Steam Hardware Survey Shows AMD's Continued Struggle to Gain Market Share

[Xaled]

Someone got to tell Lisa Su, the cousin of nvidia's owner, that:
1-She can't gain market share by making cards that are slower, more expensive and/or have worst prive/performance ratio than your opponent's or your previous cards
2- Finally convince her that game bundles just don't work!

 

[turbogear]

Steam used to be my platform of choice for many years.
Unfortunately in the recent times most of the games I play are not on Steam anymore.

Battlefield I and Battlefield V, COD Black Ops 4, Far Cry New Dawn, Division 2, Metro Exodus
For Metro, I did not pre-order and have to use Epic now.

As big titles are moving away from steam, I wonder how good Steam is nowdays as indicator of market share.
It would be nice if EA, Uplay, Epic and Blizzard will also provide their data on CPU and GPU market share.

 

[notb]

OMG. A normal topic about market share turned into AMD fanboy bonanza. "But they rule consoles!". "Nvidia fanboys everywhere!"

If there is one thing you can say for Nvidia, its that it has an army of aggressive and passionate fanboys.

Many compared to AMD? Fanboys per card sold? Really?

how many a reply on the steam forums asking for help with some problems running a game point towards the "AMD" products being the cause of it all...

And how often are these problems actually caused by AMD hardware/drivers?
I mean: even the most fanatic AMD followers on this forum use arguments like "you only need a bit of tweaking to make Vega great" etc.

As big titles are moving away from steam, I wonder how good Steam is nowdays as indicator of market share.
It would be nice if EA, Uplay, Epic and Blizzard will also provide their data on CPU and GPU market share.

Yeah. Discredit a user group as representative for the whole population, because it doesn't use as many AMD cards as you'd like. Perfect.

Steam is the most popular game distribution platform, with the largest choice of latest games (I'm not sure if GOG isn't beating them in totals). And gamers aren't exclusive.
So it's very likely that even if one spends the most time playing Blizzard games (often true), he'll also have Steam.

This makes Steam the best source for hardware popularity among users.
If we calculated some weighted statistics, for example games owned or hours played, the result could look differently.

We can safely assume that in the Windows part of the market AMD cards are usually bought for gaming, i.e. Radeon owners may be more avid gamers.
Nvidia cards are bought for other tasks as well, gaming being less important for the buyers (i.e. it's occasional). Nvidia GPUs are more common in ultrabooks / business laptops as well.

I said "Windows part" because there's also that 3% Mac users who may or may not game and are almost sure not to have an Nvidia GPU at the moment.

AND Nvidia has even more loyal followers, whose don't even know there is a another GPU manufacture who offer competative GPU for certain price bucket.

Actually the majority of PC users simply don't know who AMD is (neither in the GPU nor CPU space). And AMD is the only party to blame. End of story.
Many non-gamers don't know Nvidia as well. I'm pretty sure my mom doesn't.

 

[turbogear]

OMG. A normal topic about market share turned into AMD fanboy bonanza. "But they rule consoles!". "Nvidia fanboys everywhere!"

Many compared to AMD? Fanboys per card sold? Really?

And how often are these problems actually caused by AMD hardware/drivers?
I mean: even the most fanatic AMD followers on this forum use arguments like "you only need a bit of tweaking to make Vega great" etc.

Yeah. Discredit a user group as representative for the whole population, because it doesn't use as many AMD cards as you'd like. Perfect.

Based on my signiture please don't label me as user of only AMD GPU and CPU.
I have two gaming computers at home.
The machine I am using is based on all AMD. This is the first machine in a long time that has AMD processor in it.
The machine I built for my Son has Intel i7700k and Nvidia GTX 1070TI in it.
I own also gaming laptop that has Intel and Nvidia hardware in it which is now a few years old.
With Blizzard I was reffering to COD.
I don't play other games from them. I am not fan of those other games from them.

 

[Recus]

If there is one thing you can say for Nvidia, its that it has an army of aggressive and passionate fanboys.

Yeah, right. After reading AMD fanboys comments (and how many thumb ups they have) from Hardware Unboxed, Gamer Nexus, Joker Productions, AdoredTV, Coretecks... I'd say it's opposite.

how many a reply on the steam forums asking for help with some problems running a game point towards the "AMD" products being the cause of it all...

And every time it's Phenom doesn't support specific SSE.

