Steam Users Are Now Preferring Six-Core CPUs Over Quad-Core Ones

Steam users are shifting in terms of their PC gaming hardware preferences, according to the latest results of the Steam Hardware Survey.

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A AMD Ryzen procesor seen in a Motherboard during the last day of the SOFA (Salon del Ocio y la Fantasia) 2021, a fair aimed to the geek audience in Colombia that mixes Cosplay, gaming, superhero and movie fans from across Colombia, in Bogota, Colombia on October 18, 2021.

This edition revealed that six-core CPUs are the most popular processors all across the platform, with quad-core CPUs now second. According to PCGamer, this represents progress as more and more modern games are being developed to use more CPU cores effectively.

The market share for hexa-core chips now stands at 34.22%, with a 1.19% increase from February's numbers. Back then, quad-cores were still the king of PC gaming for Steam users (at least for those who use Windows). Now the market share for four-core processors fell 1.27% to 33.74%.

Eight-core CPUs still remain out of the top two with a 17.72% market share, proving that they're still considered luxuries in terms of PC gaming. Not a lot of games use eight full CPU cores as of this generation yet. But maybe this will change in the future, owing to the increased market share of six cores.

Are Six-Core Chips (Or More) The Future Of PC Gaming?

As per the original PCGamer report, it might as well be. They theorized that this shift also signifies a potential change in game development because developers will potentially now look to make games utilize even more CPU cores in the future.

Just take a look at today's current-gen consoles: the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. All three systems feature an eight-core Zen 2 CPU from AMD. While not all modern games still use those eight cores (and 16 threads), the fact that the consoles are new is begging for developers to take advantage of the hardware.

This will also not be strictly confined to consoles, as the AMD hardware in use in the PS5 and the Series X/S is more or less similar to what PC gaming enthusiasts have in their desktop rigs/laptops.

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Living room with Microsoft Xbox Series X (L) and Sony PlayStation 5 home video game consoles alongside a television and soundbar, taken on November 3, 2020.

AMD And Intel's Push For More Cores (Even On The Low-End)

Here's another perspective that puts more credence on the recent Steam Hardware Survey. Both Intel and AMD have more or less abandoned low core counts even in their entry-level gaming processors, with the exception of ultra-low-power, dirt cheap offerings.

On AMD's side, even their low-tier Ryzen 3 chips, like the Ryzen 3 4100, have at least four cores and eight threads (effectively giving games eight CPUs to work with), according to AMD's official spec sheet. That's the low-end of the stack, with more mainstream offerings in the higher-tier Ryzen 5 series having at least six cores and 12, threads-nothing less.

Intel's side is no different. Their latest 12th generation processors also feature six-core, twelve-thread chips in their mainstream line. All of these hexa-core CPUs are also competitively priced for the performance they're bringing to the table, further reinforcing the fact that PC gaming technologies are on the way up.