Nvidia‘s mid-range graphics playing cards have, for years, dominated the most-used gaming GPU chart in Valve’s month-to-month Steam {Hardware} Survey. For a very long time, its GTX 1060 playing cards dominated, with its RTX 2060 and RTX 3060 playing cards taking on because the years handed. Positive sufficient, the RTX 4060 went on to say the title, however this month has seen a shock change.
As an alternative of Nvidia’s last-gen mid-range champion persevering with to take a seat on the prime of the charts, the corporate’s older RTX 3060 has regained the crown. The variety of Steam customers utilizing the 3060 has risen from 4.41% within the earlier survey to 4.47%. That does not make it the most effective graphics card choice proper now, however merely probably the most generally used on the platform. In the meantime, each the laptop computer RTX 4060 GPU (the mannequin that beforehand topped the chart) and the desktop RTX 4060 have seen their share of customers drop.
The actions listed here are very small, and nonetheless lead to the identical three GPUs occupying the highest three spots. It is simply that the order has modified. It is nonetheless notable, nonetheless, given how uncommon it’s to see an older GPU come again to the highest spot as soon as a brand new era has established itself.
Additionally notable is simply how regular the general proportion of customers with an RTX 3060 has been over the past 5 months. In June’s survey, it had 4.57%, and now in September’s survey, it nonetheless has 4.47%. This would appear to recommend that homeowners of this card usually are not but seeing a motive to improve.
Certainly, the large shift that lastly noticed customers transfer on from the GTX 1060/1660 period was the arrival of the RTX 3060, because it introduced a big sufficient leap in efficiency, together with trendy options reminiscent of ray tracing and DLSS. Seemingly, the leap in efficiency from that card to the likes of the RTX 4060 and RTX 5060 hasn’t been sufficient to warrant one other improve – a state of affairs not helped by the low quantity of VRAM in these playing cards, as we discover in our RTX 5060 overview.
As for why the RTX 5060 and different RTX 5000 collection playing cards aren’t but topping the chart, we do are inclined to see a big delay between the launch of a brand new collection of playing cards and them turning into extensively adopted. The RTX 4060 solely hit such heights in March this yr, almost two years after its launch.
Elsewhere, the story of this month’s Steam {Hardware} Survey stays a lot the identical as final month, with AMD persevering with to hardly make a dent within the GPU utilization stats, although its generic “AMD Radeon Graphics” entry has risen one place, from tenth to ninth. Nonetheless, the corporate is steadily chipping away at Intel’s lead within the CPU utilization chart. In the meantime, Linux has, for the primary time, hit 3% utilization on the platform, which is a outcome largely pushed by the Steam Deck.
Are you continue to utilizing an RTX 3060 or was it the RTX 4060 that lastly pushed you to improve? If that’s the case, what efficiency and options will you be in search of in a attainable future RTX 6060 card that may make it tempting sufficient to improve? Tell us your ideas over on our neighborhood Discord server.
