Why is the NVIDIA RTX 3060 still the most popular GPU on Steam?

NVIDIA's mid-range card from 2021 has outlasted two generations of successors.

By Luke James Nov. 14, 2026 12:00 pm EST Lazy_Bear/Shutterstock Add Engadget on Google: Google Discover

In February 2021, NVIDIA's RTX 3060 hit the market for $329, then got tossed head-first into a fierce crypto boom that saw Nvidia ship it with a driver limiter that halved Ethereum mining speed. Now, almost six years later, it's still the most popular GPU among PC gamers, at least according to Valve's data. Steam's October hardware survey saw the RTX 3060 share top spot with the RTX 5070, each used in 3.78 percent of surveyed PCs.