Latest Steam survey: Another Lovelace card breaks into top ten, Linux passes 2% share

midian182

midian182

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What just happened? Valve's latest Steam survey results have dropped. May was another month when the RTX 3060 outperformed every other graphics card to cement its position as the most popular GPU, while another Lovelace RTX 4000 product broke into the top ten. We also saw Windows 11 close the gap on its predecessor, Linux rise above a 2% user share, and 32GB of system RAM become increasingly popular.

The RTX 3060 leader had a bit of a blip in April when its user share declined 1.21%, but it was business as usual in May as the Ampere mid-range card experienced the largest monthly share increase (0.48%).

Five of the top six best-performing GPUs in May were xx60 or xx70 variants from Nvidia's current and previous generations. It's a similar picture looking at the most-popular chart, though one outlier was the GTX 1650, a former number one, which saw a 20% increase – not bad for a five-year-old product. We also see that the RTX 4060 has broken into the top ten.

Best performing GPUs among Steam survey participants in May

Looking at AMD's latest cards, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX was the best performer with a 0.01% user share increase. It's also the most-popular RDNA 3 desktop card, sitting in 60th position on the main chart. Around 75% of the GPUs on this table are from Nvidia, almost 16% from AMD, and 7.6% from Intel (including integrated GPUs).

Most popular GPUs among Steam survey participants in May

Elsewhere, Windows 11 continued to erode Windows 10's user share. The newer OS was up almost one percentage point last month to 46.08% as Windows 10 fell slightly to 50.35%. With this trend likely to continue as the older software nears its October 14, 2025, end-of-life date, expect Windows 11 to take the lead soon enough. It's a contrast to the global view, where Windows 11 continues to lag far behind its predecessor.

One interesting result is in the system memory category. 16GB remains the most popular (47%), but it keeps falling as more people opt for 32GB. New games are demanding more RAM all the time, which partly explains this increase, though 8GB is also on the rise, probably due to more ultrabooks and cheaper gaming laptops being sold.

Linux has also passed the 2% user-share mark for the first time in over a decade. The Steam Deck can take a lot of credit for this one.

As always, it's important to remember that the Steam survey is prone to occasional weirdness, and participation by users is optional, but it still gives a good overall view of the PC gaming landscape.

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Latest Steam survey: Another Lovelace card breaks into top ten, Linux passes 2% share

 
That's a big deal for linux, as Steam's overall market has continued to increase in size. When linux hit its 1.86% marketshare high way back when, that represented about 300,000 users. Now, that 2% represents 2,640,000 users. I gotta say, I love it, and I wish more software devs would support it.
 
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I retired my beloved GTX 1650 . It delivers 40-45FPS at 1080p med quality . But it s showing its age . 4GB VRAM prevents you from getting high settings which usually require 5.5GB VRAM at 1080p . Also games like Forspoken are almost unplayable on GTX 1650 - 15FPS low . So , not only that NVidia discontinued it , but it s time to let it go .

In regards to Linux , I m very disappointed and got rid of it . Not that I needed it . Just tested it because of the hype . It cut me out of BIOS on my old laptop . The games using Proton layer were unplayable on my laptop . For me Linux is a waste of time and money .
 
I like foxes said:
I retired my beloved GTX 1650 . It delivers 40-45FPS at 1080p med quality . But it s showing its age . 4GB VRAM prevents you from getting high settings which usually require 5.5GB VRAM at 1080p . Also games like Forspoken are almost unplayable on GTX 1650 - 15FPS low . So , not only that NVidia discontinued it , but it s time to let it go .
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The 4060 is a genuinely big upgrade from the 1650, especially for low profile users like me. I couldnt imagine having such a chip a few years ago.
I like foxes said:
In regards to Linux , I m very disappointed and got rid of it . Not that I needed it . Just tested it because of the hype . It cut me out of BIOS on my old laptop . The games using Proton layer were unplayable on my laptop . For me Linux is a waste of time and money .
Click to expand...
Pretty sure the reason your laptop was slow was because your laptop is slow, not because you put linux on it. How does linux even "cut you out of your BIOS"?

If it had a dGPU, my guess is the dGPU was not set up or recognized and you were playing on the integrated.
 
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Theinsanegamer said:
That's a big deal for linux, as Steam's overall market has continued to increase in size. When linux hit its 1.86% marketshare high way back when, that represented about 300,000 users. Now, that 2% represents 2,640,000 users. I gotta say, I love it, and I wish more software devs would support it.
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That's a common sentiment and I try to explain to people that it's very similar to exclusives in consoles. If you hate windows enough then dealing with the limitation of "Linux exclusives" as I'm going to call it, then it's worth it.

