RTX 3060 reclaims top spot in Steam survey, 5060 Ti enters chart as Blackwell cards surge

[midian182]

In brief: Remember when GPUs would top the Steam survey for months or even years on end? That's become a rarity these days as the most popular product changes regularly. The RTX 3060, for example, has just regained the top spot it recently lost to the RTX 4060 laptop GPU. Elsewhere, May was another record month for AMD's CPU share, the RTX 5060 Ti broke into the main chart, and more gamers are abandoning Windows 10.

Following the somewhat surprising sight of the RTX 4060 laptop GPU topping the April Steam survey, the RTX 3060 bounced back in May to become the number one again.

Most popular GPUs among Steam survey participants in May

The most popular GPUs among Steam survey participants are mostly made up of RTX xx50 and xx60 series products from the Lovelace, Ampere, and Turing generations.

Looking at the GPUs with the biggest gains, last month was a good one for Nvidia's Blackwell cards. Despite being maligned for numerous reasons, four of the top ten best performers were RTX 5000 models. The biggest increase was for the RTX 5070, up 0.33%, while the second place went to the RTX 5060 Ti, which has just entered the main chart with a 0.21% share – it appears both the 8GB and 16GB versions are counted as one.

Top performing GPUs among Steam survey participants in May

Sitting between the RTX 5070 Ti and the RTX 5080 is the RX 7800 XT, which jumped 0.09% last month. Still no sign of any RX 9070 cards, though.

Jumping to the CPU section, AMD continues its streak of reaching a new record high every month. It is now at 39.48% as Intel shrinks to 60.44%. A few years ago, it would have been unheard of for almost 4 in 10 survey participants to be Team Red processor users.

While many gamers and PC users in general have been hanging on to Windows 10 even as its October 14, 2025, end-of-support date nears, the older OS continues to slide in the Steam survey. It is now used by just 37% of participants as Windows 11 nears 60%. And while Windows 10 still leads globally, its share is just 10% higher than its successor.

The rest of the survey shows few changes from the previous month. 1080p remains the most popular resolution despite most monitors these days being at least 1440p – the number of FullHD users actually increased by 0.08% in May. English is the most popular language, and while the majority of participants have six physical CPUs, this will likely soon be surpassed by those with eight.

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RTX 3060 reclaims top spot in Steam survey, 5060 Ti enters chart as Blackwell cards surge

 

[Beerfloat]

Where's the 9070 series?

Oh right this is the real world and noone gives a fk about RDNA.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

Steam Survey is irrelevant against real-world sales data.

 

[yRaz]

The fact that the 9070 isn't on there would explain the high prices. It would suggest that they aren't making very many of them. Afterall, AMDs bread and butter are its CPUs.

 

[BogdanR]

Where's the 9070 series?

Oh right this is the real world and noone gives a fk about RDNA.

The same can be said about Nvidia’s 40xx and more so 50xx series.
In fact the long endurance of the 3060 series of cards is a slap in the face for both AMD’s and Nvidia’s new stuff.

 

[frommhere]

I wonder with the 0.05 this and 0.07 that how many rtx 50 units were actually sold...

 

[DanteSmith]

The survey fails to separate mobile from desktop GPUs. Since laptops outsell desktops, and Nvidia dominates with 90–95% of the dGPU share in laptops, the data may be skewed.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Where's the 9070 series?

Oh right this is the real world and noone gives a fk about RDNA.

Look at the top ~30 cards and tell me what you see. Roughly the same thing you see every Steam Survey after new cards are released:

• a few Nvidia GPUs up by 0.01-0.02%,
• Generic AMD GPUs increasing, Radeon up 0.12%, Radeon™ up 0.07%
• Generic Intel GPUs increasing, Xe up 0.06%, UHD up 0.11%

Everything else down. Steam doesn't ID individual Radeon and Intel GPUs for a while for some reason and if/when they finally do, the Radeon, Radeon™, UHD, Xe drop proportionately.

They're in there, but not broken out. But don't let a little information like this stop you from playing favorites.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Steam Survey is irrelevant against real-world sales data.

AMD laptop and desktop GPU's made less than AMD powered consoles last quarter.

 

[hahahanoobs]

The survey fails to separate mobile from desktop GPUs.

Incorrect.

 

[Beerfloat]

Steam Survey is irrelevant against real-world sales data.

Oh yeah let's ignore Steam and 3DMark and Jon Peddie because I have some MindFactory hopium instead

 

[Beerfloat]

Everything else down. Steam doesn't ID individual Radeon and Intel GPUs for a while for some reason and if/when they finally do, the Radeon, Radeon™, UHD, Xe drop proportionately.

