For over 6 years, basically ever since the GPU made its debut, the Nvidia 1060 has maintained the number 1 spot in the Steam Hardware Survey as the most commonly owned graphics card. Well, for those who use Steam at least. – In many respects though, for as old as the 1060 clearly is, there didn’t seem to be much indication to suggest that it was set to lose that #1 position any time soon.
Following the publication of the latest figures, however, while it’s certainly been an epic run, all good things must end, and the Nvidia 1060 is no longer the most commonly used gaming graphics card. Albeit, in a somewhat mildly amusing/appropriate manner, it’s only been knocked off the top by another GPU that’s both relatively old and inexpensive!
Move Over Nvidia 1060 – 1650 is the New Steam Hardware Survey King!
Yep, the Steam Hardware Survey has a brand new graphics card King (or Queen if you prefer) with ownership of the GTX 1650 having shot up massively in the last month to see it overtake both the 1060 and 2060 in ownership figures to now occupy the #1 spot. – News that is more than a little ironic given that reports have emerged over the last couple of weeks suggesting that Nvidia has completely ended all 16XX production!
Has it hit the top spot while Nvidia was killing off its production? It certainly seems so!
Rather shockingly though, it seems that this has predominantly been driven by a mass exodus of 1060 and 2060 ownership. Albeit, it’s a little unclear based on the figures exactly what those consumers have upgraded/switched to with the only major winner (outside of laptops) being the Nvidia 3050. And no offence to 3050 owners, but this isn’t really much of an upgrade to the 1060 and certainly not the 2060!
AMD Also Sees Big Gains
In addition to this news regarding graphics cards, November has also apparently been a pretty decent month for AMD with them clawing back nearly 4% of the CPU market from Intel. – This in itself is almost as surprising as the 1060 losing its top spot as all indications had suggested that Ryzen 7000 hasn’t been a particularly popular platform with consumers (due to the transitional cost).
Of course, the figure is certainly not entirely comprised of Ryzen 7000 sales and is perhaps more reflective of some of the big discounts which were applied to Ryzen 5000 models and particularly so with the 5800X3D. Any way you look at it though, AMD will take a 4% gain all day long!
With more Raptor Lake CPUs and B760 motherboards set to arrive in January though, expect this to swing back towards Intel within the next couple of months. If you would, however, like to check out the full Steam Hardware Survey click on the link here!
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
