After years of enjoying the limelight, Nvidia’s RTX 3060 has finally toppled the GTX 1060 as being the most widely-used GPU, according to the latest Steam hardware survey.
Two years ago, Nvidia had a huge problem, the GTX 1060 was extremely popular. The GPU delivered excellent 1080p performance in most modern titles, and as a result, many were happy with its performance, and the GPU continued to enjoy popularity as the most popular consumer graphics card in Desktops and Laptops for a good number of years.
However, after the advent of the RTX 3060 almost two years ago, it appears that the RTX 3060 has now finally toppled the GTX 1060. The RTX 3060 offers modern tech like DLSS, Reflex, and more while also coming in at a competitive price point that we can now say with confidence caused many GTX 1060 users to jump ship over to a new platform.
If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey wholesale though, the GTX 1060 still (Technically) holds the top spot, with 6.94% of all Steam users using the popular GPU. However, when you combine the desktop and mobile variants of the RTX 3060, it just edges the GTX 1060 out of its top slot, as it holds a combined 7.52% of the market as a whole.
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Gains for market share on the RTX 3060 are also creeping up at a much more rapid pace than the GTX 1060, too, with a combined +0.89% of market share gained in September, while the GTX 1060 lingers behind at 0.34%.
What does this mean for the midrange?
It appears that with consumer support moving over from the GTX 1060 to the RTX 3060, the midrange market is less of a priority for Nvidia when it comes to the release of the mid-range RTX 40-series cards, with the RTX 4090 just mere weeks away. It’s likely that the newer cards will be more expensive, and while Nvidia is currently sitting on an oversupply of previous-gen chips, it’ll be interesting to see how exactly they tackle an impending RTX 3060 problem, should consumers stay loyal to the card.
