RTX 3060 Appears on Steam's Hardware Survey, RX 6000 Series Still Nowhere in Sight

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By Aaron Klotz
published

AMD still cannot compete with Nvidia's production output

RX 6700 XT
(Image credit: AMD)

Valve's Steam hardware survey was just updated, and one of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060, one of the best graphics cards, showed up on the charts for the first time. Sure, it has a very minute 0.17% market share at the time of this writing, but the card only launched in late February. Every Ampere GPU now at least shows up, which makes us wonder where AMD's RX 6000 series GPUs are hiding.

It's no secret that Nvidia is pumping out a far greater volume of Ampere graphics cards compared to AMD and its competition RDNA2 products. AMD has to split its allotment of TSMC 7nm wafers between the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Ryzen 5000 CPUs, and Radeon 6000 GPUs. AMD's contractually obligated to provide a lot of console chips, relative to the others, so guess which product line gets the short end of the stick.

AMD CEO Lisa Su is aware of the problem as she has promised to ramp up production significantly for the Radeon RX 6700 XT after it launched. And to be fair, it's only been out a bit less than two months. However, it seems RX 6700 XT production still isn't competitive with even the lowest stock of Nvidia's GPUs.

Looking at eBay's sold listings for the RTX 3060 and RX 6700 XT, which is what we do in our GPU pricing index, scalpers are selling off literally double the number of 3060s compared to RX 6700 XTs. Just this week alone, 382 RTX 3060s and 182 RX 6700 XTs were sold off to buyers. There were also 734 RTX 3070 cards sold, at an average price of $1,371.

These numbers from eBay should give us a good guess as to the production numbers of AMD and Nvidia worldwide. If these numbers are at all accurate, it helps explain why Steam hasn't put any RX 6000 series GPU on its hardware survey list.

Steam has never told us how it operates the hardware survey program and what requirements hardware models have to meet to be on the chart. However, looking at the charts, we believe there's a market share limit in place that all products on the charts have to meet. It may change a bit month to month, but right now the minimum value to show up as a line item is 0.15%. Considering Nvidia's RTX 3060 has 0.17% and appears to be selling at roughly twice the rate of the RX 6700 XT, that would put AMD's best RDNA2 share at less than 0.10%.

Again, there's some conjecture on our part, but this suggests Steam simply needs more of AMD's RX 6000 series graphics cards before they'll breach the 0.14% market share point. The RX 6700 XT has also been selling at nearly triple the rate of the other RX 6000 series cards — since launch, on eBay at least, RX 6700 XT alone outsold the combined RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800.

This certainly isn't good news for AMD, though it's regretably expected. There were rumors that 80% of the wafers AMD uses at TSMC right now are for the latest consoles, leaving Ryzen and Radeon to share the remaining 20%. Nvidia meanwhile only has to produce GPU wafers at Samsung, and while it can't keep up with demand, it appears to be doing a much better jump at shipping cards than AMD. In general, Nvidia looks like it's outselling AMD GPUs by at least a 5-to-1 ratio.

Hopefully, something will change so that AMD's more budget-friendly RDNA2 products can be more competitive in production volume with Nvidia's Ampere GPUs. But while we wait for RX 6700, RX 6600, and RX 6500 products to launch, there are strong indications Nvidia will have RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050 laptops this month, and likely RTX 3080 Ti desktop cards as well.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Freelance News Writer

Aaron Klotz is a freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering news topics related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

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14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • spongiemaster
    Because AMD isn't selling them. They make far more money from using their wafers for Epyc CPU's than GPU's. Makes all the sense in the world to prioritize CPU's and blame the lack of GPU availability on mining.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    Price is also a problem because I entered the Newegg Shuffle for a RTX 3060 and if I had won it, it would have cost $399. In today's Shuffle an RX 6700XT is $849 just for the card itself.
    Reply
  • bigdragon
    Looks like Nvidia has had some success getting their initial RTX 30-series product launches into the hands of some gamers. After the initial launch, the numbers appear to fall off significantly for each product. I would assume that AMD is having the same issue on a smaller scale due to less production and less stock at launch. Their smaller launches don't appear to be significant enough to cause a blip in the survey results -- not good!

