The Steam Hardware & Software Survey for August 2025 has arrived, providing insight into the upgrade habits of gamers around the globe. This month’s data illustrates that more people are buying GPUs with 8GB of VRAM than any other capacity by a significant margin. However, I believe there’s more to these results than meets the eye, whose closer inspection should inspire hope rather than dismay.
At the time of writing, 8GB GPUs populate around 35.03% of Steam PCs. This amount of VRAM has remained dominant since November 2021, usurping 6GB with a market share of 23.43%. This translates into a growth of ~2.90% year-on-year.
However, 8GB is far from the fastest growing amount of VRAM within that same time period. Take 12GB, whose share started from 3.02% in November 2021 but has since grown to 19.30%, marking an average ~4.07% of growth each year.
Turning to 16GB adoption, Steam didn’t begin tracking that capacity until February 2023. Since then, GPUs with that amount of VRAM have come to account for 6.80% of the total market, making for a ~3.40% increase per annum.
Now, just for fun, let’s examine how each of these capacities have performed since January 2025, when Nvidia launched its current generation offerings.
| January ’25 | August ’25 | Diff. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8GB | 34.91% | 35.03% | +0.12% |
| 12GB | 18.52% | 19.30% | +0.78% |
| 16GB | 4.26% | 6.80% | +2.54% |
It’s important to note that current-generation 8GB models haven’t been on the market as long as their 12GB and 16GB counterparts. Nevertheless, mainstream x60 SKUs continue to prove most popular, with RTX 5060 enjoying the second-largest individual increase in share, behind RTX 4060.
Despite this, I’m confident that the scales more broadly remain in favour of superior growth for larger capacity alternatives. After all, we’ve seen the launch of more 16GB GPUs this generation than 8GB, with more likely en route via a RTX 50 Super refresh.
It’s ultimately up to AMD and Nvidia to give larger capacities the momentum they deserve. While some consumers are rejecting cheaper 8GB models in favour of 16GB alternatives, á la RTX 5060 Ti and RX 9060 XT, the scales won’t tip until mainstream cards offer 12GB of memory or more at affordable price points.
Should such pressures continue to manifest throughout the current generation, I’m quietly confident we’ll see more sub-£300 cards sporting either 12GB or 16GB of VRAM. After all, producing cards with such capacities should only become cheaper as the price of GDDR6(X) and GDDR7 memory modules falls with time.
Summarily, 8GB GPUs will likely remain dominant for this generation of graphics cards. However, this could very well be their last era at the top, as the market share of larger VRAM capacities quietly grows outside of the limelight.
