What just happened? The latest Steam survey has dropped. Last month's results show that the final RTX 5000-series desktop card has now entered the main GPU chart, nearly one year after it launched. Elsewhere, Intel's excellent Core Ultra 200 Plus series may have started to influence the CPU results as AMD failed to move the needle in its favor during April.
There was little movement at the top of the GPU chart as the RTX 3060 remained the most popular option among survey participants. Its place at the top could be cemented if reports that Nvidia is re-releasing the 2021 card in July – a response to the memory crisis – prove accurate.
April also saw the final member of the RTX 5000 desktop series enter the main chart. The RTX 5050, which launched last July, appeared with a 0.17% share, making it the GPU with the third-highest gains last month behind the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060.
The only RTX 5000 products now missing from the main chart are the RTX 5080 Laptop and RTX 5090 Laptop GPUs.
April's CPU chart will likely be pleasing to see for Intel. AMD has consistently been eroding Team Blue's user share for well over a year now and is just 11% behind its rival. While AMD did make gains in April, they were negligible (0.01%).
AMD's X3D CPUs have long been driving the company's sales among gamers thanks to their excellent gaming performance. Intel had no real killer option of its own – until it launched the Core Ultra 200 Plus chips in March.
We called the Ultra 5 250K Plus a highly efficient, blisteringly fast productivity CPU with gaming performance that rivals AMD at the same price point. We were equally full of praise for the 270K Plus, noting that it's generally the better choice than the 9700X for gaming, offering stronger frame-time performance.
Elsewhere in the survey, Windows 11 keeps growing its lead, though Windows 10 saw a surprising (small) increase last month. Linux's share was also down, which has become a rare sight in the era of the Steam Deck. We also found that, despite new 1080p monitors often being associated with esports players due to their blisteringly fast refresh rates, the resolution's lead among participants actually grew – likely helped by the popularity of budget models.
