Nvidia RTX adoption slows down according to Steam hardware survey
Racking up the numbers
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The latestSteam hardware surveyis out, and it looks likeNvidia Turinggraphics cards are ever so slowly gaining market share.
The gains are led by theNvidia GeForce RTX 2060, which saw a 0.14% boost in May, but don’t let that mislead you, it’s still only installed in 0.65% ofSteamusers’gaming PCs. The most popular Nvidia RTXgraphics cardis theRTX 2070, which saw a 0.10% boost, up to 0.91% of the total Steam user base.
Taking up the tail end of the RTX gains is the ultra-powerfulNvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti,which only saw a measly 0.04% increase in users - and, to date, only 0.33% of Steam users have forked over the $1,199 (£1,099, AU$1,899) necessary to pick up this flagship.
NvidiaPascal graphics cards are still the most popular, and while they didn’t see any growth, the ever-popularGTX 1060remained flat at its 15.69% market share. Nvidia has claimed that itsTuring graphics cards are making more revenuethan Pascal did, but that’s likely due to the inflated prices.
What does it mean?
In April,we reported on a Steam hardware surveythat saw much more significant gains for Nvidia’s graphics cards, wherein the RTX 2060 saw a 0.27% boost. Are less people buying graphics cards?
It could be that people are waiting forAMD Navi, which not only promises similar performance to something like the RTX 2070, but should be able to be more power efficient, thanks to its 7nm architecture.Team Red’s new GPUs launch next month, so maybe we’ll see a shift in the graphics card market.
Nvidia Turing graphics cards may just be too expensive for most users, too: the entire lineup is infamous at this point for its inflated prices. That might help explain why theNvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Tiis already at 0.28% of the market just a couple months after its release.
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Either way, things are about to heat up in the graphics card space whenAMDshows Navi off atE3 2019. Who knows? Future Steam hardware surveys might see a more even spread – AMD only has 14.87% of the Steam user base overall right now.
Bill Thomas (Twitter) is TechRadar’s computing editor. They are fat, queer and extremely online. Computers are the devil, but they just happen to be a satanist. If you need to know anything about computing components, PC gaming or the best laptop on the market, don’t be afraid to drop them a line on Twitter or through email.
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