December Steam survey: AMD loses ground to Intel for first time in months, RTX 3060 sees...

[midian182]

The big picture: Most of the tech news cycle is focused on CES 2022 right now, naturally, but the start of a new month marks another occasion: the latest Steam Hardware and Software survey results. December was a bumper month for Nvidia’s Ampere line, with the RTX 3060 gaining more users than any other card while the Ti variant and the RTX 3070 experienced significant gains, too. We also saw a rare drop in the CPU share for AMD, which could be explained by the popularity currently being enjoyed by Intel’s latest Alder Lake CPUs.

During December, the number of survey participants with an RTX 3060 in their PCs increased by 0.57%, more than any other GPU on the list. The Ti version of that card was up 0.30%, while the RTX 3070 saw gains of 14%. It seems some people can find/afford Nvidia’s most recent graphics cards, though they may be buying them from eBay.

Lots of people bought cards over the holidays, it seems

As for AMD, the Radeon RX 6700 remains the only RDNA 2 card on the main GPU list. It’s found in 0.19% of participants’ PCs, which is actually down 0.01% month-over-month.

The increase in RTX 3000-series users means the RTX 3060 is now the 12th most-popular card on the list with a 1.87% share, while the RTX 3070 (1.94%) remains the top Ampere product in 11th place. The GTX 1060 stays in the number one position, but the fourth-place RTX 2060, which was up 0.40% last month, continues to make great strides.

The most popular GPUs. Will the GTX 1060 ever lose its crown?

The processor section of the survey saw a changing trend in December. Having seen its user share increase every month since August, AMD fell by 0.82% over the last four weeks. Could this be the Alder Lake effect? Intel’s latest CPUs have been receiving plenty of rave reviews, and they were likely on many PC fans’ Christmas wishlists.

Elsewhere, Windows 11 continued to chip away at Windows 10’s lead in the OS section, increasing its share by 1.87% to 10.15%. The Oculus Quest 2 cemented its dominant position at the top of the VR Headset chart with a 3.30% gain, most users have 8GB of VRAM in their graphics cards, and the number of people with four-core CPUs is dropping as those with six and eight cores increase.

Intel, Nvidia, and AMD are all holding their respective CES 2022 events today, where we’re expecting to see new CPUs and GPUs announced that could shake up the Steam survey over the next few months. But right now, it’s Intel and Nvidia who will be smiling.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/92845-december-steam-survey-amd-loses-ground-intel-first.html

 

[maxxcool7421]

Oh nooooes ... useless metric is useless

 

[Nobina]

I guess a lot of people are fine with current GPU prices since they're rising in numbers. Maybe Nvidia should crank them up a bit more.

 

[Dimitriid]

I guess a lot of people are fine with current GPU prices since they're rising in numbers. Maybe Nvidia should crank them up a bit more.

They are not: they're just not any other options at all. Wait until the 3050 desktop releases even if it's as bad as the laptop version, it will obliterate the 3060 simply because it's gonna be half the price.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

For high FPS gaming intel has taken the crown back from AMD. It's also just new new hotness, which will always cause a temporary blip in sales. The bigger issue for AMD will be the 12400 and 12700, which as budget options obliterate AMD's 5600x and 5800x options.

INB4 "wah data is bad" posters who offer no data of their own....

Oh nooooes ... useless metric is useless

Well you beat me to it. Here, let me fix that for you:

Oh nooooes ... I dont understand how polling data works

 

[Faelan]

I guess a lot of people are fine with current GPU prices since they're rising in numbers. Maybe Nvidia should crank them up a bit more.

Just because they're buying doesn't necessarily mean they're fine with it. I've bought plenty of stuff where I wasn't quite happy with the price, but felt like I didn't have much of a choice because the alternative would have been worse. We are going through an energy crisis right now in Europe. A lot of people are seriously unhappy about the kWh price, but what's the alternative? Install a wood stove in your city apartment and learn how to cook on one? Do your laundry in a bucket? Turn off your TV, PC, lights and just stare at the ceiling? Neither of those feel like a great alternative, so people just try to save where they can and change their budget to the best of their ability.

 

[koblongata]

Alder Lake certainly is competitive, but since I am converted to AMD platform, so my next upgrade would be Ryzen 6000, which unlikely to use a new socket again too

 

[Faelan]

For high FPS gaming intel has taken the crown back from AMD. It's also just new new hotness, which will always cause a temporary blip in sales.

