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Steam's monthly hardware surveys are a great way to gauge the current state of the PC gaming landscape, as they provide real-world insight into the prevalence of certain components. Just a few weeks ago, we covered the data from January, which showed an impressive climb in GPUs with 16 GB of VRAM, while cards with 12 GB and 8 GB memory sizes had grown considerably less common. Today, Valve has come forward to somewhat refute those numbers.
In the release notes for its latest Steam Client Beta update, Valve says it "fixed an issue where VRAM on some graphics cards was not reported correctly," admitting that recent data might've been misconstrued. Now, it didn't provide any details as to which stats were incorrect in particular, or what the updated numbers are — likely because it can't go back and retake the survey.
In January, 16 GB GPUs were reported to be up 5.85% while 12 GB cards were down 4.01% and 8 GB cards became 3.11% less prevalent (despite holding 29.57% adoption overall). The takeaway was simple: gamers are moving toward 16 GB cards, recognizing the fallacies of less VRAM for today's titles. Games starved of video memory become a stutter-y mess, exacerbated by the optimization issues plaguing modern releases.
Even with various SKUs available in cheaper 8 GB configs, many buyers prefer to pay more upfront to get a 16 GB model because the difference can be substantial. Unfortunately, with the ongoing memory crisis, these GPUs are hit the hardest. We even had rumors of Nvidia ceasing to supply VRAM to board partners, leaving them to source their own memory due to the shortage.
As the industry navigates these turbulent times, graphics cards in general have gotten more expensive. Budget-conscious gamers feel left out as an already mid- to high-end focused market has begun moving even further up. Regardless, we should get a more accurate representation of VRAM capacities in Steam users' systems next month; with February's survey, that's only about a week out.
Moreover, Valve also said that in systems with "multiple display adapters," the one with the highest amount of memory will be reported. That means if you have, say, an 8 GB GPU and a 12 GB GPU together for some reason, it's the latter that Steam will pick up as part of its hardware survey. That should streamline the VRAM calculation process and provide us with a more realistic snapshot for most rigs out there. It will also prevent Steam from picking up integrated Radeon and Intel units with very small default allocations of VRAM in the BIOS.
