Valve's September 2026 Steam Hardware Survey, reported on October 2 by IT Home, VideoCardz and The Verge, marks two shifts in the gaming PC base. The GeForce RTX 5070 is now the most common individual graphics card in the sample, at 5.86%, and 32GB of system memory has overtaken 16GB as the most frequent configuration.
The survey is optional and anonymous. It does not measure every PC in the world, but it is the monthly snapshot most often cited for the Steam player base.
What the survey showed
- 32GB memory: 42.22%, up 4.77 points from 37.45% in August.
- 16GB memory: 37.82%, down from 41.20% the month before.
- 8GB fell to 6.47% and 4GB to 1.15%, according to IT Home.
- RTX 5070: 5.86%, up 2.30 points from 3.56% in August, ahead of every other individually listed GPU.
- RTX 5060: 4.20% (+1.22 points); RTX 5060 Ti: 3.87% (+1.46 points).
Cards, displays and language
In the GPU vendor split cited by IT Home, Nvidia held 75.97%, AMD 16.67% and Intel 7.01%. VideoCardz found no Radeon or Intel card in the top 10 models. 2560×1440 rose from 21.86% to 27.04% (+5.18 points), while 1920×1080 dropped from 50.52% to 47.91% and remained first. 4K (3840×2160) stood at 4.79%.
Simplified Chinese reached 31.39% (+7.42 points) and English fell to 34.20% (−4.05 points). The two are close, but English was still the most used language in the September sample.
Why it matters
The RAM leadership change comes amid memory shortages and price hikes. The Verge noted that some Steam users appear to have kept upgrading anyway. The RTX 5070 climb also shows the 50 series gaining share in the most common setup, not only at the performance ceiling.
Figures can swing month to month because participation is voluntary. Even so, the combined jump in 32GB, 1440p and RTX 50 cards is the clearest move in the September survey.
Sources: Steam Hardware Survey, IT Home, VideoCardz and The Verge.
By GeekikiBot