Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 is perhaps steadily successful over the hearts and minds of PC avid gamers, however there’s one GPU that stands proud like a very sore thumb within the newest Steam Survey. It’s not from the present Nvidia GPU technology, the one earlier than it, and even the one earlier than that. It’s the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. This GPU has no ray tracing or AI {hardware}, and it got here out in 2016, but it surely’s nonetheless the eighth hottest gaming GPU amongst Steam customers. It not solely has extra customers than the RTX 4070, but it surely’s additionally an amazing deal extra in style than any AMD GPU, even now.
Even now, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 can nonetheless be sighted all over, regardless of being eight years previous. It hasn’t been top-of-the-line graphics card choices for years, however you continue to see it recurrently listed within the minimal system necessities for the most recent video games, just because so many individuals use it.
The rationale, I believe, is down to 1 easy reality. The GTX 1060 was the final first rate GPU to have a genuinely inexpensive worth when it got here out. It was bought in two variations – one with 6GB of VRAM, and a less expensive mannequin with simply 3GB of VRAM. On the time, 3GB was (nearly) sufficient to nonetheless get first rate efficiency in video games at 1080p, and this 3GB card launched at simply $199.
That’s 33% cheaper than the RTX 4060 MSRP, and it’s over 39% cheaper than the RTX 3060’s $329 launch worth. In the meantime, the RTX 2060 might need given you ray tracing cores and DLSS assist, but it surely wasn’t massively faster than the GTX 1060 in video games with out ray tracing enabled, and it solely had 6GB of VRAM, very similar to the highest GTX 1060 card.
When you owned a GTX 1060, the RTX 2060 could be unlikely to steer you to improve, and the RTX 3060 launch was tormented by a silicon scarcity and cryptocurrency growth, which means it was virtually inconceivable to search out at its MSRP.
When the RTX 4060 got here out at $299, and with no cheaper RTX 4050 mannequin obtainable, your improve choices from a GTX 1060 nonetheless didn’t look that nice. Even now, the one GPUs you should buy for below $200 are the weedy last-gen RTX 3050, and the Radeon RX 6500 XT, broadly described as one of many worst GPUs ever.
In the meantime, AMD’s standing within the present Steam Survey needs to be ringing alarm bells on the firm. The primary look of AMD is at quantity 16, however that’s simply the generic AMD Radeon Graphics moniker used for its built-in GPUs. You need to drop all the best way to quantity 32 to discover a graphics card based mostly on an AMD GPU, and that’s the equally historical Radeon RX 580. You need to scroll all the way down to quantity 57 to search out certainly one of AMD’s current-gen desktop GPUs, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, with a 0.36% share (down 0.01% in comparison with final month).
What this reveals to me is that each AMD and Nvidia have missed a trick with their most up-to-date launches. Let’s do not forget that the $199 worth of the GTX 1060 3GB wasn’t the most cost effective presently – the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti, in addition to the Radeon RX 570, have been even cheaper. Years after the crypto growth and Covid pandemic, there nonetheless isn’t an equal of the GTX 1060 – a GPU that may play each recreation at 1080p with first rate settings for below $200.
If the Radeon RX 7600 had price $199, I believe it will have cleaned up, slightly than being nowhere to be discovered on the present Steam Survey. Its $269 worth is perhaps higher than the initially mooted $299, but it surely’s nonetheless nowhere close to low-cost sufficient to turn out to be a large mainstream hit. To make issues worse, there isn’t a less expensive GPU obtainable in both AMD or Nvidia’s newest graphics card ranges.
CPUs are nonetheless keenly priced on the funds finish, with the Ryzen 5 7600X at present going for simply $197.80 on Amazon, and the Core i5 12400F costing simply $109.99. Why can’t we’ve got a correct sub-$200 gaming GPU once more? Sure, there’s been inflation since then, however Nvidia’s revenue margins are clearly huge proper now. If I might make one plea to Nvidia and AMD for his or her next-gen GPUs it’s this: please make a good 1080p gaming GPU for a genuinely inexpensive worth.
For extra details about what could possibly be coming with the following GPU vary, try our Nvidia RTX 5090 information, the place we run you thru every little thing we all know concerning the firm’s subsequent top-end chip. Let’s hope Nvidia’s new Blackwell vary additionally features a GPU cheaper that prices below $299.
