August Steam study: Intel up, Oculus Quest 2 down, RTX 3060 reigns supreme

What just took place? Valve's Steam survey for August has arrived. There ended up a number of trend reversals very last thirty day period, which include AMD shedding share to Intel in the CPU place, Home windows 7 really getting customers, and the Oculus Quest 2's share dropping by practically 10%.

Starting off with CPUs, August was an additional period in which Intel scored a rare gain above AMD as group blue's processor share amid participants rose by 1.65% to 67.91%. AMD experienced liked several months of chipping absent at Intel's lead in this spot, but Lisa Su's business has knowledgeable both of those rises and falls since the release of Alder Lake. Really don't be astonished to see an uptick in AMD CPU house owners following the Ryzen 7000 start on September 27, even though.

Shifting on to GPUs, it was an exceptional month for the RTX 3060. A .66% share boost was practically double that of July's major-performer—the laptop computer version of the same card—pushing the mid-ranger up two destinations to the sixth place.

August's ideal-performing GPUs

Wanting at the best discreet graphics playing cards, it can be interesting to see how only the Ampere line built any substantial gains in August. Nvidia could possibly not be promoting as several playing cards as it would like, in spite of the company's constant value drops, but it appears these who are shopping for new GPUs are opting for workforce green's recent generation, specifically the mid-assortment RTX 3060, 3060 Ti, and 3050.

At this amount, the RTX 3060 could sooner or later choose the range a single place from the GTX 1060 that has topped the table because displacing the GTX 750 Ti in January 2018.

The top rated GPUs

Elsewhere, Home windows 11 bounced back again from its first-at any time share decline in July with a 2.66% rise. It suggests Microsoft's most up-to-date version of Windows is now the OS of decision for virtually a quarter of the survey's individuals. And astonishingly, Home windows 7's share amplified incredibly marginally, in spite of its prolonged support time period ending in January 2020—business and instruction consumers can continue to shell out for prolonged protection updates.

Not a excellent thirty day period for VR

Just one closing craze reversal in August came from the VR headset area. The Oculus Quest 2 has totally dominated this location as its share increased each thirty day period. Meta's product or service passed the 50% milestone in July, but August observed an 8% decrease. The only headset in the chart to see a substantial maximize was the Oculus Rift, up .09%. Is the turbulent economic climate in which folks are making fewer non-necessary buys also impacting the VR sector, or was this a just one-off anomaly? We will know more when the upcoming survey arrives.