The takeaway: Valve has just released the results of the Steam survey, two days later than usual. The biggest takeaway from May's findings is that AMD CPUs have once again reached an all-time high user share as Intel's falls, making the gap between the two platforms smaller than ever.
Thanks to a 0.79% increase last month, almost 45% of Steam survey participants now use AMD processors. With Intel's share falling by the same amount, the gap between to the two rivals is just under 10%.
Barring a few anomalous months, including one in February, Team Red has been consistently gaining CPU users for well over a year now. AMD's X3D CPUs have long been driving the company's sales among gamers thanks to their excellent gaming performance, and while March's Core Ultra 200 Plus chips have been some of Intel's best-received in years, they haven't slowed the company's decline in the survey.
AMD could further improve its fortunes in the chart following the announcement at Computex that it is bringing back the Ryzen 7 5800X3D for AM4 users and launching a cheaper Ryzen 7 7700X3D for AM5 on July 16. The company also said it was extending AM5 support through to 2029.
Moving on to the GPU chart, the six-year-old RTX 3060 remains at the top despite a slight fall in user share. It could cement its position at number one following news that the Ampere-era card has been re-released in China and, as rumors suggest, will soon arrive in other markets.
Looking at the month's best performers, the RTX 5060 Ti saw the largest gains (0.16%), followed by the RTX 5060 laptop. The RTX 3050 and its 6GB laptop variant were also in the top ten, which could be a sign of consumers turning to older, second-hand cards as new models become increasingly expensive.
Best-performing GPUs among Steam survey participants during May
Speaking of RAMageddon, the number of participants with 16GB of system memory (the most popular amount) increased in May as those with 32GB fell. Elsewhere, 8GB is still the most common amount of VRAM, though it did fall slightly as 16GB increased.
Finally, there's the OS section. Windows 11's share keeps increasing, with 7 out of 10 participants now using Microsoft's latest operating system. Windows 10 is declining, but it still holds close to a quarter of the total share. Linux, meanwhile, was down slightly to just under 4%, even though almost all the distros saw their individual shares increase last month. This is the second month in a row that Linux's user share has declined, but that could have been influenced by the now-addressed Steam Deck shortages.
