Valve's September 2026 hardware survey shows that Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070 has climbed to the top of the Steam hardware rankings. According to the survey, 5.86 percent of the surveyed PCs are equipped with this graphics card, surpassing the previous leader, the RTX 3060. This rise coincides with a significant increase in the number of PCs configured in Chinese, a trend that had previously affected rankings earlier in the year. Valve conducts monthly surveys asking a portion of its Steam users to report their PC configurations. Participation is optional and anonymous, with the sample of users changing each month. These surveys help players and developers understand the most commonly used hardware, as exact sales figures are not publicly available. The specialized site VideoCardz has compiled data on all RTX 50 cards, from the RTX 5050 to the RTX 5090. These cards are found in 18.21 percent of surveyed PCs in September, compared to about 12.93 percent in August. The RTX 5060 rises to 4.20 percent, and the RTX 5060 Ti reaches 3.87 percent. No AMD or Intel graphics cards make it into the top 10. Other survey results show similar rapid shifts. The 32 GB of RAM now surpasses the 16 GB, at 42.22 percent of PCs compared to 37.82 percent, reversing the previous month's trend. The 1440p (2560 × 1440 pixels) screens also increased in popularity, moving from 21.86 percent to 27.04 percent of primary screens in just one month. According to Wccftech, the proportion of PCs configured in Simplified Chinese has increased by 7.42 points in one month, now representing 31.39 percent of participants. This shift in the sample is believed to explain the rise of the RTX 5070. In February 2026, Tom's Hardware suggested that the rise of the RTX 5070 might be linked to the popularity of cybercafés in China, where hundreds of users can connect to the same machine, potentially giving a single configuration more weight in the survey. The RTX 5070 has shown consistent growth on Steam since its launch in March 2025. In August, before this recent rise, it was already the most common RTX 50 card, ahead of the RTX 5060 and its 2.98 percent. The October survey, to be published at the beginning of November, will show whether the RTX 5070 can maintain its top position.