News Nvidia's RTX 4090 Appears on Latest Steam Hardware Survey

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Still surprising to see the number of Steam users who are using some pretty basic gaming equipment on their desktop/laptop. 1920 monitors are the most prevalent for instance. I expect that almost all of the high-end gear does not sell very many but is probably used more for promotional purposes than to make a lot of profit.
 
But analysts trolls said pc gaming is dead just when Nvidia is about to release an rtx 4090ti and 4090s still sold out at MSRP as well as 7900xtx. Unless they want people to sell so they can buy on the dip rinse repeat every time!
 
I'd say it is a relatively small subset. And I'd say that because I got the survey prompt very rarely, but also because some of these percentages are jumping around quite some. E.g. RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, or e.g. RTX 3060, where it seems difficult to explain otherwise why it increased by 2% from September to October, to then drop by 2% for November.

Still provides a general picture though, such as that 37% of surveyed users have a GPU with 4GB or less of VRAM, and that around 80% have a primary display resolution of 1080p or less.
 
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Admin said:
[...] and "other" (Imagination?) at 0.24%.
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Hahaha :tearsofjoy:

So... only around 10-15% of Steam users can play Forspoken at 1440p@30FPS.
I'm actually surprised that RTX 4090 is as high as it is. I would have guessed it'd be closer to 0.1%. Even 1/384 users owning a 4090 seems high to me, considering the astronomical price, and how many Steam users are casual gamers and not PC enthusiasts. Among my dozen or so friends who all game on Steam, I'm the only one who even knows that a card called RTX 4090 exists.
 
On a side note of popularity growth:

You know I can go online and find 7900XTX for MSRP ($999) non reference design.

With some work I can find the 4090 at MSRP.

Considering these cards launched so recently, that's a strong message to vendors.
 
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Johnpombrio said:
Still surprising to see the number of Steam users who are using some pretty basic gaming equipment on their desktop/laptop. 1920 monitors are the most prevalent for instance. I expect that almost all of the high-end gear does not sell very many but is probably used more for promotional purposes than to make a lot of profit.
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I'm not really surprised tbh. You don't really need much more for casual gaming, even new games are not that hardware hungry outside the AAA crowd, and with how high price were the past couple years, and how little reason there was to upgrade... why would any average Jane or Joe buy expensive hardware?

AgentBirdnest said:
Hahaha :tearsofjoy:

So... only around 10-15% of Steam users can play Forspoken at 1440p@30FPS.
I'm actually surprised that RTX 4090 is as high as it is. I would have guessed it'd be closer to 0.1%. Even 1/384 users owning a 4090 seems high to me, considering the astronomical price, and how many Steam users are casual gamers and not PC enthusiasts. Among my dozen or so friends who all game on Steam, I'm the only one who even knows that a card called RTX 4090 exists.
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I had an argument recently with someone about Jedi: Survivor, which has similarly brutal requirements. No matter what I said, that ... very smart person ... was adamant that the requirements are reasonable; over 40% can play the game after all; and that it's anyone's own fault for failing to get a new GPU in 5 years. Makes one wonder what parallel universe that guy came from, where GPUs weren't as rare as unicorns and extremely overpriced the past couple years until even now. And it's not even "just" the GPU with Survivor; an 11600K as the recommended CPU is equally ridiculous.
 
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AgentBirdnest said:
Hahaha :tearsofjoy:

So... only around 10-15% of Steam users can play Forspoken at 1440p@30FPS.
I'm actually surprised that RTX 4090 is as high as it is. I would have guessed it'd be closer to 0.1%. Even 1/384 users owning a 4090 seems high to me, considering the astronomical price, and how many Steam users are casual gamers and not PC enthusiasts. Among my dozen or so friends who all game on Steam, I'm the only one who even knows that a card called RTX 4090 exists.
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4090s target small business/home studio professionals IMO, I'd fall under the category if I could actually afford it, I can definitely see those individuals being casual gamers who couldn't resist playing on the card as well as utilising it for work.
 
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Honest question: Am I doing something wrong here? When I look at the page for this article, it is mostly empty space. The left 1/3 of the page is empty, the right 1/3 of the pageis empty. The middle of the page is made up of a column of adds and the article. The 214 row chart has side-scroll bar at the very bottom, making it a * nightmare to try to read.

I've tried this on all my browsers on two computers. It's the same on all of them.
 
SteveRNG said:
Honest question: Am I doing something wrong here? When I look at the page for this article, it is mostly empty space. The left 1/3 of the page is empty, the right 1/3 of the pageis empty. The middle of the page is made up of a column of adds and the article. The 214 row chart has side-scroll bar at the very bottom, making it a * nightmare to try to read.

I've tried this on all my browsers on two computers. It's the same on all of them.
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Without listing your browser or extensions, I couldn't say for certain what's causing the problem. Possibly an overly aggressive adblock or something? Here's a screenshot from Chrome 109.0.5414.120:
187


Things look even better if you shrink the width to the 'ideal' amount that eliminates the sidebars:

188
 
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JarredWaltonGPU said:
Without listing your browser or extensions, I couldn't say for certain what's causing the problem. Possibly an overly aggressive adblock or something? Here's a screenshot from Chrome 109.0.5414.120:
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for the quick response. I'm using the same version of Chrome and I'm also using Firefox, and Chromium Edge. I completely disabled my adblocker on Chrome.

I wasn't sure what you meant by "Things look even better if you shrink the width to the 'ideal' amount that eliminates the sidebars: ", but I think I figured it out. I just want to make sure what you were saying is what I did. :)

I have my browsers set to full screen. I changed to windowed mode. I then started narrowing the Window width. After I narrowed it to a certain point, the ad to the right of the table disappeared. After that, the full table was visible.

