New Steam hardware survey results are in: Windows 11 surges, but 1440p gaming takes a hit
The data says the use of 1440p resolution fell by over 7% in November.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
What you need to know
Every month, Valve conducts an optional and anonymous hardware and software survey through Steam that collects data about its customers' PC builds. The results of these surveys are posted publicly on Steam’s website, and now that December’s here, the data for November 2023 is in — and it suggests that there have been some interesting shifts.
Arguably the most surprising result is that 2560x1440 resolution was found to be used by just 15.97% of users — a large 7.17% decrease from October’s sampling. I definitely wasn’t expecting to see this, especially since 1440p looks considerably better than 1080p and isn’t too much harder to run in most cases. To be clear, it’s still the second most popular resolution after 1080p, which accounts for 60.09% (+1.08%) of Steam’s player base. However, a drop of over 7% is alot, and implies a good number of PC gamers may be moving to more budget-friendly displays. 1366x768 gets the bronze at 4.10% (+0.86%), followed by 3840x2160 (4K) at 3.72% (+1.13%); all other resolutions each account for ~3% or less of what folks are using.
The use of theWindows 10operating system has also fallen to 53.53% (-12.05%), accompanied by an increase up to 42.04% forWindows 11(+11.51%). This indicates that many folks who’ve stuck with Windows 10 since the launch of the newer OS in late 2021 have opted to migrate to Windows 11, likely enticed to do so by numerous improvements and refinements that Microsoft has made over time.
-Best Xbox headsets to get in 2023-Best upcoming Xbox games-Best Xbox controllers-Best Xbox accessories-Best gaming laptops in 2023
Notably, bothIntelandNVIDIAare still beatingAMDin the hardware department here, with 65.28% of survey participants using Team Blue CPUs and 75.12% playing with Team Green graphics cards. The most commonly used GPU is still theNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060at 4.89%; however, that’s still a 4.79% decrease compared to October’s results, suggesting that gamers have been making upgrades (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday season discounts certainly helped with that, I’m sure).
49.88% — close to half of all survey participants — are using 16GB of RAM in their system, while 31.88% have 6-core CPUs (23% have 4-core chips, and 20.55% have 8-core ones). Also, 23.46% of users have 100GB to 249GB of storage space free, while 51.99% have over 1TB of total space. The storage struggle is real, and I’m not sure if even thebest SSDscan save us.
You can view the full results of the surveyhere. Something important to note is that since all these stats come from randomly-chosen participants every month, they don’t represent the entirety of Steam’s user base. Even taking that into consideration, though, big shifts of 4% or more are uncommon, and likely are indicative of noteworthy market shifts.
Get the Windows Central Newsletter
All the latest news, reviews, and guides for Windows and Xbox diehards.
Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).
