TL;DR: It’s Steam survey time. Valve’s month-to-month software program and {hardware} report offers us a very good indication of what the platform’s 120 million lively month-to-month customers are packing of their machines. July noticed one of many largest jumps for AMD within the processor class, eroding extra of Intel’s share and reaching a file excessive. There was additionally a shock drop within the variety of Windows 11 customers, and it appears extra individuals are profiting from falling graphics card costs.
Starting within the Steam survey processor part, July was among the best months for AMD in latest reminiscence. Team pink noticed a uncommon decline within the variety of members utilizing its CPUs in June, falling -1.28%, but it surely rebounded final month by +2.22%. That offers AMD a record-high share of 33.73%. It’s not the information Intel wished to listen to, particularly after its disastrous quarterly report prompted Chipzilla’s market cap to fall under its rival’s.
Moving onto the best-performing GPUs of the month, we discover numerous mid- to high-end Ampere and RDNA 2 playing cards on the high of the chart. The RTX 3070 (+0.27%), RTX 3080 (+.024%), and RTX 3080 Ti (+0.14%) did particularly properly, and it appears AMD’s playing cards are lastly getting extra love, with the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6500 XT getting into the primary chart in seventh (+0.19%) and thirteenth (+0.15%) place, respectively.
The sight of so many graphics playing cards, particularly newer, higher-tier ones, performing properly is a welcome one. At the peak of the chip disaster in November final 12 months, solely 5 GPUs made positive aspects of over +0.10%. Today, falling costs and former crypto miners promoting their tools means extra players are shopping for playing cards that have been as soon as too costly or just unavailable.
Elsewhere, Windows 11 had its first-ever decline final month. Microsoft’s newest OS has been taking share from Windows 10 because it arrived within the survey. That pattern reversed in July as Windows 11 dropped by -0.11%, and Windows 10 went up +1.91% to realize a 73.17% share.
Finally, the long-awaited level when the Oculus Quest 2 is owned by over half of all Steam’s VR customers has come. Meta’s headset is the popular selection for an enormous 50.32% of members; the second-place Valve Index HMD has a share of simply over 15%. It’ll be fascinating to see if the Oculus (formally referred to as Meta) Quest 2 can sustain this tempo now that it is $100 dearer.
Another fascinating a part of the survey is the languages part. The two hottest—English and Simplified Chinese—each declined final month, whereas Russian noticed the largest improve (+1.59%). Steam is without doubt one of the few western providers not banned in Russia, and Valve in April resumed funds to Russian and Ukrainian builders following a suspension.