 

[hat]

If there is one thing you can say for Nvidia, its that it has an army of aggressive and passionate fanboys

You could say the same about AMD. Or Intel. Or Chevrolet. Or the New England Patriots. Or literally anything that exists...

 

[PanicLake]

From this chart i can conclude that AMD users aren't Steam Gamer?

I can see why AOC might want to update their marketing and focus on G-sync compatible displays, it's a far larger market to tap into.

Maybe you missed the news: latest nVidia drivers now support Adaptive Sync (FreeSync).
If you want to spend 100-200$ more just to bind all your future GPU to be exclusively nVidia or you lose the feature you paid good money for, go for it!

 

[PLAfiller]

It's nice to have articles/analysis based on data from Steam survey IMO. It's free data, it's regular and it's quick and dirty. What made me choose AMD for my current card was surprisingly their efforts on the software side. I really enjoy the added "ReLive" desktop recording stuff integrated into the drivers. I could never really use Shadowplay from nVidia. It is restricted to certain cards, software feels clunky IMO.

 

[B-Real]

"Considering Intel still offers better gaming performance "

That is true when you use an RTX 2080 or 2080 Ti on FHD. In any other scenarios, you get ZERO performance gain from an Intel. How many use 2080 or 2080 Ti for FHD? LOL

 

[jabbadap]

Heh someone made a vid of steam surveys 15 top graphics card from 2004 to 2019. Intel HD4000 reigns supreme over year from Oct. 2014 to Dec. 2015, finally dethroned by almighty gtx 970.

Spoiler

 

[Vayra86]

These are gaming PCs numbers, there are millions of all-purpose desktops out there.
I'm sure AMD's total CPU share increased significantly since first Rizen's launch back in Feb 2017.

These aren't just gaming PCs. Look at the range of GPUs and Intels position with only IGPs. Its right up there fighting AMD and has a 10% share. In addition, Steam is the lowest-barrier of entry gaming store with lots of free content. What you see here is the demographic of Joe Average households. That includes the parents' PC that was claimed by son or daughter and includes a massive batch of student laptops among many other things.

What you're seeing here is a slice of PC gaming industry that tends to lean towards the casual side. And even here you see a better growth for high-end GPUs. A hardware survey on Origin or Uplay will return a greater percentage of those, along with a greater percentage of GTX 1060 equivalents.

I think we shouldn't overestimate AMD's Ryzen success. Its not like everyone jumped on it, because let's face it, for most tasks, most CPUs do fine and Zen isn't quite as mobile so you won't see much in laptops yet, which is the larger share of PCs for consumers. Also, stronger gaming APUs like the 2200/2400G are nowhere in the list...

 

[FordGT90Concept]

AMD has been price competitive that whole time. I think I smell anti-trust behavior.

 

[Mussels]

A lot of steam users have older hardware, with intels 5 year lead of course they're going to have a majority - ryzen 2 will be when they claw some market share back, but it'll take years before they reach equality, if they every do

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

OMG. A normal topic about market share turned into AMD fanboy bonanza. "But they rule consoles!". "Nvidia fanboys everywhere!"

You got me. I’m such an AMD fanboy that the three PCs in my home are Intel inside. Maybe its because I have a PS4 Pro that I bring up consoles. I’m just one of 90M or so users that might buy and play games on something with an AMD chip in it. Coincidentally, I have no stability issues with my PS4 despite the AMD hardware.

 

[Gasaraki]

Honestly, I think it's amazing that AMD is holding steady with their GPU market share. You'd think with their current portfolio of only the RX 570 and Vega 56 being competitive, that they'd be losing. I suspect it has more to do with Nvidia releasing the underwhelmingly expensive RTX cards rather than AMD doing anything right. I bought a 570 for my SO, she just needed a 1080p card for Civ 6, and it was the right choice. First AMD card I ever bought, not counting my ancient laptop with a 6770m.

Not really. The RTX cards across all lines have increased market share.

 

[Kapone33]

This is an interesting post considering the top 2 selling processors on Amazon.com are the R7 2700X and the R5 2600. This may be anecdotal but I have noticed that the majority of RAM reviews on Newegg are for Ryzen based systems. Steam is a good start but I go by what I see, There were no AMD cards to buy the last time I went to the computer store. I asked my friend that works there and he said that they are gone as soon as they come in. Anyone with common sense would get a RX 580 (2 free games!) before a 1060 but propaganda is an effective tool. Every time there is a major sporting event I see Nvidia and Intel commercials. I have yet to see an AMD commercial.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I still suspect Steam Hardware Survey is being skewed by cybercafés where they buy NVIDIA cards (the x50 and x60 variants) by the pallet and have many users signing in from the same system.

