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RTX 5070 Leaps to No. 1 in Steam’s February Survey After Unusually Large Jump

Analysts flag an unusual surge in Chinese survey responses that could have distorted February’s results.

Overview

  • Valve’s February 2026 Steam Hardware Survey lists the GeForce RTX 5070 at 9.42% share, up from 2.87% a month earlier, with the RTX 5060 reported at 6.72%.
  • Steam’s country data shows 54.6% of surveyed users were in China, a 30.74% jump, with reporting pointing to Chinese New Year timing and internet gaming cafes as likely drivers of the shift.
  • Tom’s Hardware notes Valve has not clarified how duplicate system sampling is handled, raising questions about how shared PCs in cafes may inflate hardware counts.
  • Systems reporting 32GB of RAM rose by 18.91% in February, even as coverage highlights a global memory crunch and says RTX 5070 market prices sit about 15% above the $549 MSRP.
  • TweakTown observes that Nvidia’s overall GPU share in the survey climbed to 84.7% as AMD’s fell and reports the RX 9000 series vanishing from the chart, with some outlets suggesting the February figures may see a correction next month.