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

[crazyeyesreaper]

Steam's latest hardware survey has been released, and while there is no real head scratching changes, it does continue to give us a glimpse into current market trends. In regards to CPU adoption, both six-core and eight-core processors now account for 12.2% and 2.2% respectively. Looking at just Windows data shows six-core processors gained a bit over 2% market share in 3 months. Meanwhile, eight-core offerings saw a market share increase of roughly 0.5%. Speaking of processors, Intel still dominates the market capturing an 82% share. AMD, while competitive in many tasks besides gaming still only has an 18% share. Looking at the data would lead one to believe AMD is gaining back market share; however looking at previous hardware surveys their current share is mostly holding steady. Considering Intel still offers better gaming performance for the time being its unlikely AMD will make any real gains in the Steam hardware survey until gaming performance reaches true parity.

Looking at graphics cards, NVIDIA still reigns supreme holding the same 75% market share they have been clutching for quite some time. AMD, on the other hand, continues to struggle, holding a paltry 15% share with Intel and their integrated graphics still managing to hold a 10% share. Considering AMD's only release as of late was the Radeon VII it is not all that surprising to see no change here. That said, NVIDIA's dominance is indeed not a good thing as it means competition is minimal, and pricing is likely to remain high. Right now according to the Steam hardware survey, NVIDIA currently holds the first 12 spots in regards to today's most popular graphics cards, which combine for a 52.8% share. The most popular of these being the GTX 1060. You have to go all the way down to 13th place to find an AMD graphics card which just so happens to be the Radeon RX 580 with its 1.1% share. To find the next AMD graphics card you have to go all the way down to 19th where the companies Radeon R7 Graphics holds steady at 0.87%. Hopefully, AMD's upcoming Navi graphics architecture can bring them back to prominence and drive more competition.



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[danbert2000]

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.

 

[fynxer]

They are at least a generation behind nvidia. Sure they can sell som cards with current line up but not to make a serious dent in nvidias market share without a complete line up that can compete for real with nvidia in all segments of the gaming market. Vega and RX590 are both duds only generating enuf sales to keep RTG floating.

Most people want to buy from the winning team and that seems to be nvidia at the moment. They have the most powerful cards in the market and execute both hardware and software updates regularly to keep them self's interesting in the market. RTG hype to much and then people lose faith when they don't deliver thus think of them as losers.

 

[Bones]

I can say I grabbed a Rad VII and I'm very happy with it.
I've had it for about a week now and no issues to report with it so far - Doing great.

 

[jabbadap]

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.

Their market share for sold AIB cards are dropping quite fast since Q2 2018. Last quarter was actually all time low for Radeons:

Spoiler

 

[Space Lynx]

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?

 

[notb]

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?

Do we have hardware surveys for them?

 

[John Naylor]

With the CPU, my thinking the change is less related to folks thinking .... "oh I need a 6 or 8 core processor" but if they continue their customary build practices. ... I don't see anyone going thru a thought process of ... "Umm... I need a 6 core CPU, after all my research and investigation, it looks like the 9600k will serve me well in this category.". It's more like, "I;m upgrading nmy i5 system and just looked at the performance tables of the 9600k and based upon it's performance in all the things I need it to do relative to other choices, have determined it's the best for me."

I would like to point out that there is much more info to be gaied by looking past overall market share. There's more to be gained from the Steam Hardware survey ... for example.....

a) Yes AMDs market share in the CPU gaming market is18.1 % but that's up from 17.6%. Sounds like good news no ? Well not really, the month before that it was 18.1% so they recovered from a downward blip. So no real movement here.

b) Yes AMDs market share in the CPU gaming market is 14.9 % but that's up from 14.7% last time. Again, sounds like good news no ? Well not really, the month before that it was14.9% so they just recovered from a downward blip. The 3 previous numbers were 15,3, 15,1 and 15.2 %. Potentiually a sign of recovery not enough data to see a trend.

