Steam’s latest hardware survey shows PC gamers moving decisively to Windows 11, with 69.76% of participants now running Microsoft’s newest desktop OS. Windows 10 is sliding toward the exit at 23.99%, but the odd little twist is that Windows 7 is still hanging on, despite Valve dropping support for the Steam client on it.
That split says a lot about gaming PCs in 2026: most users do upgrade, but not all of them do it on Microsoft’s schedule. In Valve’s huge monthly sample, Windows still dominates the platform overall at 93.85%, while Linux and macOS remain very small, if stubborn, minorities.
Windows 11 stretches ahead of Windows 10
The May survey, published at the start of June 2026, puts Windows 11 up by 2.02 percentage points from the previous month. Windows 10 fell by 1.64 points over the same period, which is exactly the kind of glide path you would expect as gamers increasingly buy new machines or finally stop nursing older installs along.
- Windows 11: 69.76%
- Windows 10: 23.99%
- Windows 7: 0.07%
- All Windows versions combined: 93.85%
Windows 7 is still alive, just barely
Windows 7’s share is tiny at 0.07%, but it is not zero, which makes it the sort of statistic that annoys product teams and delights people who hate replacing working software. The old OS has been unsupported for years, and yet a sliver of Steam users still chooses it, or is trapped on it, for reasons that are probably more practical than romantic.
Outside the Microsoft camp, Linux accounts for 3.99% and macOS for 2.16%. Arch Linux is the most popular Linux build in the survey, while macOS users are mostly on version 15.4.1. Those numbers are still modest, but they show the usual pattern: Steam is slowly broadening beyond Windows, even if that process moves at the speed of a distracted download bar.
The hardware pattern still looks like a mainstream gaming PC
The rest of the survey reads like a portrait of the average mass-market rig. Intel holds a narrow lead over AMD in processors, 53.94% to 46.06%, while six-core chips are the most common CPU configuration at 28.02%. Memory is still dominated by 16 GB systems, which make up 41.14% of PCs in the survey.
On graphics, Nvidia remains far ahead at 72.42%, with AMD at 19.13% and Intel integrated graphics at 8.05%. The most common GPU is the desktop GeForce RTX 3060 at 3.85%, followed by the mobile RTX 4060 at 3.77% and the RTX 3050 at 3.10%. That middle-of-the-road mix is a reminder that Steam’s audience is still built around practical upgrades, not trophy hardware.
VRAM and display trends look similarly familiar: 8 GB is the most common video memory size at 25.89%, and Full HD 1920×1080 remains the top resolution at 51.89%. The next question is whether Windows 11’s lead keeps widening as older systems age out, or whether the last stubborn Windows 10 and Windows 7 holdouts keep the migration slower than Microsoft would like.