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

[R0H1T]

Because it doesn't show wider real world trends? If you're talking just about steam users then the point is valid however Steam isn't anywhere near representative of the much wider, bigger computing world & that includes casual gamers among others.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The 80-85% is for a quarter (3 months). For the past many years, AMD has had ~33% quarterly market share yet none of them (360-390, 470-480, 570-580 have been very popular cards) show up in the top 10 on Steam Hardware Survey. This is what makes me suspect there is major flaws in Steam's Hardware Survey. For starters, the hardware survey isn't all inclusive: it's random sample. Because random sample is going to reflect the rotating users at cybercafés, it amplifies the reporting from cybercafés which overwhelmingly use NVIDIA hardware.

Steam Hardware Survey should do all who opt in and it should flag each system that has been sampled so it can't be sampled again per survey (cybercafé machines count for one). But, as with all things, Valve doesn't care that much. It's just not a good measuring stick for what hardware gamers use. Asia is over-represented.

 

[efikkan]

As big titles are moving away from steam, I wonder how good Steam is nowdays as indicator of market share.

It doesn't matter if Steam is dominant or not, the only thing that matters is if it's a representative sample, even if Steam only had 20% market share.
As of today, Steam is by far the best metric we have.

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

If we were to believe some of the news circling in the AMD echo chamber these days, then we might get the impression that AMD is crushing Intel. But in reality, AMD isn't really outselling Intel globally, even in the custom-build market.

Secondly, those who are inclined to buy an 8-core Ryzen over an Intel option is probably not primarily a gamer.

Thirdly, people have different upgrade cycles. While a typical laptop may be replaced within 2-3 years, desktops generally last much longer, even among gamers. Why would anyone with a Haswell or better upgrade to a lesser gaming CPU from AMD? Many gamers even keep their CPUs across multiple graphics cards, especially since older Intel CPUs do fairly well in gaming.

 

[kings]

I'm not saying we should stick to it religiously, Steam survey worth what it's worth, I agree.

But given the huge discrepancy between Nvidia's and AMD's market share in the last years, I don´t see anything unusual about being Nvidia's hardware to dominate the Steam survey.

 

[64K]

I'm under the impression that by far people buy pre-builts for business and workstations and even for gaming PCs most people don't build their own. I was just on the Dell site and all of the pre-builts for business and workstations that I saw were Intel. If you chose a custom build then AMD was an option for CPU and GPU but most of the choices were for Intel and Nvidia. How AMD can gain market share in a company like Dell I don't know.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I'm under the impression that by far people buy pre-builts for business and workstations and even for gaming PCs most people don't build their own. I was just on the Dell site and all of the pre-builts for business and workstations that I saw were Intel. If you chose a custom build then AMD was an option for CPU and GPU but most of the choices were for Intel and Nvidia. How AMD can gain market share in a company like Dell I don't know.

Which is why I said the atmosphere smells like anti-trust. OEMs seem to be going out of their way to hide AMD again.

 

[R-T-B]

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

Honestly, no. That's CPUs and not GPUs like we are talking.

 

[Caring1]

The Steam survey doesn't prove AMD struggled to gain market share, it only shows less Steam customers use AMD products, there can be other viable explanations for it.

 

[EarthDog]

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?

Because this is a steam article.

Not to mention, most PC users playing fortnite have steam. Arent there more users on steam than epic? You post seems to allude you believe fornite players dont have steam for other games. Not all would have it, but I'd bet most would and re included here.

A late to that party...but yeah.

Anyway.. not surprising at all seeing the cold reception to Turing and the Radeon VII (rightfully so for both).

 

[efikkan]

Anyway.. not surprising at all seeing the cold reception to Turing and the Radeon VII (rightfully so for both).

Each of the four RTX cards have all market share higher than Vega combined, including the newly released RTX 2060.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

How does that make any sense?

 

[turbogear]

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.

That was exactly the point I was trying to make in the original post.
I was not referring to AMD VS Nvidia.
I was just trying to ask if now days Steam survey is accurate as many of top games from recent times has moved away from Steam.
Maybe if we look at other platforms where these games are launched, the survey will look different.
Maybe there will be a different portion of people who use cards line 1070TI, 1080TI or RTX cards, Vega cards, etc.

I was not trying to discriminate anybody.
I was bashed by some member as being AMD fan boy and Steam hater.
I did not even mention AMD in my post.

I don't hate Steam either.
It used to be my main platform for buying games. I own around 90 games on Steam.
Tomb Raider games, Borderlands games, Merto Series, GTA games, a number of COD games, older Far Cry games, Bio Shock series are a few of the great games that I played in the history on Steam.
I was not amused to hear that Metro Exodus is not on Steam anymore and that I will also not be able to get Borderlands 3 on Steam.

 

[notb]

How does that make any sense?

RTX2060 having higher market share than Vega?
Out of the top of my head: it's a more attractive product. Makes sense?

Which is why I said the atmosphere smells like anti-trust. OEMs seem to be going out of their way to hide AMD again.

Do you at least consider as probable the hypothesis that Intel CPUs are more attractive products for OEMs?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

RTX2060 having higher market share than Vega?
Out of the top of my head: it's a more attractive product. Makes sense?

Vega has been on the market for 2? 3 years? RTX 2060, outsells it in a few months? I don't buy it.

Do you at least consider as probable the hypothesis that Intel CPUs are more attractive products for OEMs?

Why would they be? Last time I checked, AMD was selling roughly as many processors and Intel was but apparently they're not going into machines sold to people that use Steam...if you believe Steam Hardware Survey.


