Steam published their monthly survey yesterday. The biggest takeaway from the data collected during December 2016 is, without a doubt, that Microsoft's Windows 10 OS finally surpassed half of Steam's users. Windows 10 64-bit is the most popular OS by far, with 48.97% and a monthly increase of 0.60%; when combined with Windows 10 32-bit's 1.22%, the critical 50% threshold is easily passed.
It looks like Microsoft's gamble is paying off, with the fastest adoption yet for a Windows OS. Meanwhile, the most popular GPU is still NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970 with 4.70% of the total. The brand new GTX 1060 made the biggest leap this month, though, gaining 0.54% which got it to 2.01% overall.
All the cards of NVIDIA's new 10 series registered moderate to significant gains. The GTX 1070 moved to 1.82% (+0.29%); the GTX 1080 is at 0.95% (+0.12%) and the new entry GTX 1050 Ti is already at 0.24%.
AMD cards don't fare as well. Newcomers RX 460 and RX 470 are at 0.17% and 0.16%, respectively, and the most popular AMD card on Steam remains 2012's HD 7900 Series with 1.12% in 20th place.
While most Steam users (33.66%) still only have 1GB of dedicated VRAM, the amount of gamers with 6GB and 8GB VRAM increased respectively by 0.19% and 0.22% last month.
A similar trend can be seen for system RAM. Most users still have 8GB (33.81%), but configurations with 12GB or higher rose 0.31% last month.
The most used primary display resolution will be 1080p for some time yet. The so-called Full HD resolution is still used by 38.21% of Steam's users and it also registered the biggest bump in December (+0.15%).
Finally, both VR headsets have barely moved in December 2016. According to Steam's survey, both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive only gained 0.02% with their respective totals at 0.12% and 0.23%. Clearly, the Virtual Reality market is going slower than some had anticipated.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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