The most popular graphics card of a generation is rarely the best-performing. Instead it’s the one the most people can reasonably afford. The most popular cards, according to Steam’s monthly hardware survey, are the RTX 3060, GTX 1650, and GTX 1060. Unsurprising, but what’s somewhat more shocking is you have to look pretty far down the list to find any high-end GPUs noted at all.
Nvidia and AMD sell higher volumes across the lower rungs of the GPU market. The so-called ‘mainstream’ cards. What constitutes a mainstream graphics card is a constantly shifting definition and not easily defined by price alone. In the early days of PC gaming, £399 was kingly money to spend on an add-in card, whereas nowadays that’s barely more than budget. Blame inflation, and try not to think about it too much.
There are heaps of options available to the budding PC gamer with a reasonable amount to spend. At every conceivable budget
