Methodology

The data

Every figure comes from the monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey, which covers Windows, macOS, and Linux. Valve publishes it as percentages of surveyed systems, so GearCensus reports shares, never numbers of players. Each surveyed system reports its hardware and operating system, and Steam is the largest PC gaming platform, so the site treats the surveyed systems as a picture of the gaming systems in use in general.

Performance tiers

GPUs are ranked by hand into ordered tiers of similar gaming performance, tier 1 being the fastest. Tiers are an ordering, not a score: they say which GPU is faster, not by how much. They give a broad overview of each GPU's overall gaming performance rather than a precise measure: how two GPUs compare varies from one game to another, so tiers are approximate by nature.

A laptop GPU can span several tiers, because laptop makers run the same chip at very different power limits: across ASUS's 2024 ROG and TUF laptops, the GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU's maximum power ranges from 90 W to 140 W. A survey name shared by several GPUs, such as a desktop and a laptop part sold under one name, spans the tiers of all of them.

“Match or beat” shares

A GPU matches or beats another one when it is placed in the same or a faster tier, even at its slowest. When the two ranges overlap, typically with laptop parts, it is uncertain: it is counted separately and shown as an upper bound.

The median GPU

Line up every identifiable GPU from the fastest tier to the slowest. The median tier is the one in the middle, and the median GPUs are the most common GPU of each vendor in that tier. A GPU spanning several tiers counts evenly in each of them.

Supported features

GPUs are grouped by hand into architectures that share the same features, such as Turing RTX or RDNA 2, and each architecture lists what its GPUs support on Windows with the latest driver they can run. Metal support describes macOS. A survey name shared by GPUs that differ, such as a desktop and a laptop part, is uncertain: it is counted separately and shown as an upper bound.

A technology runs natively when it uses its primary path, such as DLSS on an RTX GPU or XeSS on Intel Arc. A compatible path also works: FSR runs the same way on every vendor's GPU, and XeSS on a GPU without Intel's XMX units uses a lighter model, usually with lower quality and performance. The upscaling and frame generation headlines only count technologies built for the GPU; compatible paths and driver-level features, such as AMD Fluid Motion Frames, are shown in their charts.

Platforms

Steam does not publish how many surveyed systems run each operating system. Its overall list of versions only keeps the most common ones, so adding up its Linux or macOS versions would undercount them. Steam also publishes a complete list for each of Windows, macOS, and Linux, as shares of that operating system alone. A version found in both lists links the two: if a Linux distribution runs on 0.5% of all surveyed systems and on 13% of Linux systems, Linux runs on about 4% of all surveyed systems (0.5 ÷ 0.13). GearCensus combines every version found in both lists.

SteamOS, the system of the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine, is counted apart from Linux. Other gaming distributions, such as Bazzite or CachyOS, count as Linux. Windows 11 and Windows 10 are shown on their own; older versions only count in Windows as a whole. Linux distributions are too many to follow, and macOS versions say little about the hardware. Each trend has its own scale, starting at zero. The trends leave out months in which Steam's data lacks several platforms' lists, because those months cannot be split between platforms.

CPUs

Steam reports how many cores each surveyed system's processor has, who makes it, and which instruction sets it supports, but not its model, so processors cannot be ranked like GPUs. The headline core count is the largest one that at least half of the surveyed systems have or exceed. Counts reported by fewer than 0.1% of the systems are left out of the chart.

Steam publishes the processor vendor separately for Windows, macOS, and Linux, so the vendor shares combine them with the platform shares. Every Mac that runs Steam has an Intel or an Apple processor, and Apple processors often report no vendor, so Macs not reported as Intel count as Apple. AVX-512 counts the processors that support its foundation instructions.

RAM

Steam reports how much system memory each surveyed system has, not its type or speed, so DDR4 and DDR5 cannot be told apart. Capacities are shown as Steam reports them, including uncommon sizes such as 28 GB or 60 GB. The headline capacity is the largest one that at least half of the surveyed systems have or exceed. Answers without a capacity, reported as “Other”, are left out of every percentage.

What is left out

Answers that identify nothing, such as “Other” (about a tenth of the GPU answers), are left out, so the figures of each page add up to 100%. A generic name, such as “AMD Radeon Graphics”, counts across the tiers and features of the GPUs it can stand for, but never in the share of any one of them. Only a single GPU's own share is a share of all surveyed systems, as Steam publishes it.