AMD disrupts Nvidia stranglehold in Steam's April hardware survey thanks to an uptake for the Radeon RX 5700 XT and an appearance by the Radeon R7 M445 laptop GPU

It’s clear to see with Steam’s April 2020 hardware and software survey that the current coronavirus pandemic and increase of people working from home has had a considerable effect on the latest chart for PC video card usage. Nvidia’s stranglehold on the top places from last month in regard to % change has been thoroughly disrupted, and Team Green also lost some overall share (77.9% to 73.3%) to both Intel (8.6% to 10.7%) and AMD (13.4% to 15.9%).

In March, Nvidia had eight products in the top 10 movers for the month, dominated by units from the RTX 20 series (and SUPER). However, it appears this month gamers may have sought out cheaper methods of enjoying Steam sessions, such as dusting off old computers or taking office laptops home with them and using those for a bit of gaming relief during the extensive lockdown period. This can be demonstrated by the appearance of three aging Intel iGPUs in the top 10 movers, including the HD Graphics 4000 unit that was released in 2011.

The same can be said for the AMD Radeon R7 M445, which ties for first place with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER. This old discrete laptop GPU from 2016 can be found in devices such as the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 (5567-1753) that we reviewed in 2017. But there are some newer cards present in the top 10 movers too, so sales may have slowed down while Steam users choose to save money and use their work laptops at home during these complicated times, but they haven’t ceased completely.

For instance, there is a strong showing for the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT in fourth place while three graphics cards from Nvidia’s attractive GTX 16 series maintain decent % change as units from the costlier RTX 20 series endure massive swings, with the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 going from last month’s biggest movers to being two of this month’s biggest losers.