Steam’s monthly Hardware & Software Survey shows Windows 10 is gaining big amongst gamers. The new operating system features the latest DirectX 12 graphics API so most of these gains also reflect in DirectX 12 adoption. From August to September Windows 10 64-bit gained 7.95% bringing it to 25.06% of the Windows install base on Steam. Windows 10 32-bit is just shy of 1% so all together Windows 10 accounts for 26% of Steam users reporting in the September hardware survey.
Windows 7 64-bit is still holding strong at 39.16% only loosing a few percentage points between August and September. Windows 8.1 64-bit lost the most month-to-month at -4.93% finishing at 19.46% and third overall following Windows 10 64-bit. No doubt users are upgrading from Windows 8/8.1 to 10 at the faster rate among Windows versions.
Valve provides a graph for DirectX 10/11/12 Versions but they don’t group that data the same in the tabular breakdown. Complicating the numbers is the fact you not only need Windows 10 but a compatible video card to utilize DirectX 12. According to their graph DirectX 12 GPU & Windows 10 accounts for 22.6% of users effectively the true indicator DirectX 12 among Steam hardware survey participants. DirectX 12 GPU & Pre-Windows 10 accounts for 42.38% so there is still quite a bit of room to grow.
I compiled the Windows Version data into a graph to illustrate Windows 10 gains. Windows XP is black, Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit) are in red, Windows 8/8.1 (64-bit only) are green, and Windows 10 in blue (64-bit only). I only used versions that had over 1% market share for September so this excluded: Windows 10 32-bit (0.92%), Windows 8.1 32-bit (0.48%), Windows Vista 32 bit (0.37%), Windows 8 32 bit (0.22%), and Windows Vista 64 bit (0.19%).
