Well, the latest numbers from the Steam Hardware Survey have just come out and they are, to be honest, quite baffling. I mean, totally perplexing. A user on Twitter, NikTek, pointed out a very unusual thing. The results are listing the ‘Radeon Graphics’ and even the NVIDIA RTX 5090 is expected, while the entire AMD RX 9000 series is completely missing. Not a single RX 9060 or 9070 can be found. Nothing at all. This is strange because the majority assumed that the cards were pretty popular among the users. So what could be the answer? Is the Steam survey not right, or the new GPUs of AMD are being regarded in a certain way?
To begin with and to those who do not know much about all that, the Steam Hardware Survey is a monthly activity carried out by Valve. Basically, it asks a random sample of Steam gamers about their hardware configuration one month later. Steam’s monthly report shows the real consumption of graphics cards among gamers. So when a new generation of graphics cards from a huge company like AMD suddenly disappears from the scene, it surely attracts a lot of attention.
The tweet from NikTek prompted a talk about different theories and, to tell the truth, many people just misunderstanding the situation. The first and the most typical response from the people was a big facepalm moment. A number of people, among them Kayu, Ali Rahmati, and Josh, immediately with their easy answer pointed out: “Those are iGPUs.” Integrated graphics. You really have to go down very far to get past the section for dedicated GPU. The “Radeon Graphics” entry probably refers to the graphics integrated into AMD’s Ryzen APUs or to low-power graphics used in devices like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. It is not a placeholder for the RX 9000 series. The mystery is solved for now, but it is a typical case of the survey’s arrangement being, let us say, not very user-friendly.
Nevertheless, this raises the next and larger question. Where are the RX 9060 and 9070 cards then? The main riddle here is the fact that an unannounced NVIDIA card like the RTX 5090 can appear as a placeholder but AMD’s already launched cards are nowhere to be seen. The community was given a chance to express their views on the topic.
Some gamers think that this is only a numbers game. The user who reminded us of the ‘cehennem_dunya1’ account made a fair point. Even if the cards were “very well” sold, the actual number of units available in the market could still be very small compared to the total number of Steam users. Also, that number would be divided among different models: 9060, 9060 XT, 9070, 9070 XT. Such fragmentation might mean that no single SKU reaches the minimum required to be listed separately. They might all be together under a general “Other” category.
The old AMD vs NVIDIA argument came up and soon it was very angry. The replies were brutal. “I do not know any person who has bought an AMD gpu since Vega,” said Jean-Baptiste, linking it to what he perceives as AMD’s “disastrously bad PR and Marketing.” Others like Rockstar went as far as saying, “Nobody in their right mind who can afford nvidia, even used, will buy amd. Nvidia is just better in 98% of ways.” Woah. Still, it underlines a perception that might be a barrier to the adoption rate.
But wait, there is not a complete minority supporting the doomy side. A handful of users came out to say they actually own the cards. “The last time I got hw survey was when I had gtx1080. now I’m on 9070xt, but I guess stats update need,” said Roniakia, suggesting that perhaps the survey is just not done with them yet. Another one, gamoid, spoke of a friend who was “very happy” with a 9070 XT even if he was overjoyed with the price. So the cards are already there in the hands of gamers.
Then the discussion turned to pricing and location since these factors could be the selling point. User ‘vitormaicao’ gave a very convincing reasoning: “5070 is being heavily pushed in some areas. Who would want to buy a 9060xt 16gb chip when a 5070 is only 10% more expensive?” So if NVIDIA is putting its last-gen products super aggressively priced that might totally wipe off the new mid-range GPU sales of AMD. Why pay more for a new AMD when you can have last year’s NVIDIA for a cheaper price or the same price? It’s really a difficult situation.
