Steam's hardware survey reports a +1.57% increase month-over-month in Windows 10 64-bit adoption, marking a growth trend favoring the move to DirectX 12. Presently, the major Dx12-ready titles include Rise of the Tomb Raider, Hitman, Ashes of the Singularity, and forthcoming Total War: Warhammer; you can learn about Warhammer's unique game engine technology over here.
In Steam's survey, Windows 7 is broken into just “Windows 7” and “Windows 7 64-bit,” the two totaling 41.43% of the users responding to the optional survey. The survey also breaks Windows 10 into a “64-bit” and an unspecified version, totaling 41.4% (or 40.01% for the specific 64-bit line-item).
Tabulated results are below:
Windows 10 Adoption for Steam Users
| OS | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr |
| Windows 10 64-bit | 32.76% | 34.35% | 35.57% | 38.44% | 40.01% |
| Combined Windows 7 | 44.63% | 44.11% | 43.94% | 42.08% | 41.43% |
| Combined Windows 8 & 8.1 | 18.55% | 17.29% | 16.03% | 15.64% | 14.65% |
| Combined Windows Vista | 0.48% | 0.43% | 0.40% | 0.37% | 0.34% |
| Windows XP 32-bit | 2.28% | 2.43% | 2.5% | 2.08% | 2.12% |
Windows 10 64-bit is showing steady growth month-over-month, with 7 still retaining a joint majority of the install base. It isn't until specifying 64-bit operating systems that Windows 10 pulls ahead of Windows 7 (by ~6%). Windows 8, unsurprisingly, is rapidly losing pace and has held a significantly lower marketshare than even predecessor Windows 7.
For fun, we included Vista and XP in the charts – although entirely irrelevant – just for sake of memory. XP is still besting Vista, though the sample size is obviously low enough that data is fluctuating in patterns which seem unrealistic.
Regardless, DirectX 12 is now available on more than 40% gaming machines reporting data. Most hardware is also already equipped for Dx12, furthering its inevitable ubiquity in the PC gaming space.
- Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke.