Valve is out with their September 2026 Steam Hardware Survey results and it shows that the average PC Gamer is using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. That's a huge leap from past hardware generations, as the top 10 most popular GPUs are now all RTX-only. Of course, if you're buying, you should be aware that this minimum threshold of hardware power means that modern gaming is a LOT more power hungry than in the past.
Valve data shows NVIDIA dominance and storage crunch
For the average PC Gaming spec Valve is surveying, you can see that Windows 11 64 bit is the dominant OS. The average person with this spec also has 32 GB RAM, which is now the average RAM spec people have. This is important for the kind of heavy multitasking and asset loading modern games require.
Average Steam PC Specifications
- Operating System: Windows 11, 64-bit
- RAM: 32 GB
- CPU Frequency (Intel): 2.3 GHz – 2.69 GHz
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070
- VRAM: 16 GB
In terms of graphics, the RTX 5070 with 16 GB VRAM is what we're seeing. The most common display spec, according to the survey, is 1920×1080 with 47.91% of the user base. Also, storage is higher now, with the average system now having over 1 TB of total capacity.
However, that big GPU and total storage capacity means that these "average" systems have between 100-249 GB of "free" drive space. The discrepancy between total and free drive space shows just how quickly games install and gobble up drive space. Note that the resolution settings are still pretty conservative, but the escalation of the underlying hardware is through the roof.
Source: IXBT
RTX 5070 is the new baseline. We are done with mid range.