What simply occurred? Valve’s Steam survey for August has arrived. There have been a number of pattern reversals final month, together with AMD shedding share to Intel within the CPU area, Home windows 7 really gaining customers, and the Oculus Quest 2’s share dropping by virtually 10%.
Beginning with CPUs, August was one other interval through which Intel scored a uncommon win over AMD as group blue’s processor share amongst individuals rose by 1.65% to 67.91%. AMD had loved many months of chipping away at Intel’s lead on this space, however Lisa Su’s firm has skilled each rises and falls because the launch of Alder Lake. Do not be shocked to see an uptick in AMD CPU house owners following the Ryzen 7000 launch on September 27, although.
Shifting onto GPUs, it was a wonderful month for the RTX 3060. A 0.66% share enhance was virtually double that of July’s top-performer—the laptop computer model of the identical card—pushing the mid-ranger up two locations to the sixth spot.
Wanting on the prime discreet graphics playing cards, it is attention-grabbing to see how solely the Ampere line made any important good points in August. Nvidia may not be promoting as many playing cards as it could like, regardless of the corporate’s fixed value drops, but it surely appears those that are shopping for new GPUs are choosing group inexperienced’s present era, particularly the mid-range RTX 3060, 3060 Ti, and 3050.
At this price, the RTX 3060 may finally take the primary spot from the GTX 1060 that has topped the desk since displacing the GTX 750 Ti in January 2018.
Elsewhere, Home windows 11 bounced again from its first-ever share decline in July with a 2.66% rise. It means Microsoft’s newest model of Home windows is now the OS of alternative for nearly 1 / 4 of the survey’s individuals. And amazingly, Home windows 7’s share elevated very barely, regardless of its prolonged assist interval ending in January 2020—enterprise and training customers can nonetheless pay for prolonged safety updates.
One remaining pattern reversal in August got here from the VR headset part. The Oculus Quest 2 has completely dominated this space as its share elevated each month. Meta’s product handed the 50% milestone in July, however August noticed an 8% decline. The one headset within the chart to see a major enhance was the Oculus Rift, up 0.09%. Is the turbulent financial system through which individuals are making fewer non-essential buys additionally impacting the VR market, or was this a one-off anomaly? We’ll know extra when the following survey arrives.