The Steam survey has a new top graphics card

[midian182]

In brief: There's a new GPU leader in Valve's Steam survey. Having consistently seen the most gains in this segment for months, the RTX 3060 has finally surpassed the GTX 1650 to sit at the top of the graphics card chart.

September was yet another month in which the RTX 3060 proved to be the top-performing (up 1.4%) GPU among Steam survey participants. The expensive prices of the RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti and their comparatively weak performance combined with the RTX 3060's high availability on the second-hand market have pushed the Ampere card into more gamers' machines. It now sits atop the main GPU chart with a 6.27% share, ahead of the GTX 1650 - the former number one – which is found in 4.78% of participants' machines.

The top GPUs among September's Steam survey participants

September was a pretty good month for the Lovelace cards, too. Only the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 failed to make gains, with the RTX 4060 proving to be the series' best performer, up 0.31%. AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX, meanwhile, is its only newer card on the main chart. It fell 0.02% and is currently in 73rd position.

Also Read - 20 Years of Steam: From Half-Life 2 to the Steam Deck

Last month wasn't the first time the RTX 3060 took the top spot on the main GPU chart. It happened in March, too, but there were a number of unusual changes that month; the RTX 3060 saw a massive 6.2% month-on-month increase, which is pretty much unheard of. Valve never gave an explanation, and the survey results returned to normal in April with the RTX 3060 dropping from the top position.

September's top-performing GPUs

Elsewhere on the survey, several categories saw their trends reverse. Windows 11 has been closing the gap on Windows 10 for months, but the older OS moved further ahead by almost 2% to nearly 58% in September as Windows 11 fell by 1.79% to 37.4%.

Another change to the status quo took place in the CPU chart. AMD has spent most of this year closing the (still admittedly large) gap between itself and Intel, but Team Red fell by 2.24% at the last count as Team Blue increased its share to 68.77%. Intel could widen the gap further when the Raptor Lake Refresh chips land in a few weeks.

Elsewhere, having six physical CPUs solidified its place as the most common result after it went up 2.74%. Most people have over 1TB of drive space but just 100GB to 249GB free – not a surprise, given the size of games these days – while the most typical amount of VRAM remained at 8GB, something more titles are struggling with.

Finally, English remains the most common language, but only by a 0.11% margin after Simplified Chinese climbed 5.34%.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100340-valve-steam-survey-has-new-top-graphics-card.html

 

[torchyear]

3060 12GB is probably the “least mediocre” card out of a very underwhelming lot in its current price bracket. Your screen grab of the Steam Survey seems to say that it’s the crappy 8GB model that is topping the charts though, which was a relatively recent release.

 

[noel24]

Well, It drops in price below $250 and suddenly becomes number one in a chart. Coincidence? Probably, at least Huang would like You to believe that.

I'm just shocked that AMD 6600 is nowhere to be found on that list. AMD should drop from the market, wait out two years and come back in glory when people will get fed up with paying $600 dollars for PTX6050.

 

[Dimitriid]

In other unrelated news, given how:

1) FSR 3 is going to work on the 3060
2) Modders are likely to immediately put it in whatever game doesn't gets updated and probably fairly quickly too
3) The supply of 3060s should hold up for a lot longer given the number of former Eth miner cards are still out there

I seriously doubt the needle would move away from the 3060 any time soon for the next lots of months.

 

[EdmondRC]

You would think with the popularity of anything XX60 from Nvidia, they would have put a little more effort in the 4060/4060 Ti. I guess they assume they'll sell tons of them regardless of the fact that they are such poor offerings.

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

I have old 1080Ti laying on the shelf "just in case" and I would gladly sold it for decent, mining price, but even that I realize If I was strained on a budget I would totally prefer 3060 - +1GB VRAM, negligibly 10% slower overall while faster in new titles + DLSS + RT. Cmon, 3060 was OK from the start, not like 4050Ti 4060Ti

 

[ScottSoapbox]

3060 is a decent card as long as you game at 1080p - which many people still do.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I'm just shocked that AMD 6600 is nowhere to be found on that list. AMD should drop from the market, wait out two years and come back in glory when people will get fed up with paying $600 dollars for PTX6050.

