In the years I’ve been covering the Steam Hardware & Software Survey, there’s one graphics card I’ve always felt sorry for: Radeon RX 7900 XTX. For over a year now, its predecessors and competitors have surrounded it on all sides with nary a sign of its siblings. However, that all changes today as Radeon RX 7700 XT joins the fray.
Much as this is a cause of celebration for AMD, a market share of 0.16% means Radeon RX 7700 XT only escaped the nebulous 9.16% of ‘Other’ by a whisker. For context, the only graphics card standing between it and non-descript oblivion is Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop with a share of 0.15%.
Radeon RX 7900 XTX remains the champion of AMD’s current generation offerings, with a 0.44% share. Unfortunately for AMD, this is a lower percentage than every single GeForce RTX 40 series graphics card, with GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super setting pace at 0.67%. Worse still, the Nvidia GPU is less than a year old while 7900 XTX is now almost two.
While the Steam Hardware & Software Survey only captures a fraction of a fraction of the market, it’s still a substantial share. These public-facing percentages almost certainly carry weight to consumers and developers, guiding purchase decisions and prioritisation of features. After all, Valve explicitly created this survey to help guide the specs for Half-Life 2.
With all this in mind, these positions don’t paint AMD in this most flattering light. Unfairly so, I’d argue to a point, particularly given the value and competitiveness of midrange cards like Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7900 GRE.
The battle for this generation may well be over, but its new RDNA 4 GPUs could see AMD properly disrupt the market and finally win a sizeable piece of the pie. Of course, this depends on how aggressively the company prices its offerings relative to GeForce RTX 50 series, not forgetting Intel Arc B580 too.
I expect both AMD and Nvidia to play their respective hands at CES 2025, with both companies set to stage a press conference during the event. Club386 will be on the showfloor come the time, so be sure to check back for analysis on any official announcements.
