The coveted top spots in Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey are usually dominated solely by budget GPUs, such as Nvidia’s RTX 4060 and 3060, but the GeForce RTX 5070 is notably bucking that trend in this generation. According to the June 2026 survey, this mid-range GPU is now the fourth most popular model, commanding a 3.29% share of Steam users.
Remarkably, that puts it two places in front of the significantly cheaper RTX 5060, which is also steadily climbing the ranks. The RTX 5070 has been ascending the chart consistently over the last few months, but this time it went from fifth place to number four after a 0.2% boost. This $549 GPU is now biting at the heels of the RTX 4060 with its 3.65% share, and more gamers are using it than any of its cheaper Blackwell cousins.
Of course, the Steam Hardware Survey isn’t a foolproof stats tool, and we’ve seen some outlandish results from it already this year. We’re not talking about officially recorded market share here, but the share of the Steam users who submitted their system specs for this month’s survey. Nevertheless, when you remove the outlying February survey result from the equation, the RTX 5070 has clearly been a popular GPU among Steam users for a while, and it’s only getting more so.
There are likely to be a few factors at play here. One is that the RTX 5060 may have a lower price, but it also doesn’t give you much of a boost over the RTX 4060, with the same amount of VRAM and only a modest increase in shader power. If you already own an RTX 4060, you really need to step up to the RTX 5070’s level to get a decent upgrade.
It probably also doesn’t help that the RTX 5060 only has 8GB of VRAM, which quickly gets saturated in several of the latest games, even at 1920×1080. Meanwhile, 16GB versions of the 5060 Ti and Radeon RX 9060 XT now go for silly prices, thanks to the DRAM crisis, leaving the RTX 5070 as the obvious candidate.
At the time of its release, we gave the RTX 5070 a bit of a hard time, as it only has 12GB of VRAM compared to AMD’s 16GB offerings, and it wasn’t massively quicker than the RTX 4070 before it. In the middle of a RAM pricing crisis, though, this GPU makes more sense.
At MSRP, we’d recommend spending an extra $50 on the Radeon RX 9070 XT, with its 16GB of VRAM and faster performance. In the brutal world of real-world pricing, though, the RTX 5070 starts at $599, while the 9070 XT starts at $689.99. The RTX 5070 also has the advantage of Nvidia’s ubiquitous DLSS ecosystem over AMD, and GeForce has huge brand recognition.
Whatever the reason, gamers clearly want the power of the RTX 5070, and they’re willing to pay for it. If you’re looking to upgrade your graphics card, check out our guide to buying the best GPU, where we take you through all our recommendations, all based on our reviews and in-depth testing.
