Does this chart explain why Valve opted for 8GB on Steam Machine?
Steam Hardware Survey chart shows average VRAM of popular cards still near 8 GB.
A Reddit user has shared a histogram based on the latest Steam Hardware Survey and graphics card benchmark data. The chart sorts 20 performance bands from entry level to top cards, each covering a 2000 G3D score range (if I’m not mistaken, this type of score is used by PassMark). User notes, this includes 82.24% of Steam users who took part in the survey. The rest sit in a generic “other” group or use cards the survey did not classify.
According to the chart, the most common high end card is the GeForce RTX 4070 at 2.16% share. In the middle of the stack the RTX 3060 desktop has 4.41% share and the RTX 4060 Laptop has 4.84%. On the lower end, GTX 1650 holds 3.02% while RTX 3050 is at 3.07%. GTX 1050 is still present as the “potato” option with 0.71% share.
Source: seyedhn/Reddit
The author colored the bars as low, mid and high, but pointed out that these labels are arbitrary. There is no shared rule for what counts as mid range. Some models such as RTX 3090 Ti and RX 9070 XT did not show up at all and are likely grouped under “other”. Two cards, 5070 and RX 580, were also counted twice in the first version of the chart and should only appear in the higher band.
- Most popular high-end card is RTX 4070 at 2.16%.
- Most popular mid-range card are RTX 3060 at 4.41% and RTX 4060 Laptop at 4.84%
- Most popular low-end card are GTX 1650 at 3.02% and RTX 3050 at 3.07%
- Most popular potato card is GTX 1050 at 0.71% .
From our point of view, mid range cards in 2025 tend to use 8 to 12 GB of memory with a 192-bit bus. High end starts when board partners move to a 256 bit memory bus, while anything above 384 bits is aimed at enthusiasts. Many GPUs also come in several memory configs, for example both 8 GB and 16 GB, which can make a performance based chart harder to read.
Statistics confirm 8GB popularity
For a quick check we focused only on the entry level and mid range groups from the chart. That set included 54 distinct models, from GTX 16 and RTX xx60 cards to RX 500 and RX 6000 series. When we assigned their standard memory sizes and added them together we reached 430 GB of VRAM. The average comes out close to 8 GB per card. This matches the most recent survey data, which confirms 33.46% of all users have 8GB VRAM:
October Steam HW Survey VRAM, Source: Valve
This result shows that Steam users still cluster around 8 GB graphics cards. That average lines up with Valve choosing an 8 GB memory budget for its Steam Machine design . The system targets common GeForce and Radeon owners rather than users with 16 GB or more, and this chart helps explain why that choice makes sense.
In an interview with Tested , Valve’s engineer Yazan Aldehayyat mentioned that “ Steam Machine is equal to or better than 70% of what people have at home “. As we can see, this can be interpreted in many ways, depending on what the actual comparison is based on. If VRAM was the deciding factor for what the mid-range is, then it indeed matches the spec. This is also true for VRAM specs, where 33.3% of systems have more memory, so roughly 67.6% have similar or lower specs.
2025 8GB VRAM GPUs: RX 9060 and RTX 5060 were not met with a warm welcome
It’s worth remembering that back in May and June, the 8GB memory config was a very hot subject, particularly thanks to the release of GeForce RTX 5060 series and Radeon RX 9060 GPUs. Both AMD and NVIDIA decided to limit sampling of the 8GB models and AMD even mentioned that the majority of gamers have no use for more than 8GB VRAM. The 8GB models also performed worse in testing and were considered less future proof. Valve hardware usually stays around for long, so initial impressions may not match what we hear about these systems in a few years.
Source: seyedhn/Reddit/PCMasterRace via 3DCenter
