AMD reaches almost 45% CPU share in the latest Steam Hardware Survey for Windows gaming PCs — Ryzen is steadily gaining ground against Intel's legacy domination

Valve released the Steam Hardware Survey for May 2026, revealing insight into PC gaming trends and patterns that define the industry. As always, we have data on how much RAM people have, what GPUs are the most popular, etc., but perhaps the most interesting bit of info is the CPU usage. AMD has now reached 46.06% share on Steam across all platforms, with almost 45% of Windows PCs using AMD processors.

The exact number for Windows is 44.97%, so we're counting that as 45% for AMD, while Intel is at 55.02% for the month of May. Compared to April, that's a 0.79% drop for the Blue Team, while also a 0.79% gain for the Red Team. Compared to the start of the year, in January, AMD only held 43.34% of the share while Intel accounted for 56.64%, so the patterns either way are being reinforced.

Steam Hardware Survey CPU usage - May 2026 — (Image credit: Future)

AMD keeps climbing the charts while Intel's lead is on a steady decline. It still has the biggest slice of the pie because of the sheer legacy left behind, and since AMD only became competitive in 2017. That was the year the first mainstream Ryzen chips came out and challenged Intel for the throne.

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AMD planted the seeds of the Zen architecture during its darkest years, and that multi-year gamble has borne fruit to the point that the data now reflects it. To be clear, Intel is also very competitive these days, especially on the mobile front with Panther Lake and with the upcoming Nova Lake family set to take a true generational leap for desktop.

Most recently, the advent of 3D V-Cache has helped AMD secure the gaming segment with chips that consistently outperform other offerings. The company has released several X3D variants of its existing CPUs for both current and older generations, such as the newly announced 10th Anniversary Edition of the 5800X3D, the chip that started it all. On the other hand, we have the 9950X3D2 with extra cache stacked underneath both its 8-core CCDs for the first time in Ryzen history.

Funnily enough, AMD has also reached a similar 46% share of the server x86 CPU market thanks to its EPYC lineup, which is about to get refreshed with Venice this year and Verano in 2027. L

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

33 Comments Comment from the forums

LordVile

Reminder as always this is a “random” sampling of steam users not the entire user base
Reply
PEnns

Reminder again that Steam surveys could show 95% of users are playing with Nvidia GPUs the past week and this week AMD has a 45% share!

Steam, where number are like, well, vapor.
Reply
usertests

PEnns said:
Reminder again that Steam surveys could show 95% of users are playing with Nvidia GPUs the past week and this week AMD has a 45% share!

Steam, where number are like, well, vapor.
Steam numbers are suspicious, but GPUs != CPUs.
Reply
Notton

If I'm to believe social media, it's because a bunch of ill-informed people bought a DDR4 5800XT PC, and there was a huge uptick in AMD handheld PCs, despite the cost increase.
Reply
ezst036

LordVile said:
Reminder as always this is a “random” sampling of steam users not the entire user base
FUD.

You can negate some situational results under such a premise but the trends are really the point.

Using the "just this today" FUD model of yours, should there be a small uptick in 16GB computers but 32 and 64GB goes down this would prove that people are pulling out half of their DRAM out of their computers.

Meanwhile the last 6 months of trending of AMD CPUs, well, you would ignore the trend for "just this today".

10 random samplings over the course of a year can actually produce quite reliable results when your goal is to reveal the trends.
Reply
Ogotai

ezst036 said:
should there be a small uptick in 16GB computers but 32 and 64GB goes down this would prove that people are pulling out half of their DRAM
IF that is even possible.. if they have 2 sticks of ram, i doubt they would take half of it out to do what ever it is your are assuming... one comp i have here, as 32 gigs.. thats 2x16.. there is no way im gonna take a stick out and loose the dual channel setup.. or performance gains that also brings.. same with my main, 32x2 sticks.. not gonna happen... and not worth the effort to try to fud the results of the steam survey....

ezst036 said:
FUD.

You can negate some situational results under such a premise but the trends are really the point.

Using the "just this today" FUD model of yours, should there be a small uptick in 16GB computers but 32 and 64GB goes down this would prove that people are pulling out half of their DRAM out of their computers.

Meanwhile the last 6 months of trending of AMD CPUs, well, you would ignore the trend for "just this today".

10 random samplings over the course of a year can actually produce quite reliable results when your goal is to reveal the trends.
i have used steam for quite a few years now, and i have NEVER done a steam survey... the whole thing could be though of as fud... how many others have used steam for years, but never taken the survey ????? at best.. it should only be used as a peek into what hardware people are using, and lightly looked at " trends " as you put it... nothing more...
what about those that dont even use steam ????? i guess they dont count.......

you want a more complete look and what people are using in their comps.. then a way needs to be done where any one can get a program, or pop onto a website, have it scan your system to see what you are running, and tally those results, and attach a unique way to ID a persons comp, so they cant change something, and redo the scan to pad the results IE, change one 5090 from MSI, then change it to an gigabyte 5090... for example.. it would either flag it as an upgrade for that comp and not count it, or not even count it at all..
Reply
ezst036

Ogotai said:
IF that is even possible..
It is not possible, not really. I used a ridiculous example on purpose given the fact that ridiculum is afoot in this thread from the beginning.

Ogotai said:
" trends " as you put it... nothing more...
what about those that dont even use steam ????? i guess they dont count.......

My only comment thrust was that the trend is what counts. As they say, the trend is your friend. (Unless you oppose what the trend says then the trend is your friend) But one day results are almost not worth commenting on if they lack officialdom.(like actual item/unit sales on say, black friday)

For users those outside of steam, these users would be captured in different metrics and then correlated together to get a greater market picture.
Reply
LordVile

ezst036 said:
FUD.

You can negate some situational results under such a premise but the trends are really the point.

Using the "just this today" FUD model of yours, should there be a small uptick in 16GB computers but 32 and 64GB goes down this would prove that people are pulling out half of their DRAM out of their computers.

Meanwhile the last 6 months of trending of AMD CPUs, well, you would ignore the trend for "just this today".

10 random samplings over the course of a year can actually produce quite reliable results when your goal is to reveal the trends.
Remember steam is owned by an opaque private company who could cherry pick survey numbers as much as they could truly be random.

I would expect 16GB to be higher tbh considering the price of DDR5
Reply
txfeinbergs

PEnns said:
Reminder again that Steam surveys could show 95% of users are playing with Nvidia GPUs the past week and this week AMD has a 45% share!

Steam, where number are like, well, vapor.
What the hell are you talking about? They are talking about CPUs, not GPUs.
Reply
palladin9479

Steam HW survey is very accurate. It uses the exact same methodology and sampling techniques used by academic and research institutions.

They merely show the hardware used on PCs that have steam installed. Gaming PCs basically. Social media, techtube and benchmarking sights distort reality.

May 2026 for anyone wanting to see actual data.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?pubDate=20251110
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