With the end of August just gone, means the release of another Steam Hardware Survey, and while most of the things you see there are pretty expected, we were very surprised to see the RTX 4060 closing in on the 3060 for the most popular GPU on Steam. Not just any RTX 4060 either, but the laptop variant.
This speaks to a wider point, that gaming has become really accessible now, no longer do you need a powerhouse of a PC that takes up an entire desk in your home, but we’re able to pack enough of an affordable punch into a system to facilitate gaming in a portable form factor. Handhelds like the Steam Deck are another good example of this. You can game anywhere now with the technology we have, and this survey proves that the majority is changing. Even the 3060 laptop GPU share saw an uplift in August.
RTX 4060 Laptop GPU is making moves
The RTX 4060 laptop GPU climbed a whopping 1.34% in August to 4.55% share over the total GPUs on Steam. This is less than 1% behind the current leader, the RTX 3060, which currently holds a 5.51% share. In terms of the hardware survey, a 1% jump is quite a big one, but with last month giving an increase of 1.34%, it’s clearly possible. As we mentioned before, the RTX 3060 laptop GPU even jumped by an impressive 0.50% to a 3.50% share.
In fact, out of the top 10 GPUs sorted by share on Steam, the RTX 4060 Ti, in the tenth spot, was the only desktop GPU to see an uplift in total share this August. This could be for many, many reasons, but if it brings more people to gaming, and lowers the bar, making gaming more accessible for everyone, then I’m all for it.
All in all, the Survey showed that a very respectable 1.81% of people moved to DirectX 12 capable GPUs, meaning they are on the newest of the new (in DirectX standards anyway) There must have been one heck of a sale on RTX 4060 Laptops this August. Having a look on Amazon shows a great deal of RTX 4060 laptops on sale, but it’s probably impossible to connect this increase in share to one big sales event.
