The big picture: The latest Steam survey has dropped, and the biggest takeaway for the month, other than AMD continuing its resurgence, is apparent signs of the chip shortage. Only five graphics cards made gains of over 0.10%, with the most significant increase belonging to the GTX 1660, which jumped by just 0.35%.
Starting with the CPU category, AMD will be pleased to see more Steam users turning to their processors as it erodes Intel's lead. There was a surprise in August when team red fell to its lowest point in the year to date---27.31%---but it bounced back a month later to pass the 30% milestone. In October, 0.69% more survey participants were using AMD chips, pushing its share to a new high of 30.84%.
Checking Amazon's best-selling CPU list shows AMD is once again dominating the chart, taking seven of the ten slots. Intel has two, including the Alder Lake Core i9-12900K that arrives this week, in fifth. There's also a controller emulator in third place---it seems the 'Zen' part of the name is confusing Amazon.
The graphics card section looks different this month, not just because the top six cards all lost ground. Arranging the chart by percentage increase shows how even the best-performing product of the month, the GTX 1660, jumped by just 0.35%. For comparison, August's biggest gainer was the RTX 2060 with 1.35%. Additionally, only seven entries managed gains of 0.10% or more, and several of these are integrated or mobile GPUs.
The lack of significant movement in the graphics card section may reflect their general lack of availability and increasing price. A recent report showed Ampere and RDNA 2 continue to get more expensive and harder to find, with team red's latest close to their highest-ever average selling price.
Elsewhere, more survey participants are using Linux than ever before (1.13%), and around 40% of these systems are powered by AMD CPUs. Windows 11 entered the OS chart with a 1.82% share, and the Oculus Quest 2, which is removing its requirement for a Facebook account, cemented its position at the top (33.19%) of the VR charts.