    The Steam survey results show that both Nvidia and AMD are having major problems getting their hardware into the hands of gamers. Scalpers and miners are clearly winning. In fact, miners appear to be the bulk of scalpers' business.
    Reply
  • Eximo
    Always the underdog, and not having any mid-range GPUs, that will do it.

    When your cheapest current gen offering is limited to only the premium high end models, that is going to happen.

    Also alternatives to Steam. You'll have people that spend all their time in Epic or Origin...
    Reply
  • Giroro
    One other thing of note is that the "Other" category increased by +0.31% , which would include all models of RX 6000 cards combined; This gives you some idea of scale.

    But that number is also affected by people buying/trying to game on weird cards overlooked they buy on ebay (like workstation graphics). Also people on uncommon cards will have exited the "other" category as they can get something more popular.

    Compare that to something like the GTX 1650, which increased by +0.21%. It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that more gamers have been able to start playing on a GTX 1650 than on any particular RX 6000 model (or on the RTX 3060). I don't think the1650 is even being manufactured right now. Although, I think Nvidia may have started producing that same basic GPU for mining cards.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    Keep in mind that most of these cards are likely coming from pre-built systems. A cursory glance on some stores at the more "affordable" price range of around $800-$1200 give you mostly midrange cards.

    As much as we all like to think the DIY market is the majority in PC gaming, it really isn't.
    Reply
  • Olle P
    spongiemaster said:
    Because AMD isn't selling them. ... using their wafers for Epyc CPU's ...
    I'd say you're (mostly) wrong, and there are other factors playing a much bigger rôle:
    It's true that Epyc gets priority, but Radeon GPUs are still produced (and fly off the shelves) at about twice the rate of prior GPU production.
    The RDNA2 cards haven't been on sale for very long.
    The number of Steam users have gone up when more people stay home and find computer gaming to be a viable option to going out. These users (typically) haven't bought the latest Radeons but use their older equipment. The increased number of total users means an increase in diversity of cards in use and a requirement for a higher number of cards with a specific GPU to get on the list.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Olle P said:
    I'd say you're (mostly) wrong, and there are other factors playing a much bigger rôle:
    It's true that Epyc gets priority, but Radeon GPUs are still produced (and fly off the shelves) at about twice the rate of prior GPU production.
    The RDNA2 cards haven't been on sale for very long.
    The number of Steam users have gone up when more people stay home and find computer gaming to be a viable option to going out. These users (typically) haven't bought the latest Radeons but use their older equipment. The increased number of total users means an increase in diversity of cards in use and a requirement for a higher number of cards with a specific GPU to get on the list.
    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index
    In May so far (so not being on sale long is not an argument), twice as many 3070's have been sold on Ebay than all four RDNA2 models combined. 3090's almost outsold all RDNA2 cards combined. 3000 series cards are out selling RDNA2 models by almost 6 to 1. You are entitled to your opinion, but the numbers say you are (mostly) wrong. Unless AMD is offloading all their cards to miners directly, they are not selling them.
    Reply
  • Olle P
    spongiemaster said:
    ... 3000 series cards are out selling RDNA2 models by almost 6 to 1.
    That means Nvidia is doing much worse than usual!
    Normally Nvidia would outsell AMD by at least 10:1, so if anything it's Nvidia that doesn't sell!

    (My point is that AMD do sell cards, way more than usual, it's just not enough to show up in the overall statistics of cards in use. Furthermore the RDNA2 GPUs are pretty crappy for cryptomining, so they're not sold to miners whereas Ampere is great for mining.)
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Olle P said:
    That means Nvidia is doing much worse than usual!
    Normally Nvidia would outsell AMD by at least 10:1, so if anything it's Nvidia that doesn't sell!

    (My point is that AMD do sell cards, way more than usual, it's just not enough to show up in the overall statistics of cards in use. Furthermore the RDNA2 GPUs are pretty crappy for cryptomining, so they're not sold to miners whereas Ampere is great for mining.)
    Nvidia has typically held 70-80% market share in recent years. Which would be about 3.5:1 to 4:1. The current 6:1 ratio indicates AMD is producing at a measurably lower rate than they have in recent years compared to the rest of the market. Nvidia has never had 91% market share which would be 10:1.

    You're shooting your own argument in the foot by pointing out AMD cards are inferior and less desirable for mining, yet they still can't be found for sale.
    Reply