I found this article while trying to find out what is going on in these results as they don't make sense.  The one big thing here that doesn't add up is that Intel is suddenly, and drastically when compared to other months, beating AMD; while at the same time the largest CPU core count usage increase is "6".  6?  Currently AMDs 6 core CPUs offer the best value, so it stands to reason that it's AMDs systems that are beating Intel.  Something fishy is going on here.  How many 6 core CPUs have Intel released....one?   And wasn't that a couple of years ago?  "shakes one's head"

The Steam votes must have been handled by the same 3rd world country that handled the presidential election.  👉👌

Indeed I too believe about sudden Intel rise in Steam stats caused by office PCs now used in gaming due to Covid and working at home. Both taken from workplace and purchased used by peanuts from eBay/Craigslist. Earlier Steam had more detailed CPU descriptions - they should explain this situation better. Most likely newcomers will turn out as CPUs from years 2010-2016.

Quote from: ualogic on January 03, 2021, 17:13:28
I bet, it's zombies with old crappy 10yo Intel cpus came alive on holidays. Not to worry, they will go into hibernation again until easter, or smth...

If that is true, there should be an uptick on low-core count PCs as well.

I'll tell you one way I know their survey is getting false information.  I participated in the survey yesterday, and steam decided that my desktop computer with a desktop cpu and desktop gpu was a notebook.

The info on my AMD cpu appeared to be correct, so this doesn't explain the manufacturer disparity.  Still, it leaves me uneasy about the accuracy of the survey.

I wonder if there may actually be some truth to the figures, during the pandemic a lot of people who have been unable to buy/build a new gaming pc have been going down the time honoured route of "stick a gpu in a second hand office pc". The vast majority of those dell, lenovo etc office fodder boxes will be intel inside, I wouldn't be surprised if they make up some of the difference.

I bet, it's zombies with old crappy 10yo Intel cpus came alive on holidays. Not to worry, they will go into hibernation again until easter, or smth...

The reason is handheld gaming devices like GPD Win Max

Stock.

Phoronix had a story on this. The giveaway is language.

Simplified Chinese 47.18% +30.22%
Simplified Chinese 31.07% +11.88%

First line is what someone there wrote, second is what I see just now. So Valve might have already started to correct these results.

Steam is a bit nuanced. When I've been working in China, I noticed how damn many people are playing on simple office machines with Intel HD graphics and/or old Intel laptops :) so I believe if we talk about what PCs people were assembling for themselves in 2020, the ratio towards AMD would be slightly higher. I personally assembled AMD based PC, my brother, as well, and his friend, etc. In any of these cases, it was hard to justify Intel-based machine, simply 3600 and 5600X + B450 were too good to consider anything else.