AMD looks like it’s losing the GPU war based on new Steam survey, with Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti proving itself to be popular already
- Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti is already present in the top GPUs for Steam gamers
- It has a small but appreciable 0.21% market share, less than two months after its launch
- AMD’s RX 9070 models have yet to appear in the Steam hardware survey at all, though its fortunes may change with RX 9060 GPUs
Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti GPU has only been out for a month and a half, but it’s already established itself as a better-selling graphics card than AMD’s RX 9070 models, according to the latest Steam hardware survey for May.
In fact, as VideoCardz highlighted, AMD’s new RDNA 4 GPUs still haven’t yet managed to appear anywhere on the list of the most popular graphics cards, going by the rigs of Steam gamers, whereas the RTX 5060 Ti is on 0.21% market share after less than two months.
That’s the second biggest gain of the month, behind only the RTX 5070, which picked up 0.33% of GPU market share to end up on 0.71%.
The RTX 5080 also crept up to 0.47%, a gain of 0.09% for the month of May. With the RTX 5070 Ti increasing by 0.11% to a total of 0.38%, the RTX 5000 family accounts for 1.77% of all gaming PCs on Steam, as per this snapshot from last month.
Whereas AMD’s RX 9070 models have yet to gain any percentage points in the Survey, despite being launched at the beginning of March, three months ago.
Of course, take the results from one survey with an appropriate amount of caution, although this month doesn’t appear to have been affected by any regional-based oddities. Sometimes, we can see a significant shift in the number of PCs included from Asia, which have different hardware preferences, and this can cause specific GPUs to appear as if they’ve gained popularity, when in fact it’s merely a reflection of the survey respondents’ makeup.
Analysis: On-shelf pricing and consumer perceptions
Why are AMD’s RX 9070 models flailing around in terms of their inability to make an impact on Valve’s survey?
That’s a tricky question to answer, but in some part, it may be down to supply levels and pricing. The RX 9070, and particularly the 9070 XT, have suffered from low stock of graphics cards at the MSRP. There are models on shelves, but the pricing is inflated, and you’ll be paying quite a bit more. At the time of writing in the US, the 9070 XT commands around $800, the plain 9070 about $650, at their cheapest pricing.
Despite the glowing reviews of the 9070 XT, the premium price puts this GPU well out of reach for the average PC owner. And pretty much ditto for the vanilla 9070 – or at least it puts the brakes on sales in a considerable way. The thing about the RTX 5060 Ti is that you can pick one up for as little as $390, so that’s a big difference.
Okay, so it’s a different class of GPU, granted (xx70 versus xx60), and the cheaper RTX 5060 Ti models with 8GB of video RAM (VRAM) also have a sting in the tail with that lean allocation of VRAM. Meaning performance is not as good as the 16GB version of this Nvidia graphics card, which is priced close to $500 or so (all pricing is correct at the time of writing).
Still, the average gamer may not care much about these performance differences. And indeed, the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB will suffice if all you’re interested in is playing some less demanding PC games at 1080p resolution without maxing out graphics options. Present this graphics card with more challenging gaming workloads for its VRAM loadout, though, and you’ve got problems, at least if you want higher graphics details, even at 1080p resolution – you’ll be looking at using medium details.
As noted, though, this may not matter to a typical buyer who just wants to be able to afford a new, cutting-edge graphics card, and is happy to go with an RTX 5060 Ti because it sounds close(-ish) enough to an RTX 5070 on paper, without fully understanding the wrinkles around VRAM if plumping for the 8GB spin. This also applies very much to the RTX 5060, of course, which has 8GB as well.
It’ll be interesting to see if the plain RTX 5060 soon debuts in the Steam hardware survey – it has faced a lot of criticism and flak, to say the least – and indeed we have AMD’s incoming RX 9060 models, which are now imminent.
The pricing and availability of those more affordable RDNA 4 graphics cards will, of course, be key, and while Team Red has pitched the MSRPs at a nicely affordable level, will that translate with the actual prices on shelves?
That’s exactly what hasn’t happened with the RX 9070 models (yet), and it’ll be the crucial factor for this next RDNA 4 launch.
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Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti is already present in the top GPUs for Steam gamers It has a small but appreciable 0.21% market share, less than two months after its launch AMD’s RX 9070 models have yet to appear in the Steam hardware survey at all, though its fortunes may change…