c) The most popular card is the GTX 1060 with 15.58% market share ... more than all AMD cards combined. Ouch

d) The most popular AMD GFX card (11th place) is the RX 580 with 1.10%, the 2nd most popular is the 480 (23rd place) w/ 0.61%

e) Intel has 3 GFX solutions in the top 20, AMD has 1.

f) nVidias low priced cards (960, 1050, 1050 Ti, 1060) are losing market share, higher priced cards are gaining (970, 1070, 1080, 1070 Ti, 2060

g) With it's 1st appearance on the charts, the 2060 sales to date (0.27%) already exceed Vega 56 and 64 combined (0.22%) which had a 17 month head start ... the 2070 is at 0.65% (3 times Vega combined) ...the 2080 has more than twice as much (0.50%) the ridiculously priced 2080 Ti also has more with 0.26%. In nVidia's line, sales for everything from the 1070 to the 2080 Ti are up this month....

h) What's trending w/ greater than + 0.05% month to month ? (Card - increase in market share)

RTX 2060 - 0.27% (with a bullet !)
GTX 1070 - 0.18%
RTX 2070 - 0.15%
GT 440 - 0.15%
RTX 2080 - 0.10%
GTX 1070 Ti - 0.09%
GTX 1080 Ti - 0.08%
GTX 1080 - 0.07%
RTX 2080 Ti - 0.05%

RX 580 - 0.16%
RX 570 - 0.06%

Intel UHD Graphics 620 - 0.06%

Why do i think this info is of note ? I like to look at what's happening with respect to users asking not only "what to build" but when. From what I see above ...

a) I don't see any nVidia price drops in near future for the 2060 on up other than perhaps the 2080.... so no reason to postpone if budget is there.
b) I expect Vega 56 / 64 to continue to drop.... if that's on your build list, wait.
c) Expect 580 to drop to 150 - $165 as the 25% performance advantage of the 1660 will continue to erode 580 sales
d) Expect nVida to lag behind AMD price drops on the 580 / 590 with subsequent 1660 / 1660 Ti price cuts

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?

I would assume because when one does a web search on "Epic Games Hardware Survey" it doesn't produce any links to examine. Tho I read that they do send out hardware surveys, I don't think we'll have the data available any time soon ... at least not until they get past the steam file copying broohaha.

Their market share for sold AIB cards are dropping quite fast since Q2 2018. Last quarter was actually all time low for Radeons:

Here's Steam Data for last 12 months ending in march 2019... Y2T, Intel is up 0.2%, AMD is down 0.3% and nVidia is up 0.1%

Intel 10.0 10.4 10.9 9.8 10.8 10.2 9.3 10.5 10.6 10.6 10.1 10.2
AMD 15.2 15.4 15.5 14.1 15.0 14.6 13.9 15.2 15.1 15.3 14.7 14.9
nVidia 74.7 74.1 73.5 76.0 74.0 75.0 76.6 74.1 74.2 74.0 75.0 74.8

 

[notb]

Honestly, I think it's amazing that AMD is holding steady with their GPU market share.

Laptops and Macs?
Mobile RX is very popular in cheap laptops. Nvidia is not competing in this market.

If you look at the list, many of the top AMD positions are integrated chips.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

RX Vega, 1.5 year after launch, has just 0.22% (1.5% of AMD's share).
More importantly, it had to be under 0.15% in December, which means people started buying Vega now - when it got cheap.
RTX cards combined: 1.68%

Also, AMD has a very solid following. Some people will never buy an Nvidia GPU - no matter how much better it is.

 

[Joss]

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.

 

[John Naylor]

Here's the overall numbers....

Q3 2017 - 22.3%
Q4 2017 - 21.1%
Q1 2018 - 20.20%
Q2 2018 - 20.70%
Q3 2018 - 20.90%
Q4 2018 - 22.90%
Q4 2018 - 23.10%

So up about 0.8% overall

 

[Manu_PT]

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.

