Steam Hardware survey shows gamers are embracing AMD and Nvidia, but falling out of love with Intel

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The latest Steam Hardware and Software survey has been released, giving us a glimpse of the what kind of hardware PC gamers are using – and it seems AMD and Nvidia have a lot to be a happy about, though the picture is less rosy for Intel.

Earlier this year we reported how the Steam Hardware survey had shown Intel increasing its dominance in the processor market, while AMD struggled, but the most recent Steam Hardware survey for August 2019 shows AMD has reversed its fortunes, with the number of people using AMD processors growing – at Intel’s expense.

AMD recently released its Ryzen 3000 series of processors to rave reviews (despite some controversy over their inability to hit promised boost speeds), which has likely helped AMD recover lost ground against Intel, with the share of people with AMD processors increasing by 0.96% compared to the month before, with Intel’s share dropping by the same amount.

This is certainly encouraging for AMD, though the company still has a long way to go, as despite Intel’s CPU market share amongst Steam gamers dropping, it still dominated with 81.04% of the market, compared to AMD’s 18.95%.

However, even with its dominant position, this month’s shift is something Intel will not want to become a trend.

Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards on the rise

On the graphics side of things, Nvidia continues to dominate, with the entire top ten of most popular GPUs being from Team Green. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 continues to be the most popular GPU used by Steam gamers, followed by the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GeForce GTX 1050.

However, what should really please Nvidia is that its recent RTX line of graphics cards are slowly but surely increasing in popularity, with the GeFroce RTX 2070 being the most popular of the RTX cards, up 0.19% compared to last month.

The RTX 2060 and RTX 2080 also saw gains, which Nvidia will be pleased about, showing that gamers are gradually moving to its newer cards.

AMD only managed to get to number 11 with its most-used card, the Radeon RX 580, and that also saw a modest bump in market share with 0.07%.

While the Steam Hardware & Software Survey only logs Steam customers (and ones who have opted into the survey), due to the huge popularity of Steam, it gives us an excellent idea of what kind of hardware and operating system PC gamers are using, and this month both AMD and Nvidia will be pleased to see their products growing in popularity.

Intel, on the other hand, may not be so happy, and could be hoping its launch of its new Core i9-9900KS in October will reverse its decline in market share.

Via TechSpot

Matt Hanson
Managing Editor, Core Tech

Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Core Tech, looking after computing and mobile technology. Having written for a number of publications such as PC Plus, PC Format, T3 and Linux Format, there's no aspect of technology that Matt isn't passionate about, especially computing and PC gaming. Ever since he got an Amiga A500+ for Christmas in 1991, he's loved using (and playing on) computers, and will talk endlessly about how The Secret of Monkey Island is the best game ever made.