Every month, Valve releases the results of its hardware survey, and the results are usually predictable, especially when it comes to what graphics cards most people are using. Most months, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 – or an equivalent XX60 class card from another generation – is on top. And while the RTX 4060 is technically the top GPU on Steam right now, this time it’s the mobile version.
Since December 2024, the RTX 4060 for gaming laptops has grown from 4.19% of Steam’s userbase to 4.99% of it. That seems like a minor change, but in the same time frame the RTX 3060, which has been the the most popular graphics card for a while shrunk from 5.01% to 4.72%, allowing the mobile GPU to take the lead. This is the first time in my memory that a mobile graphics card was at the top of the list.
Why Gaming Laptops? Why Now?
It’s no secret that graphics cards are getting more expensive. Even the RTX 4060 is leagues more expensive than its equivalent was in the pre-RTX days. And while gaming laptops certainly aren’t cheap, when you take the marked-up prices retailers attach to GPUs into consideration, it actually starts to make sense to just grab a gaming laptop and call it a day, especially if you need more than just a graphics card.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 for laptops isn’t the most powerful GPU in the world, either, but it is still enough to play most games at 1080p without much of a struggle, moreso if you disable niceties like ray tracing and enable DLSS. It’s not surprising that’s enough for a lot of people, especially as we start to contend with the prospect of everything getting more expensive.
That’s probably also a factor in why the only current-generation GPU that makes it into Valve’s report is the RTX 5070 Ti, and that’s coming in with just 0.27% of the playerbase. That puts it behind the GTX 1030, a cheap graphics card that launched 8 years ago, and it was bad back then.
I’ve been hearing gaming laptop manufacturers tell me for years that gaming laptops are the future or whatever, but now that a laptop GPU is sitting securely at the top of the Steam Hardware Survey, I’m actually starting to believe it. After all, when everything costs an arm and a leg, it starts getting really hard to justify dropping $1,000 on a graphics card, even if it comes with Multi-Frame Generation, or whatever Nvidia’s next big thing will be with the RTX 6080.
The Future of PC Gaming
The magic of PC gaming is that it’s flexible. While playing games on PS5 requires you to have one specific piece of hardware, you can basically configure a PC however your heart (or budget) requires. There are games out there like Assassin’s Creed Shadows that can bring the RTX 5090 to its knees, but that’s not why PC gaming is awesome. Instead, the indie games that spring up out of nowhere are where the real magic happens, and you don’t need super-expensive hardware to tap into that.
I don’t think high-end gaming PCs are going anywhere, but this hardware survey makes it pretty clear that the niche is shrinking a little bit. Instead, mid-range gaming laptops and handheld gaming PCs are starting to look like the way many people will engage with PC games going forward.
Over the next year or so, as RTX 5000 laptops become more common and the AMD Z2 Extreme powers up next-gen gaming handhelds, it’s going to be interesting to see if desktop graphics continue to shrink, or if this was just a brief hiccup. Only time will tell.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
