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A new Steam hardware survey is out, and it could make for interesting reading for Nvidia. On the one hand, it is clear that the company continues to dominate the GPU market with eight of the top 10 GPUs made by Team Green.
However these results (opens in a new tab) also shows some potential difficulties for Nvidia, especially regarding the current approach for its upcoming RTX 4000 series of next-generation graphics cards.
This is because each of those eight GPUs it has in the top 10 is either a budget or mid-range GPU. The GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU is the most popular graphics card used by PC gamers who entered the Steam hardware survey, followed by the GTX 1060, RTX 3050, RTX 3060 and GTX 1660.
In fact, you don’t see a high-end GPU until you reach the RTX 3070 Ti laptop GPU at number 14. As for high-end GPUs, there’s only one in the top 30 – the RTX 3080 Ti – and that only squeezed in at number 29.
While it may not be too surprising that PC gamers are gravitating towards more affordable GPUs, it seems like it’s news for Nvidia – as it continues to stick to pumping out high-end GPUs.
Analysis: Is Nvidia making a costly mistake?
With Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 4000 series of graphics cards, it seems that making affordable GPUs just isn’t a priority for the company. At the launch event, we only saw three GPUs – two versions of the RTX 4080 and the RTX 4090. While all of these GPUs will undoubtedly be incredibly powerful – and quite expensive – there was no mention of more affordable RTX 4000 GPUs s, as with the RTX 4070 or RTX 4060.
Nvidia will almost certainly announce those GPUs in the future. However, for PC gamers who simply cannot afford those high-end GPUs to play the best PC games, it may feel like the company is ignoring them. It certainly doesn’t help that at a time when people are struggling to find GPUs they can afford, the only other GPU Nvidia released this year was the ultra-high-end RTX 3090 Ti.
While launching incredibly powerful GPUs to kick off its new RTX 4000 series – and no doubt garner impressive headlines – Nvidia mustn’t neglect the budget end of the market. Its main rival AMD will be happy to accommodate more budget-conscious gamers who feel rejected by Nvidia, and Intel is getting into the discrete gaming GPU game with its series of Arc GPUs, which are likely to seriously undercut Nvidia when it comes to price.
When the RTX 4080s and RTX 4090 launch, we can’t imagine them appearing anywhere near the top of Steam hardware surveys for a very long time – if at all. But, if Nvidia wants to continue its dominance, it needs to start appealing to regular PC gamers – not just enthusiasts.
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