NVIDIA's mid-range card from 2021 has outlasted two generations of successors.
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.
Thanks to the AI-driven memory shortage, the 3060's successor cards sell far above Nvidia's list prices, encouraging users to retain their older cards. But it's not all bad: Its 12GB of memory (more than either of its direct successors shipped with) is still adequate for 1080p gaming, which is the most common resolution in the Steam survey.
The 3060 featured in 4.79 percent of surveyed systems in August 2025, according to the same survey, so while it still tops the popularity charts, it's definitely leading a shrinking market overall. Valve also lists laptop chips separately, and combining the desktop RTX 4060's 3.51 percent with the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU's 3.60 percent 7.11 percent, nearly double the 3060.
Nvidia lists the RTX 5070 at $549, but median Newegg prices climbed from $659.99 in…
