Valve has released the December 2025 Steam Hardware Survey, and the results point to one of the most dramatic rebalances in PC gaming hardware in over a decade. AMD’s CPU share surged to 47.27%, shrinking Intel’s long-standing lead to just over eight percentage points—the narrowest gap ever recorded on Steam.
🧠 CPU Market: The X3D Effect #
AMD’s gains are being driven less by raw generational leaps and more by targeted gaming efficiency.
- Market Share: AMD climbed to 47.27%, while Intel slipped to 55.47%.
- Why X3D Matters: CPUs like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D now dominate high-refresh-rate gaming benchmarks, while the older 5800X3D remains extremely popular on the secondary market. Large 3D V-Cache continues to outperform brute-force clock speed increases in real-world games.
- Platform Economics: With AM5 systems requiring DDR5, many gamers are choosing value-focused X3D upgrades rather than full platform rebuilds.
- Confidence Gap: Ongoing caution around stability issues in older 13th- and 14th-gen Intel CPUs appears to have accelerated AMD’s steady erosion of Intel’s once overwhelming Steam dominance.
💾 Memory: 32GB Becomes the New Normal #
After years of stagnation, memory capacity trends are finally shifting.
- 32GB and Above: Now represents 39.07% of all Steam systems, gaining more than two percentage points in a single month.
- Why the Jump: Persistent DDR5 price pressure—driven by manufacturers prioritizing HBM for AI accelerators—has pushed many users to upgrade sooner rather than risk higher prices in 2026.
- Gaming Reality: Modern titles, background applications, and content creation workloads increasingly punish 16GB systems, making 32GB the new “safe minimum” for enthusiasts.
🎮 GPU Landscape: Blackwell Takes Hold #
NVIDIA remains firmly in control of the graphics market, holding 73.28% total share, but the internal makeup of that share is rapidly evolving.
Top GPUs on Steam (December 2025) #
| Model | Share | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 | 6.53% | +2.20% |
| RTX 5070 | 3.05% | +0.82% |
| RTX 4060 (Laptop) | 6.26% | +2.10% |
| Radeon RX 9070 | 0.22% | New |
- RTX 5070 Momentum: The RTX 5070 has quickly become the most popular Blackwell (RTX 50) desktop GPU, balancing efficiency, price, and performance.
- AMD’s Entry: The RDNA 4–based RX 9070 made its first appearance, though AMD’s discrete GPU share remains under pressure in the midrange.
🖥️ Resolution Trends: Frame Rate Over Pixels #
Despite increasingly powerful GPUs, gamers are still prioritizing responsiveness over raw resolution.
- 1080p (FHD): 53.68% — still the majority.
- 1440p (QHD): 21.77% — slow but steady growth.
- 4K (UHD): 5.47% — firmly niche.
This resolution mix reinforces the importance of strong CPU performance and cache-heavy designs, as 1080p and 1440p gaming remain heavily CPU-bound in modern engines.
📊 Overall Picture #
The December 2025 Steam data reflects a great rebalancing rather than a sudden upheaval. AMD continues to win ground through focused gaming-oriented designs, NVIDIA is successfully transitioning its massive install base to Blackwell, and memory expectations are quietly resetting upward. As 2026 begins, Intel’s era of near-total CPU dominance on Steam looks increasingly like a chapter that’s closing—not one that’s coming back.