by Well, finally it happened. According to the Steam Hardware Survey, the Nvidia GeForce RTX4080 And RTX 4070 Ti GPUs were both among the top ten most purchased (or at least “recently plugged in and connected to Steam”) graphics cards as of February 2023.
This comes after months of stock restrictions and controversy surrounding Nvidia’s new GPUs, and could signal a shift towards the current generation of graphics cards among PC gamers. Interestingly, the flagship RTX4090 was absent from the top ten list, though undeniably he was best graphics card just on the market (read: because it’s phenomenally expensive).
In comparison, AMD saw very very modest market gains in February, with the best-selling Radeon GPU being the latest generation RX6600XTwhich is an excellent choice cheap graphics card but currently still only 0.38% of all cards owned by Steam users. For comparison, the tried and tested old Radeon RX 580 is used by 1.1% of gamers on Steam, while the most popular overall performance is still the three-year-old Nvidia GTX 1650.
Analysis: These gains are good for Nvidia, but bad for gamers
Personally, I’m not particularly pleased to see Nvidia’s next-gen graphics cards gaining traction in the PC gaming market. The RTX 4080 is a disappointingly expensive GPU that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone given the alternatives currently available, while the RTX 4070 Ti is far better but still works the controversy surrounding his release. As for the RTX 4090, well, that’s just more money than any gamer has to spend on their PC.
I’ve accused Nvidia (and in fairness almost every PC hardware company) of anti-consumer moves in the past, and the current trend in GPU pricing has me tearing my hair out. Supposedly don’t even get me to start with Nvidia RTX 4090 stock throttling to move an unsold 4080 units that no one wanted to buy – although judging by these Steam stats that plan may have worked.
The simple fact is that while Nvidia’s new GPUs are great, nobody really needs them. DLSS 3 is coming for previous-gen Nvidia GPUs, and AMD’s price cuts for its RX 6000 cards are also eye candy; Why bother throwing $800+ on a GPU when you can buy a 4K-capable card (with upscaling enabled anyway) like that RX6800 for less than 500€? Those cheaper GPUs don’t stand a chance Set your PC on fireeither.
But maybe I’m worrying too much. While the RTX 4080 was the sixth most purchased GPU in February according to Steam data, the RTX 4000 cards are nowhere near the most used in the survey. The actually The top ten list is populated almost entirely by Nvidia’s budget xx50 and xx60 cards, with four being older GTX models. The most popular next-gen card is the RTX 4090 (understandable since it launched first) at the bottom at position 56, with a weak 0.31% of users.
Keep it up gamers. We don’t need those stupid overpriced GPUs – I’ve stuck with my trusty GTX 1060 for years and before that I was playing on a clunky old laptop with a GTX 950M. As always, vote with your wallet. Come on Nvidia; Give us the RTX 4050 already.