It's really not that shocking. AMD prioritized CPUs during the GPU drought and only moved production back when demand slowed.

Dropping out is the DUMBEST thing you can do. You will lose talent, market presence, brand recognition, the works. May as well shut down the RTG group at that point.

 

[winjer]

The 3060 was already the top GPU a few months ago.

 

[i like foxes]

Everything flows , everything changes .

 

[PanfiloTexas]

I have old 1080Ti laying on the shelf "just in case" and I would gladly sold it for decent, mining price, but even that I realize If I was strained on a budget I would totally prefer 3060 - +1GB VRAM, negligibly 10% slower overall while faster in new titles + DLSS + RT. Cmon, 3060 was OK from the start, not like 4050Ti 4060Ti

im still rocking that card....monitor maxes out at 1920x1080 so no need to upgrade at the moment.

 

[Ryrynz]

3060 was OK from the start, not like 4050Ti 4060Ti

4060 Super will come in and kick *** sometime next year I expect

 

[toooooot]

Could stay there for the next 5 years.
3060 laptop can be bought very cheap nw when even 4060 laptops are finally cost less than 1400.
Good card to play everything on medium settings

 

[Lounds]

If mid range cards don't have double the memory capacity next gen I'm done with PC gaming and just getting a console. 3070/3060ti owners got proper shafted.

 

[Tantor]

Most Interesting - Win 10 gained 2% in one month, while Win 11 lost 2%. How is that even possible?

I checked the web for Windows version market share. Turns out the 2% change is primarily in the US, although Europe and India also experienced it. Asia almost not at all.

https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Most Interesting - Win 10 gained 2% in one month, while Win 11 lost 2%. How is that even possible?

It is a random survey of people on steam. Which means it is a good (statistically valid) representation of everyone on steam but not exact.

 

[fredmike]

Most people have over 1TB of drive space but just 100GB to 249GB free are not surprising.

 

[Geravor]

These steam hardware surveys are about as accurate as an ak47 fired from the hips.
There's no way that there's this much fluctuation on a month to month basis, and and it's common for them to show such useless data. 5% change in month for 1 type of card? Sudden 2% surges on the CPU front? Sure steam, let's get you to bed.

I don't know why they even bother to keep this survey running if they can't be bothered to collect accurate data

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

im still rocking that card....monitor maxes out at 1920x1080 so no need to upgrade at the moment.

Well, yeah, wish it was that capable in 1440p as well. Nevertheless, 3060 or 6700xt or any other modern 1080Ti-tier solution still would be much better today, since I forgot to mention the main advantage, and that would be power. I mean, I'm ethusiast-card-fan, I like seeing and trying out the performance all-in huge >500mm2 chips can provide every time something new comes in, but at the same time I have just the same bone... amusement when I see some mid and low tier cards with <300mm2 chips performing amazingly good due to architecture changes, on par with previous flagships. I think it all started when 1060 came out.

 

[hel0sn8]

If mid range cards don't have double the memory capacity next gen I'm done with PC gaming and just getting a console. 3070/3060ti owners got proper shafted.

No they didn't. Well maybe a little, but really not a lot. You just think that because 5 odd ported from console games (HGWL, RE4, LoU etc) require more VRAM when gaming at 1440p and above. But both there cards are 1080p cards. And they work just fine. Just like a GTX1080/TI, 2070 Super even - still do. Being overly dramatic and threatening console use exclusively really just goes to show you aren't a true PC person. Cos none of us would ever dream to have only a console LOL.

 

[Lounds]

No they didn't. Well maybe a little, but really not a lot. You just think that because 5 odd ported from console games (HGWL, RE4, LoU etc) require more VRAM when gaming at 1440p and above. But both there cards are 1080p cards. And they work just fine. Just like a GTX1080/TI, 2070 Super even - still do. Being overly dramatic and threatening console use exclusively really just goes to show you aren't a true PC person. Cos none of us would ever dream to have only a console LOL.

I knew 8GB wasn't enough but the choice was buy the 3060ti or pay nearly £200 more for a RX 6700 XT that had very similar performance at the time.