May 2026 Steam Hardware Survey data shows only 8.54% of Nvidia RTX owners still use RTX 20 series GPUs, prompting a retrospective on how Turing architecture mirrors Windows 7's legacy. Like Windows 7, the RTX 20 series introduced ideas — ray tracing, DLSS, Tensor cores — that seemed premature at launch but became foundational to modern PC gaming. Subsequent GPU generations refined these concepts rather than replacing them, and RTX 20 series cards remain functional today thanks to continued support for DLSS 4.5, hardware ray tracing, and modern DirectX features.
Table of contents
The RTX 20 series was ahead of its timeEvery generation after the RTX 20 series simply finished what Turing startedThe RTX 20 series is now the oldest generation still hanging on276 Impressions