If the ad actually does this, then this seems to be defect in the web page encoding.

Again, thank you! Now I can read the full table.
 
SteveRNG said:
I wasn't sure what you meant by "Things look even better if you shrink the width to the 'ideal' amount that eliminates the sidebars: ", but I think I figured it out. I just want to make sure what you were saying is what I did. :)

I have my browsers set to full screen. I changed to windowed mode. I then started narrowing the Window width. After I narrowed it to a certain point, the ad to the right of the table disappeared. After that, the full table was visible.

If the ad actually does this, then this seems to be defect in the web page encoding.
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It's not the ads, it's the "responsive web design." Basically, the people that determine how Tom's Hardware looks (and other Future sites) decided on certain parameters in regards to what size window the browser is in. So if you're on a mobile phone, it looks different than on a desktop or laptop. But if you have it in a window on a desktop, you can narrow the width to get the CSS to swap to a different layout that eliminates the sidebars to give more room for the content.

One of my pet peeves is that, even in 2023, our website still assumes a maximum content width of 600 pixels in most cases on a PC. And then another 600 or so pixels for ads and sidebar stuff. But that's all out of my hands, unfortunately.
 
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Mandark said:
Maybe folks have wised up and don’t need the best of the best all the time
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Huh? As if the high-end hasn't always been a niche. Wise? Just because you don't have high requirements for your uses doesn't mean others don't, compromise all you like but don't project onto others. And all the time? Considering you can get 5 years out of a high-end card easy before hitting performance limitations, it's the best of the best once every half decade, and that doesn't sound bad at all. Many people change their cars more often than that. My previous GPU went through two PC rebuilds, then used GPU's go on to be sold and used by others for many more years, the GPU may just be the longest lived component in a PC keeping the most residual value and usefulness over long periods of time.
 
halfcharlie said:
Huh? As if the high-end hasn't always been a niche. Wise? Just because you don't have high requirements for your uses doesn't mean others don't, compromise all you like but don't project onto others. And all the time? Considering you can get 5 years out of a high-end card easy before hitting performance limitations, it's the best of the best once every half decade, and that doesn't sound bad at all. Many people change their cars more often than that. My previous GPU went through two PC rebuilds, then used GPU's go on to be sold and used by others for many more years, the GPU may just be the longest lived component in a PC keeping the most residual value and usefulness over long periods of time.
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Pretty sure he was talking about the kind that buys the newest stuff every single year. And even in your case, it's often cheaper to buy an RTX X060/X070-class (or AMD equivalent) card and switch it out after 2-3 years. Heck, I made due with my 1070 for 5 years and still use it in my secondary 1080p gaming system when I visit my parents; still going strong. Actually, that system just got an overhaul with new CPU, mainboard, RAM, and 2 NVMEs, and will run another few years with that card. You don't need anywhere close to the best for what you described.
 
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How meaningful is Steam these days? I cannot remember the last time I played a game on Steam. When I did last consider a Steam game it could only multiplayer with other Steam users, by buying the same game through XBox store I could play with all platforms except Steam.
 
sizzling said:
How meaningful is Steam these days? I cannot remember the last time I played a game on Steam. When I did last consider a Steam game it could only multiplayer with other Steam users, by buying the same game through XBox store I could play with all platforms except Steam.
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Most I know play on Steam regularly. It's still the biggest platform out there. I have no idea what game you are talking about, but I have never had such issues.
 
halfcharlie said:
Huh? As if the high-end hasn't always been a niche. Wise? Just because you don't have high requirements for your uses doesn't mean others don't, compromise all you like but don't project onto others. And all the time? Considering you can get 5 years out of a high-end card easy before hitting performance limitations, it's the best of the best once every half decade, and that doesn't sound bad at all. Many people change their cars more often than that. My previous GPU went through two PC rebuilds, then used GPU's go on to be sold and used by others for many more years, the GPU may just be the longest lived component in a PC keeping the most residual value and usefulness over long periods of time.
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Uhhh ok 😀have a good day dude

I used to be an early adopter and had to have best hardware but I grew up and realized there are much more important things to spend money on

but if people want the best and have the $$$ the go for it. I just got tired of sitting at a pc to game. I went all console years ago. For me it’s plenty good enough. Looking at premium prices now I’m glad I did
 
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InvalidError said:
If you know of a better source of data about what people are actually using to play PC games on than Steam which has millions of users, do let us know. Otherwise, those are the only numbers we have and there is no point arguing about it as those are the only meaningful numbers available.
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When reviewing any data you have to understand its validity otherwise it’s just meaningless. There might be nothing better but it doesn’t mean it’s good enough to be informative, I am not saying one way or the other but I can see how this data isn’t including someone like me.
 
sizzling said:
When reviewing any data you have to understand its validity otherwise it’s just meaningless. There might be nothing better but it doesn’t mean it’s good enough to be informative, I am not saying one way or the other but I can see how this data isn’t including someone like me.
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I've been looking at Steam's data for years. It's questionable what they're doing at time, but the numbers do stay consistent. If Steam was truly just using weird sampling of only changed PCs, as an example, we'd see major swings in use of various parts over time. The fact that the most popular cards usually only show a slight month to month variation suggests that at least proper random sampling is being done. That's the most important thing.

We can't give things like margin of error or confidence levels, we don't know how many PCs are sampled each month, we don't know why the GPU API pages don't sum up to 100% in each column (less in DX12/11/10, more in Vulkan), we don't know why there's a large percentage of "Other" in Vulkan but much lower in the DX lists, and we don't know the population being sampled either (all Steam users who logged in during a given month? Maybe, but maybe not). But the data does mean something on some level, if only that Nvidia GPUs remain far more popular than AMD. I'm very curious to see how long it takes for Intel Arc GPUs to start showing up. 🙃
 
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