Desktops that are not for gaming with gaming GPUs? We not on the 1990s anymore my friend. General computing devices nowadays are laptops.

 

[notb]

These are gaming PCs numbers, there are millions of all-purpose desktops out there.

Which are almost entirely covered by Intel.
You can easily assume that the "gaming" figures are a very safe upper bound of the total market share.

I'm sure AMD's total CPU share increased significantly since first Rizen's launch back in Feb 2017.

Of course it did.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

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.

 

[ZoneDymo]

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

 

[sergionography]

c) The most popular card is the GTX 1060 with 15.58% market share ... more than all AMD cards combined. Ouch

d) The most popular AMD GFX card (11th place) is the RX 580 with 1.10%, the 2nd most popular is the 480 (23rd place) w/ 0.61%


c) Expect 580 to drop to 150 - $165 as the 25% performance advantage of the 1660 will continue to erode 580 sales.

I seriously can't even express how disgusted I am when I see trends like this. Rx580 is superior to a GTX 1060 on almost every metric imaginable and yet consumers buy the 1060 15 times more. This type of trend makes me think that even if AMDs lineup was far superior; consumers will just simply continue to buy nvidia... Now unless I am missing something where perhaps this huge gap is due to the timeframe when mining was inflating prices on AMD cards. I have no idea. I know I personally had to buy a GTX 1070 last time I was upgrading because vega was expensive as heck due to mining. But non the less this is not good at all. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to navi and consumers start actually using their brain cells

 

[Fluffmeister]

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.

Anyway, the results aren't too surprising, AMD's lineup is getting stale and is seriously lacking in efficiency now.

 

[efikkan]

Vega and RX590 are both duds only generating enuf sales to keep RTG floating.

They are barely selling at all. RX 590 doesn't register at all, and Vega (all versions) register at 0.22%.

Most people want to buy from the winning team and that seems to be nvidia at the moment. They have the most powerful cards in the market and execute both hardware and software updates regularly to keep them self's interesting in the market. RTG hype to much and then people lose faith when they don't deliver thus think of them as losers.

People don't care about who is "winning", they care about the relevant offers in their chosen price range. The sad truth is that AMD have no favorable GPU option above $200, and the statistics will reflect that.

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?

You don't need to count everyone as long as you have a representative selection, and the Steam survey is the best we have.

 

[IceShroom]

Also, AMD has a very solid following. Some people will never buy an Nvidia GPU - no matter how much better it is.

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.

 

[swaaye]

They haven't done particularly well in ages.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1916435/

 

[qcmadness]

Steam Hardware Survey is a joke for market share analysis. Just check the Language and you could see the problem.

 

[Crackong]

Well, a 5 year-old 4790k still rocks in gaming performance.
It is not surprising to see AMD only gets a slight increase for "Gaming PC market share on steam".

 

[Paganstomp]

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

Currently listings on Ebay US as of 4.8.2019 @ 10:30 PM EST

Radeon 8GB
USED = 868
New = 500
Refurb ( MFG + Seller ) = 86
Open Box = 160
Not working / Part = 22

Geforce 8GB
USED = 1,031
New = 990
Refurb ( MFG + Seller ) = 65
Open Box = 247
Not Working / Parts = 15

 

[chaosmassive]

uh, I think its not entirely AMD fault here
not all people who buy graphics card want to upgrade everytime Nvidia/AMD release new gen card
GTX 1060 owner probably bought their card during rise of mining craze which wipe out all of RX 480/70 cards first
and Nvidia card later affected after AMD card stock was dried up, and people still using that card until this day

and also while Steam survey is great for giving us insight on market share situation, its only tell the half of the story since not 100% PC gamer use steam like @lynx29 said

 

[Patriot]

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?

We don't count daycare, they haven't purchased anything yet, just prebuilt boxes.