One of Nvidia’s best graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3060, has recently dropped from the top spot. Steam Hardware Survey (opens in new tab), fell to 3rd place in just one month. I agree. Last month’s Steam hardware survey had some very unusual data. This led to an unusually high adoption rate for some of his Nvidia GPUs. It looks like the issue has been fixed and the affected GPU is back to normal.
Adoption rates for the RTX 3060 (desktop and laptop variants), GTX 1060, RTX 2060, and GTX 1650 in particular changed significantly in April’s Steam hardware survey, which reported GPU market share in March. . The RTX 3060 (desktop) sits at the top, replacing the GTX 1650 as the most popular GPU among Steam gamers, increasing its “market share” by 6.31% in just one month.
The RTX 2060’s replacement for the GTX 1060 also shook the number two spot, garnering an impressive (and highly unlikely) 3.42% popularity lift among Steam gamers, resulting in the GTX 1060 dropping to 3. However, the GTX 1060 also had an unusually high adoption rate of 2.57%. Filling in the rest of the top five GPUs in April are the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti, both of which showed an outlier increase of 2.52% and 2.14% respectively. On the other hand, users with RTX 3060 laptop GPUs dropped significantly to 8th place, previously (before April) where he was in 3rd place.
All of this was very unusual, as our Steam hardware surveys typically show less than 0.5% change in GPU month-to-month. A few percent increase or decrease clearly indicates that something has gone very wrong with Steam’s data collection. Now that that issue has been fixed, we’ve seen a similarly large shift in the opposite direction to the May results.
Steam poll results for May 2023
In our May Steam Hardware Survey (looking at GPU market share in April), we regrouped all affected GPUs to their normal pre-April tier. So the GTX 1650 was his number one again, and the GTX 1060 was his number two. There have been a few other changes since we last reported on the Steam Hardware Survey in February.
The RTX 3060 desktop card came in third place, followed by the RTX 3060 laptop GPU right behind it and the RTX 2060 in fifth place. Prior to that (February), the RTX 3060 desktop card wasn’t even on the top 5 list, with the RTX 3060 laptop GPU at number three, the RTX 2060 at number four and the GTX 1050 Ti at number five.
However, Steam lumps certain mobile and desktop GPUs together (e.g. GTX 1650 includes laptops and desktops) while newer models are separate (e.g. RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 laptop GPUs). So these rankings may vary by GPU generation. Combining all the results for a given model number (i.e. desktop, mobile, non-Ti, and all RTX 3060 SKUs including Ti parts), the RTX 3060 series is by far the most popular with a 13.44% market share. I have. Second place is 8.83% for the GTX 1650 series, 6.93% for the GTX 1660 series, 6.34% for the GTX 2060 series, and 6.12% for the RTX 3070 series.
In terms of cross-generational popularity, RTX graphics cards continue to lead the competition by a wide margin, with the 30-series capturing 29% market share and the RTX 20-series capturing 11% market share. Unsurprisingly, the RTX 40 series hovers at just 1.61% overall, which itself doubles his figure from last month. AMD’s various GPUs fared poorly with 2.97% on all RX 6000 series cards, 1.42% on all RX 5000 series parts and 3.38% on the RX 500 series. All Vega series GPUs (including integrated parts) account for 2.03%. As far as Steam hardware research goes, AMD’s latest RX 7000 series remains his MIA.
| DX12 GPUs | December | January | February | March | April |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 | 6.83% | 6.88% | 6.69% | 4.26% | 6.74% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 | 6.11% | 5.70% | 5.65% | 8.13% | 5.35% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 | 4.27% | 4.04% | 4.75% | 11.24% | 5.09% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU | 4.45% | 4.92% | 5.24% | 3.27% | 4.93% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 | 5.11% | 4.79% | 5.04% | 8.46% | 4.85% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti | 4.77% | 4.69% | 4.39% | 3.25% | 4.35% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | 2.85% | 2.95% | 3.19% | 5.33% | 3.42% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | 2.99% | 2.93% | 3.19% | 5.73% | 3.22% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 | 2.43% | 2.66% | 2.86% | 2.08% | 2.96% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER | 2.85% | 2.74% | 2.75% | 2.48% | 2.94% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti | 2.63% | 2.61% | 2.55% | 1.89% | 2.46% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 | 2.48% | 2.47% | 2.25% | 1.44% | 2.20% |
| AMD Radeon Graphics | 2.17% | 2.26% | 2.17% | 1.30% | 2.17% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | 2.11% | 2.08% | 2.16% | 2.77% | 2.12% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 | 2.00% | 1.93% | 1.84% | 1.45% | 1.74% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER | 1.75% | 1.68% | 1.69% | 1.83% | 1.58% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 | 1.68% | 1.47% | 1.56% | 2.66% | 1.53% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | 1.37% | 1.38% | 1.48% | 2.14% | 1.50% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU | 1.24% | 1.32% | 1.40% | 0.86% | 1.40% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER | 1.27% | 1.27% | 1.30% | 2.06% | 1.38% |
Here are the top 20 GPUs from last month, according to Steam: I’m using reconciled data from the API page. Here we sum across the resulting columns and divide each GPU by the sum. This is because the columns do not total 100% for unknown reasons. For example, his April total for the DX12 system is 91.53%. It’s not a DX12 capable GPU, so anything not included in the table is calculated… it shouldn’t be counted!
We’ve also broken down the totals by GPU family, but the Vega group includes both desktop Vega 64/Vega 56 cards and mobile Vega GPUs in completely different performance classes.
| GPU family | December | January | February | March | April |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 40 Series | 0.00% | 0.47% | 0.80% | 0.79% | 1.61% |
| RTX 30 Series | 25.94% | 26.96% | 29.04% | 36.65% | 29.19% |
| RTX 20 Series | 11.57% | 10.98% | 11.36% | 16.59% | 10.95% |
| GTX 16 series | 16.21% | 15.95% | 15.69% | 12.62% | 15.78% |
| GTX 10 series | 17.95% | 17.27% | 16.54% | 16.46% | 15.93% |
| GTX 900 series | 2.85% | 2.73% | 2.56% | 1.88% | 2.43% |
| RX7000 series | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| RX6000 series | 2.44% | 2.67% | 2.71% | 1.94% | 2.97% |
| RX5000 series | 1.43% | 1.43% | 1.41% | 0.93% | 1.42% |
| vega series | 2.32% | 2.27% | 2.07% | 1.24% | 2.03% |
| RX500 series | 3.44% | 3.47% | 3.29% | 2.19% | 3.38% |
| RX400 series | 0.50% | 0.50% | 0.48% | 0.30% | 0.47% |
