Anyone looking to buy a graphics card must currently invest a lot of money. But what are most gamers currently playing on Steam?
What is the current situation? Those who want to buy a graphics card today either have to be very lucky or invest a considerable amount of money. However, most users have little chance of buying a graphics card. Meanwhile, at least some users are playing on the new graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, as they are willing to pay more for a graphics card.
But which graphics card is currently the most popular on Steam, and what are people actually playing with?
The GTX 1060 is at the top of the graphics cards on Steam
Steam releases statistics every month showing which hardware users are using to game on Steam (via steampowered.com). Now, Steam has published data for February 2022, and a Nvidia graphics card is at the top.
What kind of graphics card is this? Nvidia released the GTX 1060 in 2016. The GTX 1060 is a mid-range graphics card. With a price of 300 euros, Nvidia primarily aimed to attract users who found 700 euros for the GTX 1080 or nearly 500 euros for the GTX 1070 too expensive.
With 6 GB of video memory, it offered less memory than the GTX 1080 but was able to outperform the RX 480 with its 4 GB and provided more performance than the competition. AMD later countered this with an 8 GB version of the RX 480.
How much performance does the graphics card offer in 2022? Even today, the GTX 1060 can still play modern and demanding titles at medium settings. This is also due to the 6 GB of video memory, which is still sufficient for modern titles.
In the following video, you can see how Battlefield 2042 looks at medium settings on a GTX 1060 (6 GB). The framerate remains consistently around 60 FPS in the video, which is more than sufficient for a fast shooter like Battlefield 2042.
The colleagues at GameStar have also tested the GTX 1060 in the technical check for Battlefield 2042 and the graphics card still achieves nearly 30 FPS in Full HD on the Ultra preset. The 6 GB of video memory is definitely too limited for 4K, but still more than sufficient for Full HD.
Even today, the GTX 1060 is a classic when it comes to good efficiency in power consumption. Our colleagues at GameStar report this in their graphics card test for the GTX 1060. The biggest disadvantage from today’s perspective with the GTX 1060 is the lack of features. You will have to forego ray tracing or DLSS with this graphics card; for that, you need an RTX graphics card.
The direct competition of the GTX 1060 is still popular
Nvidia positioned its GTX 1060 in the mid-range against the Radeon RX 480 with 8 GB of video memory. The RX 480 and RX 580 are still represented on Steam. The Radeon RX 580 was even on par with the GTX 1060 in the test by ComputerBase.
The AMD Radeon RX 580 accounts for about 1.66% and the RX 570 nearly 1.3% in the Steam survey.
Due to high graphics card prices, even the old classics among GPUs are rising in value again. If someone sells their old Radeon RX 580 now, they receive more money than they spent on the graphics card 5 years ago. This is the case for many graphics cards, as old graphics cards are also in high demand:
Your old graphics card might be worth more now than you think
