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The GTX 1060 has lost its crown as the most popular GPU on the Steam Hardware Survey charts. The six-year-old graphics card has astonishingly been replaced by the significantly weaker GTX 1650.
The GTX 1650 was introduced in 2019 as an entry-level 1080p gaming card, replacing the GTX 1050 Ti. This makes it over three years old at this point, and was in turn replaced with the much costlier RTX 3050 earlier this year.
This proves that raw rendering power is not what the market is after. The six-year-old GTX 1060 barely runs modern AAA games at 1080p. With the GTX 1650, performance worsens in most cases.
After replacing the six-year-old GTX 1060, the GTX 1650's days as the popular kid might not last long
The GTX 1650 desktop GPU claimed the spot in November 2022's Steam Hardware Survey after gaining a record market share of 0.62%. Currently, the GTX 1650 is owned by over 6% of the survey's participants.
The GTX 1060 lost almost 1.8% of its market share this month. This has pushed it down to the second spot, where it now stands at 5.58%.
The third place is currently occupied by the RTX 2060, the graphics card that replaced the GTX 1060. It lost an alarmingly high 1.42% market share this month as well, getting pushed down to 4.48%.
The fourth spot is taken up by the RTX 3060 laptop graphics card. It is the only laptop variant in the top 20 most popular GPUs. Surprisingly, this mobile graphics processor gained a 1.19% market share this month, which has put it dangerously close to the RTX 2060 at 4.46%.
Nvidia is reportedly discontinuing the manufacturing of the GTX 1660, 1660 Super, RTX 2060, and RTX 2060 Super graphics cards. Thus, in the upcoming months, we may see the RTX 2060 fall further in popularity.
The 1060 has long been discontinued and it is quite old now. With falling graphics card prices and massive discounts on GPUs, it is no surprise that gamers are upgrading to new GPUs and phasing out their Pascal pixel-pushers.
It is expected that the RTX 3060 laptop GPU will make it to the top 3 on the list within the next couple of months.
The RTX 3060 desktop GPU had made some significant progress on the chart in the last few months. However, it lost over 2% market share this month. The exact reason for the card's fall in popularity is unknown at the moment.
Alongside the RTX 2060, the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 also lost staggering market shares. While the former is down by 0.26%, the latter has lost over 0.3% of its prior numbers.
While not accurate, the Steam Hardware Survey charts give us a clear insight into the market demands.
The majority of gamers are not behind the latest and greatest hardware on the market. This is evident from the fact that every GPU in the top 15 spots costs less than $500. The top seven on the list are either 50-class or 60-class graphics cards.
