What stories can you find in the data?
by William Judd
Each new edition of Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey brings new insights into the changing PC market, especially as some parts of the industry continue apace, while others regress due to the AI-fuelled price rises of flash memory components.
In the July 2026 results, published today: eight-core CPUs have overtaken six-core models to finally gain the number one slot, 8GB RAM systems show the fastest growth in popularity, and 1080p displays exhibit the largest percentage point drop since we first started reporting on these numbers.
Let’s start in processor land. Octa-core CPUs have been gaining in popularity for some time, thanks in part to a succession of excellent eight-core X3D gaming processors by AMD, and we’ve finally reached the tipping point: this is now the most popular core configuration reported in the survey, at 27.85 percent, following a 0.4 percent rise. Six-core lost nearly the same amount, 0.5 percent, and now sits at 27.5 percent overall in second place. 10-core and 18-core Intel CPUs also saw small gains of 0.18 percent and 0.08 percent, respectively.
While CPU sizes have logically progressed over time, the effects of the RAM crisis continue to show up in the survey, with the 8GB RAM category continuing to grow at the expense of 16GB configurations (with a 0.2 percent trade from one to the other). 16GB still remains the most common setup, at just under 41 percent, with 32GB at a shade under 37 percent with fractional growth. 8GB sits at, appropriately enough, eight percent.
Finally, the primary display resolution results show one of the biggest drops in recent memory, with 1920×1080 displays losing nearly a full percentage point (0.8 percent) over the last month. This category still accounts for over half of displays reported in the survey, at 51 percent, but the tides of change are starting to accelerate as 1440p and 4K become increasingly affordable. 1440p was the biggest beneficiary, with a 0.26 percent gain, with other small increases across the board.
There are some other stories to unpick here – including the continued switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11, stabilisation in the AMD vs Intel CPU stakes and a small rise in Nvidia’s GPU market share – but it’s a Sunday morning, so we’ll leave it there for now.
What sticks out to you in the data? Let me know in the comments below.