They're in there, but not broken out. But don't let a little information like this stop you from playing favorites.

OK I won't let it. Not least of all because that is not information. Your conjecture is based on wishful thinking, and wrong.

The 'AMD Radeon Graphics' and 'AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics' entries are integrated graphics, like the basic 2 compute units included in every Ryzen 7k and up CPUs and the 6-8 units in G type CPUs. Those identifiers cover integrated GCN, RDNA2 and RDNA3 units. Just check the device manager on your modernish AMD CPU.

There are in fact entries for a bunch of discrete Radeon RX 6xxx and 7xxx GPUs - just not as high up on the list as you might expect from the small but loud Radeon fan community.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

Oh yeah let's ignore Steam and 3DMark and Jon Peddie because I have some MindFactory hopium instead

JP is good research. Solid data. Not perfect, but believable.

Anyone with more than two neurons knows that Steam Survey is a disaster, Steamdeck has sold much more than 4090, millions of units etc... All the SD units are on Steam, but it still doesn't appear at the top.

 

[DanteSmith]

Oh yeah let's ignore Steam and 3DMark and Jon Peddie because I have some MindFactory hopium instead

JP and Steam do not converge. Real world vs Steam do not converge.
Real world: Windows 10 market share: 54.23%
Steam: 37%

 

[Beerfloat]

JP and Steam do not converge. Real world vs Steam do not converge.
Real world: Windows 10 market share: 54.23%
Steam: 37%

Is this supposed to be some sort of smoking gun? Your claim is that not every Windows 10 user uses Steam. And this is notable to you how?

smh

 

[Beerfloat]

JP is good research. Solid data. Not perfect, but believable.

Anyone with more than two neurons knows that Steam Survey is a disaster, Steamdeck has sold much more than 4090, millions of units etc... All the SD units are on Steam, but it still doesn't appear at the top.

You could argue about the Steam Survey's data's peculiar month to month changes, sure.

Your Steamdeck argument, though? Meaningless. Do you even know where the Steamdeck shows up in the list? And how many 4090s are in active use?

 

[Lew Zealand]

OK I won't let it. Not least of all because that is not information. Your conjecture is based on wishful thinking, and wrong.

The 'AMD Radeon Graphics' and 'AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics' entries are integrated graphics, like the basic 2 compute units included in every Ryzen 7k and up CPUs and the 6-8 units in G type CPUs. Those identifiers cover integrated GCN, RDNA2 and RDNA3 units. Just check the device manager on your modernish AMD CPU.

There are in fact entries for a bunch of discrete Radeon RX 6xxx and 7xxx GPUs - just not as high up on the list as you might expect from the small but loud Radeon fan community.

Those 6000 and 7000 models weren't broken out for many months after release and then jumped to an immediate plateau. There's an example in the DB right now, look at the 3050 6GB Laptop. Nothing and then at 0.35% and staying there. It was very likely separated from other models (3050 8GB Laptop or 3050 6GB DT version?) a few months ago.

If you follow the survey for a long period of time you notice these things. If you don't look at the survey much then you make claims based on nothing.

 

[Beerfloat]

If you follow the survey for a long period of time you notice these things. If you don't look at the survey much then you make claims based on nothing.

You must have missed the minimum threshold of 0.15% share before a given GPU is broken out from the 'Other' category, despite your touted long term analysis of the Steam Survey.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Steam survey is not even a representative sample of my own computers.

Last week, it surveyed me repeatedly and reported: 3080, 3070, and Intel Integrated, but missed AMD Z1e (is an APU considered integrated?), 2070, and Qualcomm Adreno (Snapdragon Surface Pro).

 

[WhiteLeaff]

You could argue about the Steam Survey's data's peculiar month to month changes, sure.

Your Steamdeck argument, though? Meaningless. Do you even know where the Steamdeck shows up in the list? And how many 4090s are in active use?

Steamdeck alone will have sold close to 4M units by the end of 2024, certainly 10x more than the 4090. If you add up all the AMD handhelds it should be close to 10M units, laptops with AMD iGPU in the hundreds of millions of units.

The survey is broken by default.

 

[Lew Zealand]

You must have missed the minimum threshold of 0.15% share before a given GPU is broken out from the 'Other' category, despite your touted long term analysis of the Steam Survey.

Nope I haven’t missed that, hence why I pointed out 0.35% on the 3050 6GB. Keep assuming away though.