Steam has published its hardware and software survey for the month of December, and in the GPU category, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 now stands above the rest.
That wasn't the case in November when the GeForce GTX 750 Ti held the top spot, followed by the GeForce GTX 960. Interestingly, all three saw a drop in usage among Steam gamers, the GeForce GTX 1060 just happened to see the smallest decline. As it stands, the top five graphics cards breaks down as follows:
- GeForce GTX 1060: 12.56 percent (down 0.85 percent from November)
- GeForce GTX 960: 10.54 percent ( down 3.52 percent from November)
- GeForce GTX 750 Ti: 10.48 percent (down 4.13 percent from November
- GeForce GTX 1050 Ti: 8.71 percent (down 1.19 percent from November)
- GeForce GTX 950: 4.33 percent (down 1.7 percent from November)
Month-to-month gains highlight the GTX 1070, 1080, and 970, interestingly. That's two high-end options along with one of the most popular cards of the previous generation. The field is dominated by Nvidia— you have to go down another 18 spots before AMD enters the popularity contest with its Radeon HD 8800 series.
It's been an interesting year for GPUs. The cryptocurrency craze turned the category on its head, at least for PC gamers, who at times had to contend with short supplies and inflated price tags. Even now, AMD's Radeon RX Vega cards are comparatively scarce, which probably helped drive some GeForce GTX 1060 sales.
In other areas, Intel CPUs saw an overall decline of 3.5 percent, likely helped by some of the awesome deals on AMD's Ryzen CPUs during the holidays. Not being out of stock obviously helps as well.
As for VR hardware, the category is mostly split between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, though the Rift did nudge ahead in December by a hair. Going forward, we wouldn't be surprised if the Rift vaulted even higher, considering its permanent price cut to $399, and $349 sale price during the holidays.
What will be interesting, however, is how mixed reality headsets figure into the overall landscape. They're barely a blip on Steam's radar, but that could change if there is a concerted effort to push gaming.
