They haven’t been able to dethrone the four-year-old video card for a long time: the Nvidia GTX 1650 is still the most popular among gamers, 6.12 percent of gamers used it in February – turn out from Steam’s latest hardware and software survey.
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All of this can be explained by economic reasons: the GTX 1650 is much cheaper than the latest cards, it can be purchased new in Hungary for HUF 65,000.
Steam publishes hardware statistics every month, and although not all gamers use the platform and digital store, it is by far the most popular and largest, so it is a good indicator of trends. In second place, with 5.28 percent, is the almost seven-year-old GTX 1060, which can only be purchased second-hand for less than HUF 50,000. The third place is the version of the RTX 3060 installed in laptops with 4.78 percent, which jumped forward from fifth place back in January.
This GPU was released at the beginning of 2021, so it is not the latest hardware, but it can be said to be fresh compared to cards that are several years old. The RTX 2060, which has been available for purchase since the beginning of 2019, is in fourth place on the list with 4.63 percent, while there has been a change in the fifth place: the PC version of the RTX 3060 has advanced from sixth place by 4.36 percent, and has also strengthened by about 0.7 percent compared to January , which is considered quite significant in this area.
The use of the latest and most powerful RTX 4000 cards, which have been on the market for a few months, is below 2 percent, while eight or nine-year-old Methuselahs also occur in a few percent.
The reason for this is not difficult to figure out: older GPUs can be purchased both used and new cheaper, on the other hand, one of the most powerful VGAs, the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti, can be obtained new for over HUF 300,000, and for more muscular cards you have to dig even deeper into your pocket. For example, the RTX 4080 costs more than half a million forints.
We can learn other interesting things from Steam’s statistics: more than two-thirds of their users use Intel processors, and only the rest use rival AMD, while 75 percent chose Nvidia’s solutions for video cards. It also found that Windows 11 is becoming more popular, although the majority (62.33 percent) still use Windows 10.
What is a video card?
The video card (also known as graphics card, VGA, often erroneously GPU) is the main component responsible for the display of PCs and laptops. Its task is to process the image information sent by the computer and convert it into analog signals that can be interpreted by the monitor. To put it simply: it is thanks to this device that we can see something on the screen.
Integrated and dedicated graphics cards are common. The former is located on the motherboard, the latter is a separate unit. The dedicated one is much more powerful and more expensive than the integrated one, it is basically needed for running games, cryptomining and the work of graphic designers. For simpler tasks (browsing, watching movies), a laptop and PC equipped with an integrated video card are sufficient.
The video game industry is at a standstill, publishers are announcing cost reductions one after the otherCompared to the last two years, fewer video games were bought last year, so publishers began to cut costs, that is, they downsize and cancel or postpone upcoming games. According to experts, innovations and novel solutions may come from smaller companies in the future. |
