Nvidia’s RTX 5090 now ranks among Steam’s most popular GPUs – while AMD’s RX 9070 XT is nowhere to be seen, and I’m finding this baffling

• AMD’s RDNA 4 GPUs are not even in Steam’s top ranked graphics cards
• Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, on the other hand, are forging ahead
• Nvidia’s GPUs are also outselling AMD on Amazon, and it’s starting to feel like Team Red is fighting a losing battle – which isn’t good news for consumers

As July begins, we’ve got a couple of sets of GPU figures to digest: the Steam hardware survey, and the rankings for top-selling graphics cards on Amazon in the US. And it looks like these are worrying times for AMD.

Firstly, let’s look at Steam’s survey for last month (June), in which Nvidia‘s Blackwell GPUs (introduced from the start of this year) are doing a whole lot better than the newcomer RDNA 4 graphics cards from AMD.

As Tom’s Hardware noticed, Nvidia now has 3.7% of Steam gamers running its Blackwell GPUs, and that includes 0.99% owning an RTX 5070 (the top performer), with 0.55% using an RTX 5070 Ti. Even the mighty (and mightily expensive) RTX 5090 has now registered in Steam’s rankings, albeit near the bottom, with 0.19%.

Of course, given its price, that Blackwell flagship is a very niche proposition for gamers – and yet it’s ahead of the RX 9070 XT, which doesn’t have enough market share to even register for Valve’s rankings.

In fact, the same is true for every model of AMD’s new RDNA 4 range, none of which are present in the June survey. (They’re all lumped in with the ‘other’ category which represents the 8% of GPUs that don’t have enough share to be recorded – less than 0.15%, to be precise).

Moving on to Amazon’s sales figures, as provided by regular leaker TechEpiphany on X (highlighted by Wccftech). This is a less extreme picture for AMD, but still a worrying one.

Thankfully, the RX 9070 XT is not completely off the radar here, as it is on Steam. I wouldn’t expect it to be, either – past reports from retailers (apply seasoning) have indicated that it’s been shifting off the shelves at a brisk enough pace. However, in the Amazon (US) sales stats for June, the AMD GPU is still lagging behind its big Nvidia rivals.

The bestselling graphics card at Amazon in June was the Nvidia RTX 5070 with 5,450 units, followed by the RTX 5060 Ti (4,950 units) and the RTX 5070 Ti was in third (4,400). The RX 9070 XT is the fourth most popular GPU with 3,800 units sold, but other RDNA 4 models are way off the pace (the vanilla RX 9070 only sold 850, and didn’t even make the top 10).

Overall, Nvidia is hoovering up 70% of sales (and almost 80% of revenue, unsurprisingly given some of Blackwell’s weighty price tags), and AMD must be left scratching its head to some extent.

Analysis: Bad news for consumers

Okay, so the RX 9070 XT is not selling nothing by any means, we know that. But it is selling 15% less than the rival RTX 5070 Ti, at least going by these June figures from Amazon (again, add salt). That must be kind of exasperating for Team Red.

This is an AMD GPU that offers very much the same performance level as the 5070 Ti (DLSS 4 aside) – with the 9070 XT’s frame rates having been boosted considerably in recent times due to Radeon driver improvements – and you still pay a lot more for the Nvidia graphics card. As we discussed yesterday, the value proposition of the 9070 XT is a good deal stronger currently, and it looks to be a great time to buy the GPU. Remember, all this is cast against a backdrop of Nvidia’s technical fumbles with its RTX 5000 range, and a whole load of driver woes that have cast a gloomy cloud over Blackwell.

So, frankly, it’s completely baffling that the RX 9070 XT hasn’t yet to even register in the GPU rankings for the Steam survey. I mean, I can only imagine that this AMD graphics card is only just off the chart, and about to make it on maybe next month – even then, it would still be very slow going (if it happens). Particularly when you consider that, as noted, even the stupidly pricey RTX 5090 is in the rankings now.

All this seems rather bewildering in many ways, and it is, of course, bad news for consumers. RDNA 4 is a great range of graphics cards, the RX 9070 XT being a strong performer in particular. And yes, granted, real-world retail prices haven’t been that close to its MSRP, which is disappointing, but neither has the RTX 5070 Ti – and the AMD GPU is currently a much better value proposition.

So, what gives? I honestly don’t know, but hopes that were burning quite fiercely of AMD finally taking back turf from Nvidia in the desktop GPU wars now appear to be dying down.

Of course, we can’t write off RDNA 4 yet, by any means. It’s just beginning to feel like AMD has a steep, or even near-vertical, climb to start getting back on a par with Nvidia, in order to meaningfully challenge Team Green’s long-held domination of the GPU world. Despite all the troubles around Blackwell, Nvidia doesn’t appear to be breaking stride, and indeed its sales of mid-range graphics cards in particular – the RTX 5070, and 5070 Ti – are starting to gather more pace.

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