Steam survey shows GPUs with 16GB are now the most popular graphics cards — and that really doesn't bode well for gamers' wallets
As more news emerges of inbound price hikes for graphics cards
by https://www.techradar.com/uk/author/darren-allan · TechRadarNews By Darren Allan Published 4 August 2026
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- The latest Steam survey shows GPUs with 16GB are the most popular
- They're on 25.9% and have overtaken 8GB GPUs which are just behind on 25.32%
- There's been quite a shift towards 16GB boards over the past year, but with news of more price hikes incoming, upgrading to this loadout could be a painful process for gamers
Graphics cards with 16GB of memory are the most popular GPU among Steam gamers now, although the way GPU prices are going means that people aiming for a board packing plenty of video RAM (VRAM) are looking at a rather depressing future.
TweakTown spotted that the latest Steam hardware survey for July shows that 16GB of VRAM is the most prevalent memory configuration at 25.9%, up 1.4% over last month. That means it just dethrones the previous top of the VRAM table, which was 8GB, a loadout that slipped slightly from last month down to 25.32%.
There's not much in it, of course, but nonetheless, it's a telling stat (bearing in mind the usual caveats about variance in Valve's hardware report based on how the survey is distributed).
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Of course, the majority of Steam gamers are still running with less than 16GB, and only 36% have a GPU with 16GB or more. So, almost two-thirds are running less than 16GB, and just under half (47%) have a graphics card with 8GB or less.
But it's a hefty rise in the count of 16GB GPUs when you consider that less than a year ago, in August 2025, just 6.8% of Steam gamers had boards with that VRAM loadout (based on a Notebookcheck report from the time). Compared to July 2026, that's nearly quadruple the number of 16GB-equipped rigs, with a close to 20% increase — pretty eye-opening.
Analysis: 16GB ambitions and the ever-worsening RAM crisis
It seems that, at least based on Steam's stats, RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RX 9060 XT 16GB graphics cards (and 9070 models) must have been selling well — and of course higher-end Nvidia cards. The RTX 5070 is doing well for itself, too, and is now in third position in Steam's GPU ranking (although that's a 12GB offering and it should really be 16GB).
The ranks of the 16GB GPUs on Steam will also be bolstered by older models, of course, from past generations. Also, the visibility of AMD Radeon graphics cards with 16GB of VRAM was improved by Valve earlier this year, when an issue was fixed whereby these cards were misreported (not detected and lumped in a generic Radeon category), so that will have boosted numbers too.
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