Steam has published its latest monthly Hardware and Software Survey, breaking down what the most common pieces of hardware users on the platform are rocking, including processors, graphics cards, memory capacity, and more.
This latest edition once again confirms what we’ve seen in previous months: PC gamers are holding onto their graphics cards for longer. Nvidia’s RTX 3060, which originally launched in early 2021, remains the most common card among Steam users, with around 3.76% of users running it. That’s down from its September 2023 share of 6.1%, but it’s still up on the previous month’s 3.71%, showing that it’s still a popular choice for a new gaming PC build. Even older cards are holding their share too, with Nvidia’s 2019 GTX 1650 still commanding a considerable 2.37% of the user base.
Despite increasingly high prices, that’s not to say some Steam users aren’t splashing out on the latest and greatest GPUs regardless. Within Nvidia’s RTX 50 lineup, the mid-tier RTX 5060 is the most common choice within, found in 2.98% of rigs recorded in the survey. The monthly share of Steam users running 50 series cards like this one is also rising, slowly but surely.
Part of the reason gamers are holding onto some of these older cards for longer is, of course, that models such as the most popular RTX 3060 remain extremely capable in some of the latest PC games, and will likely remain so for a number of years when it comes to 1080p and 1440p gaming. But it’ll also be down to the issue of new GPU prices that continue to rise, with new models such as those within Nvidia’s RTX 50 lineup seeing price rises of up to 40% this summer alone. And with demand for memory continuing to outstrip supply amid the AI boom, there’s no sign of prices letting up any time soon.
This has also driven up the price of older cards, whether leftover new stock or used units, as they become popular picks for the more budget-conscious gaming PC builder.