There's a logical explanation for both of these things and that's overrepresentation of cybercafés. This is why I don't put much stock in Steam Hardware Survey.

 

[kapone32]

It doesn't matter if Steam is dominant or not, the only thing that matters is if it's a representative sample, even if Steam only had 20% market share.
As of today, Steam is by far the best metric we have.


If we were to believe some of the news circling in the AMD echo chamber these days, then we might get the impression that AMD is crushing Intel. But in reality, AMD isn't really outselling Intel globally, even in the custom-build market.

Secondly, those who are inclined to buy an 8-core Ryzen over an Intel option is probably not primarily a gamer.

Thirdly, people have different upgrade cycles. While a typical laptop may be replaced within 2-3 years, desktops generally last much longer, even among gamers. Why would anyone with a Haswell or better upgrade to a lesser gaming CPU from AMD? Many gamers even keep their CPUs across multiple graphics cards, especially since older Intel CPUs do fairly well in gaming.

Because it is new and Youtube has a greater impact on sales than many of us realize. I have AMD for one reason, cost. There is also the fact that you can upgrade your system with just a chip or CPU until 2020 across many platforms and threadripper is the same thing. With these node shrinks the future is indeed looking bright for AMD CPUs. If TSMC has already taped out 5nm then we already know what comes next.

 

[efikkan]

Vega has been on the market for 2? 3 years? RTX 2060, outsells it in a few months? I don't buy it.

If we count Vega 64, that would make it a little over 18 months, right?
And RTX 2060 outselling it in ~2.5 months shouldn't come as a surprise, Vega has had supply issues, and was never really a good deal. If there are more Vegas sold, then it would be for non-gaming purposes.

It was just yesterday I was listening to a random video in the AMD echo chamber, where a guy was making the case for Nvidia being in big trouble and AMD about to rule gaming. I thought it was funny at first, until I realized how deep that guy's delusions really are, which is just sad. There is nothing wrong in wishful thinking, and while we all want AMD to return with a splash, some people just need to face reality.

Because it is new and Youtube has a greater impact on sales than many of us realize.

Really? Considering how biased in favor of AMD most of those channels are, AMD's sales should have been amazing as a result of it.

 

[kapone32]

If we count Vega 64, that would make it a little over 18 months, right?
And RTX 2060 outselling it in ~2.5 months shouldn't come as a surprise, Vega has had supply issues, and was never really a good deal. If there are more Vegas sold, then it would be for non-gaming purposes.

It was just yesterday I was listening to a random video in the AMD echo chamber, where a guy was making the case for Nvidia being in big trouble and AMD about to rule gaming. I thought it was funny at first, until I realized how deep that guy's delusions really are, which is just sad. There is nothing wrong in wishful thinking, and while we all want AMD to return with a splash, some people just need to face reality.


Really? Considering how biased in favor of AMD most of those channels are, AMD's sales should have been amazing as a result of it.

Look at the post from GinoLatino

 

[turbogear]

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

That could be the case. On Epic there are lot of young players in ages 12 and above.
Fortnite is very popular among school children at least here in Germany.
My son who is 14 and all other classmates play daily this games. As far as I know neither him nor his friends have Steam.
They all play Fortnite mostly on Playstation but as well as computers.
Some have their own computers other use their parents.

 

[wolf]

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. ;-)

I would imagine that the lower power consumption and thus heat output start to really add up at cyber cafe's too, especially in hotter countries, imagine each pc is pulling say ~50w less at the wall, doesn't sound like much but when you multiply it by say 20 or more, that begins to make economic sense over time, and reduces heat output into the already hot room, not to mention if the wattage difference for relative performance was higher than that.

 

[timta2]

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.

Because AMD CPU owners constantly worry about memory speeds, timings, and compatiblity, and Intel CPU owners don't.

 

[kapone32]

Because AMD CPU owners constantly worry about memory speeds, timings, and compatiblity, and Intel CPU owners don't.

That is interesting given the fact that you can't support that argument. Just because they had teething issues with AM4 RAM compatibility does not leave Intel looking good remember the launch of X299.

 

[Space Lynx]

Because this is a steam article.

Not to mention, most PC users playing fortnite have steam. Arent there more users on steam than epic? You post seems to allude you believe fornite players dont have steam for other games. Not all would have it, but I'd bet most would and re included here.

A late to that party...but yeah.

Anyway.. not surprising at all seeing the cold reception to Turing and the Radeon VII (rightfully so for both).

most fortnite players have steam? i doubt it. maybe 49%, not 51%. pobably more like 40%.

 

[jabbadap]

Vega has been on the market for 2? 3 years? RTX 2060, outsells it in a few months? I don't buy it.


Why would they be? Last time I checked, AMD was selling roughly as many processors and Intel was but apparently they're not going into machines sold to people that use Steam...if you believe Steam Hardware Survey.


There's a logical explanation for both of these things and that's overrepresentation of cybercafés. This is why I don't put much stock in Steam Hardware Survey.

Well how many Radeons actually have gone to gamers vs sold skus. There's no point for buying cards for mining anymore so RTX cards are bought exclusively for gaming. There was a very long time when you could not buy Radeon for a reasonable price so many gamers went to nvidia alone because of that.

 

[IceShroom]

Because AMD CPU owners constantly worry about memory speeds, timings, and compatiblity, and Intel CPU owners don't.

If RAM is not that important for intel, then whos buying those 3800+ MT/s kits?? How stable RAM overclocking was on intels X99 mothernoard??

 

[EarthDog]

most fortnite players have steam? i doubt it. maybe 49%, not 51%. pobably more like 40%.

Dont split hairs. Point is many have it and would be included already. I also specifically stated PC Fortnite players.