Jacob Roach/Digital Trends
In June, we reported that sales of clobbering GPUs had taken a hit, despite some of the best graphics cards available. Now, things are finally starting to turn around, with the latest market reports showing signs of growth over the past few months despite what’s traditionally been a weak time of year for graphics cards.
This scoop comes from Jon Purdy Research, which just released its latest report on the graphics card market. While the year-to-date figures are grim, the last quarter showed great potential. GPU shipments to grow by 11.6% in the second quarter of 2023. Despite this improvement, the market still saw a year-over-year decrease of 27%. This includes all platforms and all types of GPUs. For desktop GPUs, the annual loss is even worse, down 36% compared to the same period last year, although desktop add-in boards (AIBs) grew 2.9%.
Jon Peddie Research says the quarterly growth is surprising, but overall it’s good news. The second quarter of the year is usually a bad time for the PC market, but shipments have increased significantly this year. While shipments and sales are two different things, the sudden increase in GPU shipments still bodes well for the market as a whole. Perhaps even more surprising is that AMD’s quarter was the best of all three manufacturers.
AMD was the only company to see market share growth last quarter, pulling away from Intel (-0.4% loss) and Nvidia (-0.8% loss) at 1.2% each. The increase in shipments is more impressive, however, as compared to the previous quarter AMD shipped 22.9% more graphics cards, followed by 11.7% for Intel and 7.5% for Nvidia. Although Nvidia had the highest total shipments in the quarter, according to the report, its best results were in notebooks, while AMD did well in desktops.
John Peddie Research
This growth in shipments is interesting for AMD. There wasn’t much going on outside of the RX 7600’s launch in May, so that could have contributed, but there’s probably more to it than that. The fact is that AMD’s last-gen GPUs, after cutting prices several times, are some of the most affordable cards to put inside a PC build. This strategy seems to be paying off for AMD, keeping demand high and helping it eliminate last-generation stock. Even current generation cards can usually be found for well below their initial list price these days. In Nvidia’s case, GPUs are usually around or slightly below list price, with some overclocked models selling for a higher price.
AMD hasn’t been doing much to compete against Nvidia in this generation, and it looks like it will be out of the race in the next generation as well. However, its upcoming RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards are priced as competitively as the RX 7600. This could add up to another good quarter for AMD.
Although there are some signs of improvement for graphics cards, John Peddie Research states that, “if the market has truly changed, it will never reach the levels it was 10 years ago,” referencing the steady decline in GPU sales. The past decade Despite this, the analyst believes that AMD, Nvidia and Intel are all expected to hold strong positions in the second half of the year.
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Source: www.digitaltrends.com