It's not just high FPS gaming where Alder Lake is shining. Anything where single thread performance becomes the bottleneck will likely do better on Alder Lake, though it's not a guarantee. I've seen people report great performance uplifts in Cities Skylines running on Alder Lake and that game is about as far as you can get from high FPS. I mean, I tried it on my 9900KS with a 3090 and I couldn't get even get locked 60fps. It's just that bad.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

"The most popular GPUs. Will the GTX 1060 ever lose its crown?"

I have an Alienware R4 with 1060 with a i7-8750H and 16GB DDR4 on SSD.

I literally played through Crysis, Crysis II and Crysis Warhead on maximum settings at 1080p.

If that GPU can handle that, I'd say it'll be around for a while. I'd love to upgrade that laptop specifically to a 3060, but there's really no need for the time being.

I never upgraded to the 2060 or 2070 because I felt no need to back then either. It's a super-capable travel laptop/ desktop replacement.

So what that it lacks Ray Tracing?

I recently bought a Tuf A15 with a 5800H and 3050Ti and 16GB DDR4 for podcasting on Youtube. I'm fairly certain the A15 can handle roughly anything the R4 handled.

 

[Faelan]

Alder Lake certainly is competitive, but since I am converted to AMD platform, so my next upgrade would be Ryzen 6000, which unlikely to use a new socket again too

That's where AMD is in a good position right now. If you already have a good AMD motherboard that still has an upgrade path available, it makes a lot more financial sense to just stick with AMD for the time being since Z690 motherboards are way more expensive than what you would normally expect. It's also a lot easier to just drop in a new CPU instead of replacing the motherboard and having to reinstall everything from scratch (I would not recommend letting Windows reconfigure itself to a new board for the same reason I would not recommend upgrading from 10 to 11).

 

[nnguy2]

I'd like to see some statistical rigors (sample size, margin of error, confidence intervals) before making inferences.

 

[dragosmp]

I'd like to see some statistical rigors (sample size, margin of error, confidence intervals) before making inferences.

Probably the error graphs and confidence level would be so bad you might as well guess your own number.

There is a lot of demand for the Blue team CPUs, also because the 11th gen was an impossible to find on the shelf piece of garbage.

Wouldn't worry too much for AMD, they sell every piece of silicon they can get their hands on, to the point of not releasing a budget Zen 3 because hey, why not? They could just sell the same silicon at higher margin.

 

[koblongata]

That's where AMD is in a good position right now. If you already have a good AMD motherboard that still has an upgrade path available, it makes a lot more financial sense to just stick with AMD for the time being since Z690 motherboards are way more expensive than what you would normally expect. It's also a lot easier to just drop in a new CPU instead of replacing the motherboard and having to reinstall everything from scratch (I would not recommend letting Windows reconfigure itself to a new board for the same reason I would not recommend upgrading from 10 to 11).

Yeah, and to me the added cost is pretty much already enough to trade in and upgrade my video card, which is far more important especially as I only game on a 4K TV.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Yawn, waiting for 6000 series, Intel can go pound sand.

 

[Faelan]

Yawn, waiting for 6000 series, Intel can go pound sand.

One could say that Intel has made a business out of sand

 

[chucke1992]

Dat Nvidia domination in graphics card. Intel is also doing great. Wonder how it fare in graphics card against AMD or Nvidia. Nvidia is certainly not threatened though.

If not for console market, AMD would be not in a great spot.

 

[maxxcool7421]

For high FPS gaming intel has taken the crown back from AMD. It's also just new new hotness, which will always cause a temporary blip in sales. The bigger issue for AMD will be the 12400 and 12700, which as budget options obliterate AMD's 5600x and 5800x options.

INB4 "wah data is bad" posters who offer no data of their own....

Well you beat me to it. Here, let me fix that for you:

Bahahaha ... One biased software vendor a majority represent it does not.

 

[Red34jfp]

Dat Nvidia domination in graphics card. Intel is also doing great. Wonder how it fare in graphics card against AMD or Nvidia. Nvidia is certainly not threatened though.

If not for console market, AMD would be not in a great spot.

AMD is either producing very, very, very few GPUs or selling them straight to miners, but on the CPU side they've been doing very well for a while now, we'll need to see the data from the next months in order to check out whether Alder Lake is really being popular with gamers or this was just a blip caused for instance by people on vacation playing casual games on old Intel machines (I really wish Steam started providing the exact model, or at least family, of the CPUs).

 

[punctualturn]

Lets see, I built an all AMD system (5600 and 6900xt) over 6 months ago, installed Steam, etc and…..not one survey yet.

