Valve’s latest hardware survey results are out and Nvidia may not entirely be happy about the results.
First, the big numbers. Windows 10 64bit remains the OS of choice, with 68 % of the market. For PC processors, Intel continues to outnumber AMD, at a ratio of 68.04% to 31.96 %. Lastly, Nvidia takes a commanding 76.77 % lead of the GPU market.
AMD is up next with 14.41 % of the market, followed by fledgling Intel with their Arc GPUs at 8.61 %, but this isn’t all good news for Nvidia.
That’s because, if you look at the finer details, it comes out that most gamers are not buying their most high end GPUs. In fact, the market as it is now is dominated by mid-range and even budget GPUs.
Here are the top ten most used GPUs from said survey:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
As you may have noticed, there aren’t any high end or upper high end GPUs that have come up here at all.
The high-end RTX 3070 Ti, a laptop GPU, doesn’t come up until the top 14 spot. And the only ultra high-end GPU that barely makes it to the top 30, at the top 29 spot, is the RTX 3080 Ti.
It may not be apparent to the rest of us why this is such a big deal. Wouldn’t it all be the same for Nvidia since it’s all their GPUs, and their money? But Nvidia spends a lot of money on pushing the envelope forward with their most high end GPUs.
Thinking about the new Lovelace architecture for their upcoming 4000 series of their GPUs, Nvidia has put work into making DLSS 3 technology that improves how games look to a significant degree, that CPUs couldn’t do on their own. All that work is not getting used by their intended audience, namely gamers, because gamers aren’t buying these GPUs.
So what’s going on? We’re well past the point where the crypto/blockchain market is gobbling up all these GPU supplies en masse. While chip shortages are also a factor to GPU availability today, Nvidia is making a concerted effort to make and market their more high end offerings.
That effort may very well backfire as the company isn’t working at making more stocks of more affordable GPUs in turn. So Nvidia may find the market for these Lovelace based 4000 series GPUs does not exist, and they’re throwing away money they could have made on cheaper GPUs. Or maybe, there isn’t much money to be made there too, if gamers are satisfied with buying used GPUs, particularly those excess stocks freed up by people who left the crypto/blockchain industry.
Maybe it’s just a sign of the times that gamers are doing their gaming on a budget. It’s well known at this point that the Xbox Series S is a big winner among current gen consoles, outselling even its own more high end sibling, the Xbox Series X. An even less power system than the Xbox Series S, the Nintendo Switch, has emerged as the frontrunner for this console generation so far. It’s not that the newest, most graphically impressive games aren’t being played, but maybe that’s not what gamers are really looking for right now.
