Nvidia RTX 4060 Arrives on Steam Survey, Matching RX 7000 Market Share
Historically speaking, the RTX 4060 will likely head toward the top of the Steam HW Survey in the coming years.
With the month of September well underway, Steam's Hardware Survey has been updated with data from the month of August. The most noteworthy change in the latest report is the appearance of Nvidia's RTX 4060, one of the best graphics cards based on its reasonable $299 asking price.
For its debut on the Steam survey, the RTX 4060's market share is a pretty decent 0.23%. That may not sound like a lot, but that's the exact same market share as AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX that launched a full seven months before the RTX 4060. Despite widespread concerns with the 128-bit interface and 8GB of VRAM, it appears the RTX 4060 is already gaining traction among Steam gamers.
This isn't surprising, given that the GeForce RTX 4060 is arguably one of Nvidia's most cost-effective RTX 40 series graphics cards to date. In our review of the card, we highlighted its good price-to-performance ratio, offering 22% better performance than its predecessor (the RTX 3060 12GB) for $30 cheaper — $299 vs $239. It's not perfect, offering one of the lowest generational performance uplifts of any 60-class card, and just 8GB of VRAM — vs 12GB on the 3060. However, the RTX 4060 is the only RTX 40 series graphics card to cost less than its predecessor.
For better or for worse, Nvidia's RTX 4060 is arguably the one of the best budget options among current graphics cards, particularly for gamers who prefer to stay in the Nvidia ecosystem.
Another interesting point of reference is that the previous generation RTX 3060, which now reigns as the most popular GPU on Steam (counting both desktop and laptop GPUs), debuted on the survey two months after it launched in February 2021, with a market share of 0.17%. By that metric, Nvidia is already ahead of where it was last time.
Besides the addition of the RTX 4060, the August update shows Nvidia's entire RTX-40 series market share among Steam gamers at 5.66%, including mobile GPU variants. That's a 1.94% net increase in just one month, or alternatively a 52% relative improvement. While just under six percent of the entire Steam survey might not seem like a huge number, it does show that adoption of Nvidia's latest generation Ada Lovelace architecture is proceeding at a decent rate. At the same ten months after the RTX 30-series launch, those GPUs comprised 4.35% of the Steam survey.
AMD's market share meanwhile continues to look rather poor. Some of that may simply be Valve failing to pull out data on certain GPUs (only the RX 7900 XTX shows up on the survey), which puts RDNA 3 at 0.23% total. The previous generation RX 6000-series total market share isn't great either, consisting of 2.95% for the August survey, including mobile GPUs.
These figures really show how much more popular Nvidia's GPUs are, no matter how competitive AMD's GPUs may be, or how poorly the cards might be received by reviewers and influencers. Part of the gap also stems from the fact that AMD's discrete GPU laptop market share (i.e., not counting integrated solutions) is extremely low.
While AMD's RDNA 3 graphics cards barely show up in the latest survey, we'll have to see what happens in the coming months. Hopefully Valve will break out data on the RX 7900 XT, RX 7900 GRE, RX 7600, and now the new RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT that just launched. It will obviously take time for those last two to appear on Steam's survey, but we suspect there are a reasonable number of 7900 XT and 7600 cards in the hands of gamers now.
Also still MIA: Intel Arc Alchemist. Those have been out for over a year now, at least in some parts of the world. So far, neither the desktop nor mobile Arc variants have made an appearance on the Steam survey, despite nabbing a fairly significant chunk of the global GPU market according to JPR. Maybe all of those Arc GPUs are ending up in business PCs?
Unsurprisingly, the top 10 most popular graphics cards on the Steam hardware survey have barely changed, with the GTX 1650, RTX 3060, GTX 1060, RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, and RTX 2060 making up the top five. The rest of the top ten consists of mostly budget-friendly Nvidia GPUs from the past six years, like the GTX 1050 Ti and RTX 3050.
If the Steam Hardware Survey has taught us anything, it's that Nvidia's 60-class cards inevitably make it into the top 10 at some point. That means about 2.5% of the total market, so RTX 4060's presence will need to grow by an order of magnitude before it can reach the top ten. It will be interesting to see how quickly the RTX 4060 can accomplish that feat.
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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.
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NeoMorpheus These figures really show how much more popular Nvidia's GPUs are, no matter how competitive AMD's GPUs may be, or how poorly the cards might be received by reviewers and influencers.
Actually, the influencers and biased "reviewers" have more pull than real reviewers.
Those are the ones that will say "the 4060 is not a good gpu, but the magical DLSS and fake frames will make it fly so go ahead a buy!"
The same will also say "AMD is DOA, regardless if its faster or cheaper, buy Nvidia Yo!!".
Yeah, we are doomed.
That said, I think that the only way we can ever get proper results is if Valve does a survey to 100% endpoints, not just some random systems. But it is the closest thing we have to an accurate count. -
PEnns NeoMorpheus said:Actually, the influencers and biased "reviewers" have more pull than real reviewers.
Those are the ones that will say "the 4060 is not a good gpu, but the magical DLSS and fake frames will make it fly so go ahead a buy!"
