32GB of RAM on track to become the new majority for gamers — Steam survey indicates shift could occur before the end of the year

Occasionally, Valve’s Steam Survey data shows we are on the precipice of a major change in the computing landscape. The latest such survey, sharing data collected during August, shows that 32GB of system RAM looks set to become the most popular configuration among Steam gamers in mere months. Drawing lines over graphs, we think the crossover could come before the end of 2025.

There’s been a lot of sound and fury with regard to new graphics cards being ‘stunted’ by anemic levels of VRAM. Perhaps rightfully so, as modern graphics cards don’t have socketed ICs to allow everyday users to add more memory to the board. However, most modern computers, especially desktops and the bulkier gaming laptops, allow owners to boost system RAM using compatible (SO)DIMMs or similar.

Looking at the Steam Survey data we can see that the percentage of users with 16GB of RAM has steadily declined from 43.12 to 41.67% over the last six months. Meanwhile, 32GB users have inexorably grown from 32.85 to 35.42% of the Steam gaming populace.

We’d expect the impetus behind this crossover to be those buying new machines moving up a level, falling DDR5 prices, and the well publicized demands of modern AAA games titles.

RTX 4060 momentum, 1600p screens, and Windows 11

Video card trends are often interesting to see play out in the Steam data. This month, the continued momentum behind the last-gen Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 may be confounding to some.

If we look at discrete graphics cards on a popular retail site like Newegg, for example, buying an RTX 4060 to add to your desktop doesn’t look very sensible (there’s just two samples in stock at $399 and $499). Meanwhile, you can easily grab an RTX 5060 at the same store under $300, like this Asus Dual or Gigabyte WindForce model.

Instead, we’ll have to assume one or a few alternatives: other world regions still have RTX 4060 stocks in abundance to sell at discount, and/or there’s a pile of RTX 4060 PC systems still being sold, and potentially being discounted at attractive prices.

We were also interested to see the biggest gainer in primary display resolution stakes was 2560 x 1600 pixels (WQXGA) – primarily a panel resolution that is associated with laptops. The second-best growth is seen in 2560 x 1440 pixel (QHD) monitor users.

Old favorites like FHD 1080p and 4K 2160p basically flat-lined last month. We note that the dominance of 1080p screens in the survey looks solid at just over 54%, with 1440p at a little over 20% and third placed 4K a long way behind at about 4.5%.

On operating systems, Windows 11 has broken the 60% barrier in the latest stats. There remains a considerable 35% chunk of Windows 10 users as we approach that OSes end of life. Linux has had quite a poor month, with a slight dip in this survey showing just 2.65% of Steam gamers were using this OS.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!