TL;DR: It appears that the RTX 4090's huge price tag hasn't put gamers off buying one. The latest Steam survey shows Nvidia's flagship burst into the main GPU chart in January, becoming the second best-performing card among participants. It was also a good month for Windows 11, which passed the 30% user-share mark after further eroding Windows 10's lead.

The Steam survey's top ten graphics cards show little change last month beyond the RTX 3060 laptop GPU moving into third place. The mobile Ampere GPU saw the biggest increase in user share with a 0.44% rise, but it's the second-best performing card that's most interesting.

The Steam survey's best-performing GPUs in January

The RTX 4090 has become the first Ada Lovelace card to break into the main GPU section of the Steam survey; it was already in the Vulkan Systems section with other 40-series products. The RTX 4090's 0.24% share is pretty impressive for a card with a $1,600 MSRP (and you're unlikely to find one for that price). It means the flagship already sits above the Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6500 XT.

The RTX 4090's performance here will likely bring a smile to Nvidia's face at a time when many consumers are shying away from expensive tech purchases in light of the turbulent economy.

January was another good month for Ampere, with the RTX 3050, 3060 Ti, and 3090 all experiencing increases. AMD's top performer was the Radeon RX 6700 XT with a 0.06% rise, though most of team red's modern cards still languish in the lower half of the table.

The Steam survey's most popular GPUs in January

Elsewhere in this category, the GTX 1650 maintained the number one spot it took from the GTX 1060, which had topped the chart since 2018, in November. The Turing card cemented its position with a 0.06% user-share increase.

Moving onto CPUs, January was another one of those months when AMD's share went up. Its processors are now found in 32.84% of participants' machines, close to the all-time high of 33.73% that it reached last summer.

Windows 11 passed the 30% user-share milestone in January. The latest OS sits at 30.33% after Windows 10's users fell by -1.96%. Microsoft last month announced that it would stop directly issuing licenses for Windows 10 on January 31, 2023, so don't be surprised if the popular operating system's share sees a rapid decline going forward. Windows 7, meanwhile, is still clinging to life with a 0.11% share.

As for the rest of the survey, 16GB remains the most common amount of system RAM despite a -0.11% decline, most people use a 1920 x 1080 resolution, and the Oculus Quest 2 remains unchallenged as the top VR headset.