A new top graphics card has recently appeared on Steam's charts. Surprisingly, it's not the power-hungry and expensive RTX 4080 (open in new tab); it's Nvidia's GTX 1650, which has overtaken the longtime leader, the GTX 1060.

According to Steam's November Hardware Survey (opens in new tab), GTX 1650 usage rose to 6.27%, while GTX 1060 usage dropped to 5.77%, down nearly 2% from October. This makes the GTX 1650 the most played graphics card by Steam users worldwide.

Nevertheless, it is somewhat suspicious to see a significant drop in the GTX 1060 in just one month. Perhaps there has been some change in the way Steam records user rigs or collects data. Since the hardware survey is only a survey and users must opt-in to be counted, any change in the way the survey is administered could affect the results.

The GTX 1650 is not a bad card: in his review of the 2019 GTX 1650 (opens in new tab), Jarred said it was "the fastest 75W GPU." These days, the GTX 1650 is a budget GPU for low-spec gaming machines and might be able to get 60 fps at 1080p on low to moderate settings for older PC games. Unfortunately, Nvidia's DLSS technology does not allow for further performance; DLSS technology is only available on RTX-branded graphics cards. For this reason we have not recommended this card for a long time. In most cases, they are not cheap enough to justify it.

The GTX 1060 will probably hold on to its second place position for a few more months. Since the GTX 1060 was taken out of retirement last year to mine cryptocurrencies (opens in new tab), it will no doubt be available cheaply on the secondary market now that most GPU mining is over.

Nvidia will stop production of the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Super GPUs about four years after their release; the RTX 3050 or RTX 3060 is Nvidia's current budget GPU product, our recommendation being AMD's RX 6600.

The GTX 1650 is in stock on Amazon for as low as $160 (open in new tab), though slightly higher than its $150 MSRP at launch GPUs, at least the older generations, have come down from the comically inflated prices of the past two years. However, they are still not a bargain.