In brief: Valve has released October's Steam survey results. Last month's figures, which come from optional participation by the platform's millions of users, suggest gamers are once again buying graphics cards on the higher end of the scale following a month in which cheaper GPUs were the top performers.

The GPU section of the Steam survey shows the RTX 3060 was once again the best-performing card, something we've seen in previous months. It was up 1.95% to take a 5.47% total share, making it the fourth most popular card among participants.

Apart from a couple of older cards (GTX 1660 and GTX 1060) that saw gains last month, the top twelve best performers were mid-to-higher-end Ampere and Turing products, such as the RTX 3070, 3070 Ti, and 2080 Super. That contrasts September's survey in which older and less expensive cards saw the biggest increases. Gamers might be upgrading to deal with more demanding titles such as Plague Tale Requiem and the upcoming Dead Space remake (and, to a lesser extent, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2).

The most popular card among participants remains the GTX 1060, the top card since it replaced the GTX 750 Ti in January 2018. We also see that the RTX 2060 has moved from the third to second spot. Further down the list is the RTX 3060, which has moved from sixth to fourth. If one combined its share with the laptop version, that would make the RTX 3060 the most popular GPU on the list.

October was a bad time for AMD. Its processor share fell for the fourth month in a row against Intel, dropping below 30% for the first time since August last year. With the Ryzen 7000 sales off to a slow start and Raptor Lake sales looking strong, team red isn't having the best time right now.

Elsewhere, Windows 10 experienced an increase in users as Windows 11 recorded a rare decline. And despite Microsoft ending support years ago, Windows 7 users were up 1.19% last month. In terms of RAM, 16GB cemented its place as the most common amount of memory in people's machines, and the Oculus Quest 2 is by far the most popular VR headset (41.49%).