The latest Steam Hardware and Software Survey marks a significant milestone for Windows 10, which is now the operating system of choice for more than half of its reported users. The 32 and 64-bit versions of the OS account for 50.35 percent of systems in the survey, while the aged Windows 7 claims second place with a still-respectable 33.87 percent share.
VentureBeat reported last September that the Windows 10 adoption rate is well ahead of earlier versions of Windows, including Windows 7. Making Win10 a free upgrade certainly helped convince people to give it a try, and the figure is bolstered by the inclusion of Windows 10 Mobile devices, Xbox One consoles, and other hardware in the total. The adoption rate has slowed somewhat in recent months—the free upgrade offer ended in July—and the early prediction of one billion installs by 2018 now seems laughably over-optimistic, but it's clearly still making strong headway.
The full Windows OS breakdown:
- Windows 10 64 bit: 49.10 percent (+0.20%)
- Windows 7 64 bit: 28.60 percent (-0.22%)
- Windows 8.1 64 bit: 8.49 percent (-0.10%)
- Windows 7: 5.27 percent (-0.13%)
- Windows 10: 1.25 percent (+0.02%)
- Windows XP 32 bit: 1.15 percent (-0.04%)
- Windows 8 64 bit: 1.15 percent (-0.04%)
- Windows 8.1: 0.27 percent (0.00%)
- Windows Vista 32 bit: 0.13 percent (-0.01%)
- Windows 8: 0.10 percent (0.00%)
- Windows Vista 64 bit: 0.06 percent (-0.01%)
Other interesting tidbits revealed by the survey: The GTX 970 is still the dominant video card at 4.64 percent of users, but it continues to lose share—it's down by more than a quarter point—while the GTX 1060 is coming on strong, up nearly a half-point to 1.90 percent. VR headsets account for a minuscule portion of Steam users, just 0.38 percent in total (0.25 percent HTC Vive, 0.15 percent Oculus Rift). And 1.64 percent of Steam users are still running at 1024x768. (Come on, guys, it's 2017. You can do better than that.)