Not to mention the usual websites..... -
CelicaGT Comparing 40 series adoption to 30 series and saying it's better? 30 series availability for gamers was abysmal (scalpers, miners), 40 series are readily available. These numbers do not mean what the article implies they mean given the timeline....Reply -
thisisaname
Someone wiser than me once said "There is not such thing as a bad gpu just a bad price"NeoMorpheus said:Actually, the influencers and biased "reviewers" have more pull than real reviewers.
Those are the ones that will say "the 4060 is not a good gpu, but the magical DLSS and fake frames will make it fly so go ahead a buy!"
The same will also say "AMD is DOA, regardless if its faster or cheaper, buy Nvidia Yo!!".
Yeah, we are doomed.
That said, I think that the only way we can ever get proper results is if Valve does a survey to 100% endpoints, not just some random systems. But it is the closest thing we have to an accurate count.
In this case the 4060 is far to cut down for it price. -
JarredWaltonGPU
We shall see in the coming months. I would bet heavily that RTX 4060 will do very well on the survey over time. Because it is actually faster than the 3060 while costing less. That’s a potent combination.CelicaGT said:Comparing 40 series adoption to 30 series and saying it's better? 30 series availability for gamers was abysmal (scalpers, miners), 40 series are readily available. These numbers do not mean what the article implies they mean given the timeline....
And if you think the 8GB will stop adoption, just look at how many people bought the 2060. It might not pass the 3060 for a while, but it’s virtually guaranteed to hit the top five or so GPUs over the next year or two.
And if the street price drops closer to $250 over time, it will do even better. -
NaviiX
100 percent agree. Radeon isn't competing at the low end or the high end with RX 7000. You only buy Radeon if you care about pure raster. The $500 7800xt is decent but lacking features that people care about. The big bump in raster for $50 vs 4060 Ti 16gb or the $100 saved for a 4070 won't convince most people.JarredWaltonGPU said:We shall see in the coming months. I would bet heavily that RTX 4060 will do very well on the survey over time. Because it is actually faster than the 3060 while costing less. That’s a potent combination.
And if you think the 8GB will stop adoption, just look at how many people bought the 2060. It might not pass the 3060 for a while, but it’s virtually guaranteed to hit the top five or so GPUs over the next year or two.
And if the street price drops closer to $250 over time, it will do even better.
AMD needs to win mind share and compete at the low end and midrange much harder, even if it's at a loss. They need to invest into deep learning to make FSR look better and push FSR3 harder. Now Nvidia is coming with Ray reconstruction which looks pretty incredible. It's not 2020 anymore and DLSS/RT seriously matter, that's ignoring things like reflex, ray reconstruction, or frame gen.
Not to hype anyone to rush to buy GPU's. If your GPU works fine in the games you play keep it for now. Radeon is just failing miserably with their product stack, in my opinion. Nvidia fumbled the ball directly into their hands and they're fumbling it right back. -
Colif So it doesn't really help that it doesn't automatically run the survey after you update hardwareReply
Unfortunately, what makes Steam Hardware Survey kick off is about as mysterious as confirmation of Half Life 3. If you swapped out your RAM, motherboard, a new higher resolution monitor, or even a new CPU, you may or may not have the survey kick off.
But you can run it manually if you want to:
First, press the Windows Key + the R key simultaneously to summon Windows 10’s “Run” prompt. Now, enter one of the four lines:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/394207/how-to-make-your-pc-take-the-steam-hardware-survey.html
steam://takesurvey/1/
steam://takesurvey/2/
steam://takesurvey/3/
steam://takesurvey/4/
So its accuracy is questionable unless they can make it run every year or so to confirm figures.
made me wonder as I played Steam games all year on a 7900XT so surprised none are showing at all. -
Elusive Ruse
What is there not to get convinced unless one is a mindless Nvidia buyer? The 7800 XT beats the 4070 in raster and trumps 4060Ti while also beating it in RT, it costs as much as the 4060Ti and $100 less than the 4070. Pure raster wins over RT performance any day, RayTracing is icing on the cake not the whole cake. Your post reeks of misdirection and misinformation which makes me question your motives.NaviiX said:100 percent agree. Radeon isn't competing at the low end or the high end with RX 7000. You only buy Radeon if you care about pure raster. The $500 7800xt is decent but lacking features that people care about. The big bump in raster for $50 vs 4060 Ti 16gb or the $100 saved for a 4070 won't convince most people.
AMD needs to win mind share and compete at the low end and midrange much harder, even if it's at a loss. They need to invest into deep learning to make FSR look better and push FSR3 harder. Now Nvidia is coming with Ray reconstruction which looks pretty incredible. It's not 2020 anymore and DLSS/RT seriously matter, that's ignoring things like reflex, ray reconstruction, or frame gen.
Not to hype anyone to rush to buy GPU's. If your GPU works fine in the games you play keep it for now. Radeon is just failing miserably with their product stack, in my opinion. Nvidia fumbled the ball directly into their hands and they're fumbling it right back.