There’s good news and bad news for Nvidia in the latest Steam Hardware Survey, which shows its RTX 3060 GPU taking the lead as the most popular GPU in October, beating the RTX 4000 series laptop GPU – two years after the RTX 4000 series launch.

As spotted by VideoCardz, the 3060 is used by 7.46% of PC gamers (who took part in the survey). This might come as a surprise considering the age of the GPU, but the RTX 3060 has been in this position for a long while – July saw a percent share of 5.88%, with a 1.58% increase leading into October.

While Team Green’s RTX 4000 desktop series has enjoyed critical acclaim (many appear in our roundup of the best graphics cards money can buy), the survey suggests gamers don’t seem to be so keen – the RTX 4060 laptop GPU is the second most popular amongst Steam users, with the range’s high-end graphics cards nowhere near the top ten. It appears that the RTX 3000 series still has a lot of life left in it – and that might not be great news for Nvidia, which would very likely prefer its customers to upgrade to the newer GPUs.

(Image credit: Valve)

Why aren’t any of the RTX 4000 series desktop GPUs leading?

As we know, Nvidia’s RTX 4000 series GPUs (specifically the RTX 4080 and 4090) are powerhouse options for high-level performance across multiple games. Despite this, the pricing is the clear dealbreaker, with the 4090’s price tag remaining stubbornly high.

With the survey also revealing 1080p as the most popular resolution Steam users game at, it almost single-handedly explains why Nvidia’s latest GPU range remains relatively unloved by Steam users in terms of usage versus the 3000 series. Acquiring a high-end GPU like the aforementioned 4080 for a 1080p display would be overkill, so if you’re gaming on a 1080p monitor the RTX 3060 would be a much better choice.

This also calls Frame Generation and DLSS 3 into question – RTX 3000 series users cannot use this technology, but if the 3060 is still the most popular, then perhaps Team Green’s upscaling tech isn’t as necessary as many may believe (at least at 1080p anyway).

It’s important to note that the Steam Hardware Survey results aren’t definitive by any means, as it only applies to PC gamers who opt into the survey – but, it does give us a good idea of the landscape of PC gaming hardware since so many gamers use Steam.

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