have no other choice. That way, all the bugs are worked out and the stupid crap that they wanted to try on us has already failed and has been removed.

It's just the "Path-of-Fewest-Headaches".
Even after you have no choice and move, that doesn't mean the bugs and issues are worked out. I've had Windows 10 since 7 was dropped from support and I've had a lot of issues with the forced updates that's caused BSODs, complete Windows failure that requires re-installs and loss of data. I've moved to Windows 10 Pro because of it so I can disable updates without requiring some 3rd party program (which I've tried before and it didn't stop updates).
 
Even after you have no choice and move, that doesn't mean the bugs and issues are worked out. I've had Windows 10 since 7 was dropped from support and I've had a lot of issues with the forced updates that's caused BSODs, complete Windows failure that requires re-installs and loss of data. I've moved to Windows 10 Pro because of it so I can disable updates without requiring some 3rd party program (which I've tried before and it didn't stop updates).
any chance that could be because you did an upgrade instead of a fresh install?
 
It appears the Chinese are not smart enough to opt out. They are just quickly clicking on buttons to get back to gaming after an update.
 
Wow, just when you thought the crapfest of advertising your brand couldn't get any worse. According to this, somehow 1/6 of all 4090 users just traded in their card for something else.

Well, at least Steam now knows what their Chinese userbase is claiming to use.
 
Do you know why there are no Radeons on this list? I love the 6800XT I picked up for $400. Every game is perfectly smooth, on high/ultra, at 4K. Sorry for the naive question - I legit don't understand the Nvidia rules AMD drools mentality.
Because they were not available for over a year, while nvidia was gouging people AMD wasnt shipping anything.

Kinda hard to take marketshare without product.

It's really not hard to understand how AMD gets their reputation if you pay attention for more then 5 minutes, just recently their rDNA2 cards finally got an update, after 3 months, after sustained user complaints, because AMD with a $5 billion R+D budget cant figure out how to release drivers for more then 1 series of cards at a time. Just as an example.
 
Even after you have no choice and move, that doesn't mean the bugs and issues are worked out. I've had Windows 10 since 7 was dropped from support and I've had a lot of issues with the forced updates that's caused BSODs, complete Windows failure that requires re-installs and loss of data. I've moved to Windows 10 Pro because of it so I can disable updates without requiring some 3rd party program (which I've tried before and it didn't stop updates).

Are you sure you don't have some hardware/driver issues? It honestly took me too damn long to realize that the occasional random crashes & BSODs I was having were due to ram issues (amd 2700x cpu, 3200 mhz ram, didn't know the cpu only supports a max of 2933 mhz ram speed natively, ram tests never showed errors, BSODs always pointed at nvidia driver). Once I dropped it down to default safe 2133 mhz speed, I never had any crashes ever again... :/
 
any chance that could be because you did an upgrade instead of a fresh install?
Chance of what? Avoiding the failures of MS's forced updates? No. No avoiding that crap.

That's why Windows 10 Pro is better. Disable the Windows update services and you're done.
 
Do you know why there are no Radeons on this list? I love the 6800XT I picked up for $400. Every game is perfectly smooth, on high/ultra, at 4K. Sorry for the naive question - I legit don't understand the Nvidia rules AMD drools mentality.
Yep, I also have an RX 6800 XT!

There are several theories as to why this survey is so skewed. One is that internet cafes in Asia all have these nVidia cards in them and when different users are gaming, the survey doesn't realise that it's the same computer used by another one of their account owners. Thus, a shared computer could be counted 100x without Steam knowing it.

Another theory is that Steam's survey doesn't work properly with Radeon systems. I've tried to take the survey but all it has ever done for me is freeze-up. I've tried with three different motherboards over 12 years and it has never worked. Steam is aware of the problem but has never done anything to solve it.

You can try it for yourself because PC World has instructions on how to do it:
PC World - How to make your PC take the Steam survey
 
Yep, I also have an RX 6800 XT!

There are several theories as to why this survey is so skewed. One is that internet cafes in Asia all have these nVidia cards in them and when different users are gaming, the survey doesn't realise that it's the same computer used by another one of their account owners. Thus, a shared computer could be counted 100x without Steam knowing it.

Another theory is that Steam's survey doesn't work properly with Radeon systems. I've tried to take the survey but all it has ever done for me is freeze-up. I've tried with three different motherboards over 12 years and it has never worked. Steam is aware of the problem but has never done anything to solve it.

You can try it for yourself because PC World has instructions on how to do it:
PC World - How to make your PC take the Steam survey
The first thing a respected survey researcher does is release their survey and sampling methodology. All these questions would be resolved if Steam release their survey and sampling methodology. Since they don't, we can assume it's suspect.
 
Yep, I also have an RX 6800 XT!

There are several theories as to why this survey is so skewed. One is that internet cafes in Asia all have these nVidia cards in them and when different users are gaming, the survey doesn't realise that it's the same computer used by another one of their account owners. Thus, a shared computer could be counted 100x without Steam knowing it.

Another theory is that Steam's survey doesn't work properly with Radeon systems. I've tried to take the survey but all it has ever done for me is freeze-up. I've tried with three different motherboards over 12 years and it has never worked. Steam is aware of the problem but has never done anything to solve it.

You can try it for yourself because PC World has instructions on how to do it:
PC World - How to make your PC take the Steam survey
Works fine on both of my AMD systems.
 
The first thing a respected survey researcher does is release their survey and sampling methodology. All these questions would be resolved if Steam release their survey and sampling methodology. Since they don't, we can assume it's suspect.

There is no methodology.

It is advertising Steam's brand by saying, "look at all the people (in China) who use Steam!"
 
No, but my loooong experience with Windows has taught me to only switch to the next version when you have no other choice. That way, all the bugs are worked out and the stupid crap that they wanted to try on us has already failed and has been removed.

It's just the "Path-of-Fewest-Headaches".
Jokes on you, bugs are never worked out.
 
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