Shipments is a better number to go by where RTX launch clearly did some damage to AMD:
https://www.jonpeddie.com/press-rel...arch-releases-its-q4-2018-add-in-board-report

 

[Gasaraki]

I mean Steam isn't God... there is an entire younger generation of 10-20 million + who only install Epic Games Launcher for Fortnite... why aren't we counting their systems?

So you're comparing an installer that's been around for 10+ years vs. an installer that just came out? People who have the Epic launcher also have the Steam launcher anyway.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Actually "40 percent of Epic Games Store users say they don't have Steam"

This is why EGS exclusives are so attractive: they're literally different player bases. They figure they can tap the EGS crowd then swing around later to pick up the Steam crowd later. Win-win, consumers just need some patience. On the plus side, when it does get to Steam, it should be a much more polished game.

 

[Gasaraki]

I know it's not Steam, but AMD has over 130M APUs sold in the XboxOne and PS4, they are at least partially in Stadia, and I bet they'll be in Xbox[next] and PS5. AMD might be losing on one gaming front, but they are all but uncontested in the other significant gaming segments. I think they found the niche of being a good "one stop provider" where others have no answer. Apple might be the next closest serious player in total package presentation, but right now they are only a low-power SOC maker and for their own hardware. Intel is all CPU, and NVIDIA is all GPU.

True. I think nVidia not having a iGPU solution will hurt them in the future.

 

[notb]

I still suspect Steam Hardware Survey is being skewed by cybercafés where they buy NVIDIA cards (the x50 and x60 variants) by the pallet and have many users signing in from the same system.

Why would they buy more expensive Nvidia stuff?
Maybe AMD should sell GPUs to cybercafes at a discount? Imagine the enormous PR gains from Steam statistics. ;-)

You got me. I’m such an AMD fanboy that the three PCs in my home are Intel inside.

There's no dependency between owning something and being a fanboy. They may be correlated at best. So you may be a fanboy that - for whatever reason - owns products from a company you hate. You're still a fanboy, just a very unhappy one.

Also, there's really no way I could check if you really own those Intel CPUs. There's also no way I could check if you really think what you write. Maybe you're quite normal and you act as you do for fun.
The only thing I know for sure is what I see in your posts.

A lot of steam users have older hardware, with intels 5 year lead of course they're going to have a majority - ryzen 2 will be when they claw some market share back, but it'll take years before they reach equality, if they every do

Or what they gained until now already almost saturated the potential for such CPUs and I'll soon stabilize.
BTW: I do believe AMD Zen naming is a mess and people will make mistakes, but would it be possible for staff members to be extra careful? You meant Zen 2 => Ryzen 3rd gen. Correct?

 

[IceShroom]

BTW: I do believe AMD Zen naming is a mess and people will make mistakes, but would it be possible for staff members to be extra careful? You meant Zen 2 => Ryzen 3rd gen. Correct?

AMD naming is easyer than intels lake name.
Zen archetucture name, Ryzen is a brand name under which AMD sells CPU.
Ryzen in future could have non Zen based cpu.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

There's no dependency between owning something and being a fanboy. They may be correlated at best. So you may be a fanboy that - for whatever reason - owns products from a company you hate. You're still a fanboy, just a very unhappy one.

Also, there's really no way I could check if you really own those Intel CPUs. There's also no way I could check if you really think what you write. Maybe you're quite normal and you act as you do for fun.
The only thing I know for sure is what I see in your posts.

Nah. I merely am trying to add to the discussion, which is broader in nature than Steam alone. I believe that is the point of the these forums, as opposed to having someone assume my emotional state or crazy allegiances. It’s not as though I bought a PS4 because it had AMD inside—I would have bought one as long as it does what I want—to play games with minimal fuss. I do want AMD to succeed about as much as I don’t want Intel to flounder—competition. I’ll buy what serves me best.

 

[R0H1T]

Steam hardware surveys are just as useful as opinion polls before/after elections i.e. mostly useless!

 

[kings]

Why are some people so skeptical about Steam survey? Nvidia has 80%~85% of market share and Steam reflects this vast domain.

With less than 20% share, would you expect to see AMD cards dominating Steam survey? Well, that would be strange and doubtful, indeed.