Is that point of the month once more, when Valve releases the outcomes from its Steam {hardware} and software program survey, and to no shock in any respect, Nvidia nonetheless guidelines the graphics card chart. The November figures present that Nvidia accounts for 72.5% of all of the entries, with its Ampere-based GPUs (i.e. GeForce RTX 30-series) accounting for 27.3% of all of the totally different architectures.
Each month, Valve collates the outcomes it gleans from finishing up its random requests of Steam accounts to provide it with PC system and software program configurations, equivalent to working system kind, CPU, GPU, RAM quantity, and so forth. It isn’t achieved with out the account holder’s consent, in fact, as you must actively select to take part. Valve by no means signifies the variety of accounts it is sampled, so there’s at all times an comprehensible degree of skepticism regarding the outcomes.
Lately, the fast progress of PC gaming throughout Asia and a model of Steam only for China have considerably skewed the figures, besides, the figures aren’t ignored by the media, {hardware} distributors, and sport publishers. So what is the present breakdown like?
Simply taking a look at graphics playing cards, the highest six entries are all from Nvidia: GeForce RTX 3060, GTX 1650, GTX 1060, RTX 3060 Laptop computer, RTX 2060, and RTX 3060 Ti. Collectively, these mid-priced, mainstream GPUs make up 25% of the full, with the RTX 3060 main the pack at a smidgeon over 5%.
It is just about held the highest place for the previous three months, although it is value noting that the working system language factors out simply why that is the case. Usually, simplified Chinese language accounts for 29% of the survey (averaged over eight months) however in October, it took an enormous 45.9% slice of the information. Nevertheless, for the November survey, it dropped again to 26%, so the newest figures are most likely much more consultant of PC gaming as a complete.
Going again slightly additional, it is the GeForce GTX 1650 and GTX 1060 that have been the champions of all of them, they usually’re nonetheless very near the highest now. Within the case of the GTX 1060, Nvidia’s Pascal period of graphics playing cards are nonetheless very talked-about, taking second place within the survey with 18% of the full (adopted by Turing at 15.8% and the latest Ada Lovelace at 9%).
In comparison with the July figures, the place Ada accounted for 3.7% of all GPUs, the truth that it has greater than doubled in 4 months needs to be excellent news for Nvidia. Maybe that is one much less factor for Jen-Hsun to fret about within the mornings, now.
As for the competitors, it is sadly grim studying. AMD makes up simply 11.5% of the full (with a ten.5% 5 month common) and Intel’s in a distant third place, with 6.3% (4.7% common). Within the case of the latter, it is built-in GPUs: The graphics processor constructed into the CPU. There isn’t any signal of its Arc graphics playing cards in any respect.
AMD’s RDNA 2 accounts for 3.3% of all of the architectures sampled and is by far its hottest selection for GPU. Its present RDNA 3 has a single entry, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, approach down in 69th place (35 positions decrease than the RTX 4090 and 25 away from the RTX 4080).
And talking of high-end graphics playing cards, there are comparatively few of them. Clearly that ought to come as no shock however as they account for simply 1.5% of all the GPU survey, it does make me surprise why sport builders create graphics settings that solely a tiny fraction of GPUs seem to have the ability to deal with. It is attainable that they are privy to raised information than Valve’s {hardware} survey however I think it would not inform a radically totally different story.
Regardless of the case may very well be, the RTX 3060 is prone to proceed being high canine for an excellent whereas but, as Nvidia is not going to cease manufacturing of its tremendous common GPU simply but.
