16GB VRAM now Steam's most common spec, as gamers snap up high-end Nvidia and AMD GPUs

Steam's hardware survey for July 2026 indicates a growing appetite for VRAM-heavy GPUs, with the most common GPU configuration now sat at 16GB of VRAM, accounting for 25.9% of Steam users' rigs surveyed. It only just beat 8GB of VRAM, which came as the second most common configuration accounting for 25.32% of user systems.

The 16GB category also saw a 1.4% rise compared to June 2026's report, highlighting the growing popularity of high-end models equipped with 16GB of VRAM such as Nvidia's RTX 5080 and AMD's RX 9070 XT.

However, the most popular specific GPU model seen by Steam was the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, accounting for about 3.71% of users. This particular GPU carries 12GB of VRAM, but it still proves that average VRAM capacity is on the up as the latest games become increasingly taxing on graphics cards.

While no games list 16GB of VRAM as a minimum requirement (yet), plenty of PC titles can already take advantage of cards with this amount of memory. Games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 can already push VRAM usage close to the 16GB mark, when graphical settings are maxed out.

There's still a sizeable chunk of Steam users, 4.46% in fact, holding onto GPUs with only 2GB of VRAM. Popular GPUs with this capacity include near-decade-old models such as the GTX 1050 and RX 550. That significant proportion's not a surprise though, with these cards still meeting the minimum requirements for less graphically-intensive but popular titles, such as Counter-Strike 2.

The latest hardware survey also shows 8-core CPUs are now the most common processor configuration, accounting for 27.85% of systems. 6-core CPUs follow closely behind at 27.52%, with 4-core CPUs in third place at 13.12%.