The software issue is bigger problem for people looking to transfer. There are Linux substitutes for basically everything, but people can use them for work or they just don't want to learn a new system after dedicating 10+ years learning a specific system

Linux will keep growing and the number of programs that have native support will keep growing with it.

As I've been getting older, gaming has become less important to me and being able to actually own my device has become more important than playing $100 AAAA games. Frankly, most of what I play these days is street chess at park 2 blocks from my house on Sundays.
 
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Theinsanegamer , I dont lie . Linux Mint Xfce did something so I cannot enter BIOS . I removed the hdd and again there s no access to BIOS . I didnt remove the CMOS battery because I had to disassemble the whole laptop that I didnt want to .

When the games had native Linux support they ran though not as well as on Windows . But using Proton was a disaster . less than 1FPS whereas I finished the game on Win 10 . The dGPU is not so much faster than the iGPU , say it 70% . So , even if it ran on the iGPU the conlusion stays the same .
 
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I like foxes said:
Theinsanegamer , I dont lie . Linux Mint Xfce did something so I cannot enter BIOS . I removed the hdd and again there s no access to BIOS . I didnt remove the CMOS battery because I had to disassemble the whole laptop that I didnt want to .

When the games have native Linux support they run though not as well as on Windows . But using Proton was a disaster . less than 1FPS whereas I finished the game on Win 10 . The dGPU is not so much faster than the iGPU , say it 70% . So , even if it ran on the iGPU the conlusion stays the same .
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's not mint's fault. There's something wrong with your laptop. An OS cannot deny access to your BIOS, the OS doesnt have access to your pre boot environment.

Given the difficulties some laptops have with linux and dGPUs, if you took a 70% performance hit on linux, the most likely reason was you were not using your dGPU to play games. IDK why you think a 70% difference isnt "big", thats pretty large.

I'm not saying you're laying, I'm saying what you describe doesnt make logical sense nor is it lining up with the experiences most are having with proton and linux in general, suggesting you are fighting a hardware problem and incorrectly prescribing it as a software fauly.
 
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Theinsanegamer , the issue popped up after wiping out the linux partition . I blame GRUB 2.0 for this . Anyway . I just shared my experience . Linux developers dont have enough funds to make Linux as good as Windows . One can easily get Win for 10 bucks . So , no need of headaches with Linux .

edit
I consider the topic closed . Not going to participate in a useless debate .
 
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I like foxes said:
Theinsanegamer , the issue popped up after wiping out the linux partition . I blame GRUB 2.0 for this . Anyway . I just shared my experience . Linux developers dont have enough funds to make Linux as good as Windows . One can easily get Win for 10 bucks . So , no need of headaches with Linux .
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You are spreading misinformation. GRUB cannot deny you access to your BIOS. Your BIOS loads BEFORE GRUB does. Wiping a hard drive partition cannot deny you access to your BIOS either. Your hard drive is not required to access your BIOS. Blaming this on Linux devs is willful ignorance on your part to understand how computers work.

Some simple Google searches for how to access the BIOS on your computer (usually F12 on most PCs during boot process, F9 or F10 on HPs, the ENTER key on most lenovos) will do you a lot of good.
 
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Laptops sometimes, I think, come with a set of tools on a reserved partition. These are not strictly the firmware but do provide access to it. It's possible such a partition was deleted at some point.

As you say, there's still the shortcuts to the real firmware that'll still work.

As for the poor GPU performance, my best guess is he has a Geforce GPU and the default driver for that is Nouveau open source driver - Which is far from performant. nVidia are making life very hard for the open source devs. What he needed was to replace it with nVidia's binary blob driver.
 
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I like foxes said:
Theinsanegamer , the issue popped up after wiping out the linux partition . I blame GRUB 2.0 for this . Anyway . I just shared my experience . Linux developers dont have enough funds to make Linux as good as Windows . One can easily get Win for 10 bucks . So , no need of headaches with Linux .

edit
I consider the topic closed . Not going to participate in a useless debate .
Click to expand...
Please message me with the make and model of your laptop and I might be able to help you troubleshoot it. I ran into this problem on an HP laptop and it was an easy fix. Getting into the bios is the trick. Usually just power cycle it, press and hold F5 or F9. Either one should get you into a boot menu or the bios. Once in the bios look for a setting that delays the OS from booting, I set this one to 5 seconds and that was plenty.
 
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In the last two weeks, steam surveyed two of my desktops and then one of my laptops three times, so take the survey results with a sizeable grain of salt.
 
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