Now that I think about it, I have been using the Steam service for over 10 years and I dont think I have ever received one survey.

 

[penfolduk]

That's where AMD is in a good position right now. If you already have a good AMD motherboard that still has an upgrade path available, it makes a lot more financial sense to just stick with AMD for the time being since Z690 motherboards are way more expensive than what you would normally expect. It's also a lot easier to just drop in a new CPU instead of replacing the motherboard and having to reinstall everything from scratch (I would not recommend letting Windows reconfigure itself to a new board for the same reason I would not recommend upgrading from 10 to 11).

The trouble is that Zen4 will require a new AM5 socket motherboard. So given the current situation and what they announced at CES, putting in a new CPU will be limited to the existing range and the forthcoming 5800X3D.

Then again that hopefully means a lot of people will be able to cheaply upgrade their current gen CPU or whole system when Zen4 does come out, as people who want Zen4 will have to buy new kit.

 

[Nobina]

Just because they're buying doesn't necessarily mean they're fine with it

Wether they're fine with it or not doesn't matter.

I've bought plenty of stuff where I wasn't quite happy with the price, but felt like I didn't have much of a choice because the alternative would have been worse.

Alternative is keep your current GPU or if it's dead buy a used cheap one and wait it out. Yes, it's not great but the point is to show people are not satisfied with what's happening.

We are going through an energy crisis right now in Europe. A lot of people are seriously unhappy about the kWh price, but what's the alternative? Install a wood stove in your city apartment and learn how to cook on one? Do your laundry in a bucket? Turn off your TV, PC, lights and just stare at the ceiling? Neither of those feel like a great alternative, so people just try to save where they can and change their budget to the best of their ability.

How about don't buy overpriced GPUs, that oughta help.

 

[Rdmetz]

That's where AMD is in a good position right now. If you already have a good AMD motherboard that still has an upgrade path available, it makes a lot more financial sense to just stick with AMD for the time being since Z690 motherboards are way more expensive than what you would normally expect. It's also a lot easier to just drop in a new CPU instead of replacing the motherboard and having to reinstall everything from scratch (I would not recommend letting Windows reconfigure itself to a new board for the same reason I would not recommend upgrading from 10 to 11).

I'm confused I thought amd had reached the end of their socket with the 5000 series and the new zen 4 chips and up were moving to a new socket?

Is that not the case?

Seems to me anyone looking to upgrade in the future would be looking at an upgraded motherboard one way or another.

 

[Rdmetz]

Lets see, I built an all AMD system (5600 and 6900xt) over 6 months ago, installed Steam, etc and…..not one survey yet.

Now that I think about it, I have been using the Steam service for over 10 years and I dont think I have ever received one survey.

I've taken 4 since the day steam was created and I've been on it almost the entire time (half life 2 launch).

 

[Rdmetz]

Probably the error graphs and confidence level would be so bad you might as well guess your own number.

There is a lot of demand for the Blue team CPUs, also because the 11th gen was an impossible to find on the shelf piece of garbage.

Wouldn't worry too much for AMD, they sell every piece of silicon they can get their hands on, to the point of not releasing a budget Zen 3 because hey, why not? They could just sell the same silicon at higher margin.

Why are anyone worried for a multi billion dollar company??

Like who cares which company makes your chips to me it's much more important that I'M taking care of not the fortune 500 companies.

As long as I'm getting the best performance for the money I spend along with solid stability then that's all I care about.

 

[Rdmetz]

Wether they're fine with it or not doesn't matter.


Alternative is keep your current GPU or if it's dead buy a used cheap one and wait it out. Yes, it's not great but the point is to show people are not satisfied with what's happening.


How about don't buy overpriced GPUs, that oughta help.

For me I just make sure I'm not ever in the postion to get screwed and pay close attention to what's likely going to happen with new releases.

I'm using a 3080ti and amd 2080ti before thag and I haven't spent a penny out of pocket on gpu upgrade since 2017 when I had to spend about $450 to upgrade to sli 1080ti's.

Sold those and bought 2080ti while putting $200 in my pocket and then sold the 2080ti at 3080 launch and put $300 in my pocket.

Finally I traded my 3080 FHR for a 3080ti since guy was more worried about hashrate than gaming.

It's been a very good past couple of years for me and I plan to do something similar with the next release.

Worst thing that happens is the price the cards sky high since people already paying it anyways but even with that my current card will sell for a majority of its cost (especially when I sell it a couple weeks before new release) and I've made enough off old releases that spending a few more hundred to get the upgrade will still leave me in the positive.