Defying the global memory shortage, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070 has reportedly become the most popular gaming graphics card on Steam. According to the February 2026 Steam Hardware Survey, the upper-midrange Blackwell GPU captured 9.42% of the market, a massive 6.55% month-over-month jump.
This dramatic rise, which dethroned the previous leader, the RTX 4060, is highly unusual and has raised questions. Analysis points to China as a key factor. Over half of Steam's surveyed users in February were from China, a 30.74% increase coinciding with the Chinese New Year holidays.
However, the surge is not necessarily due to a nationwide shopping spree. Instead, popular Chinese internet gaming cafes likely skewed the data. Hundreds of users can log into the same systems in these cafes, potentially inflating the RTX 5070's numbers without Valve's survey having a clear mechanism to prevent duplicates.
Other notable survey findings include an 18.91% increase in systems with 32GB of RAM, despite high memory prices, and a 10.43% decline in Windows 11 usage among Steam gamers, with many reverting to Windows 10.