Radeons take back graphics card market share

[Final8ty]

Apart from price cuts, there hasn't been much in the way of good news on the AMD processor front lately. As any enthusiast grappling with which card to buy will tell you, the Radeon maker is much more competitive in the graphics arena. Jon Peddie Research's market share numbers concur, and they say AMD took market share from Nvidia last quarter. Radeons made up 40.3% of discrete graphics shipments, up from 37.8% last quarter. Meanwhile, GeForce cards saw their market share drop from 61.9% to 59.3%.

You'll notice the numbers don't add up to 100% exactly. S3 and Matrox are still shipping graphics cards, though even combined, they make up just 0.4% of the market.

The real action is between the big dogs. JPR credits the early introduction of the Radeon HD 7000 series, coupled with Nvidia's initial Kepler supply issues, for the shift in market share between the two. If you look at the numbers from last year, the relative positions are similar. In the second quarter of 2011, AMD had 41.2% of the pie, while Nvidia's market share was 58.4%.

As a whole, the graphics card market declined 7% from this quarter last year. JPR won't weigh in on whether that trend will continue, citing uncertainties associated with "world-wide economic conditions," but it does note that AMD's A-series APUs are replacing budget add-in cards. Intel's ever-improving HD Graphics implementations are likely lessening demand for low-end discrete cards, too. With desktop Trinity chips flexing faster integrated Radeons just around the corner, the trend would seem to be toward slow erosion from the bottom up. That's not necessarily a bad thing for consumers, since it means the baseline quality of "free" integrated graphics is rising.

The JPR press release that hit our inbox isn't online just yet. When the PR pops up, you should be able to find it here

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/23482

[EniGmA1987]

IMO the graphics card shipments will slowly decline until we finally get a new generation of consoles. Right now no one needs a better GPU, that will change when the consoles hit (a good 4 years late)

[Manicdan]

IMO the graphics card shipments will slowly decline until we finally get a new generation of consoles. Right now no one needs a better GPU, that will change when the consoles hit (a good 4 years late)

+1
interesting to see them say that nvidia had supply issues, since i KNOW that will become the major debate point of this thread in just a few hours. even though 680s and 7900s are not the highest sellers, that stock should matter very little. i think what really caused sales to spike was a damn price drop we finally got around april. the prior year was almost flat for price changes. i think that could also account for lowered sales (it was really too expensive to upgrade for way too long)

[highoctane]

I wouldn't blame the shifting on available parts alone, what I see is Nvidia failed to deliver anything new for the mainstream price ranges while AMD was covered top to bottom with a new lineup.

[SKYMTL]

This totally makes sense to me. NVIDIA's rollout of Kepler has been quite slow up until now which has caused a significant gap to open up between generations.

Another issue NVIDIA is running into is Ivy Bridge. Many notebook models that used to carry NVIDIA discrete chips have moved to IVB-only setups.

[Manicdan]

Another issue NVIDIA is running into is Ivy Bridge. Many notebook models that used to carry NVIDIA discrete chips have moved to IVB-only setups.

great point, but do you think it also means that amd notebooks dont count the graphics part of the APU that use to count as a dedicated card? its not as many sales as intel laptops, but it should still make a few % difference.

[Hornet331]

IMO the graphics card shipments will slowly decline until we finally get a new generation of consoles. Right now no one needs a better GPU, that will change when the consoles hit (a good 4 years late)

I doubt you will see much gain in graphic performance on "next gen" consoles. The current direction looks rather meh. MS is in full force to try to make the xbox of some kind of media center who also "can" play games. WiiU is already not shaping up as a graphics monster and sony... ha sony will be glad when they survive the next 2 years, so if they release any sort of console it will rather a refresh of the ps3 then a completely new design with much "horse power"

[SKYMTL]

great point, but do you think it also means that amd notebooks dont count the graphics part of the APU that use to count as a dedicated card? its not as many sales as intel laptops, but it should still make a few % difference.

I believe APUs are NOT considered discrete. In addition, AMD's current APU shipments are unfortunately infinitesimal compared to Intel's mobile CPU presence.

[DilTech]

IMO the biggest factor in all of this is simple; NVidia STILL doesn't have a new part in the $125-$249 market. Sure, they can get a gtx 480 at $200'ish and beat anything in that price bracket, but the fact is a lot of people spending $200 or less likely don't have the power supply to run said card.

[Manicdan]

I believe APUs are NOT considered discrete. In addition, AMD's current APU shipments are unfortunately infinitesimal compared to Intel's mobile CPU presence.

i know, i said the same thing. mobile shipments are like 90% intel right now, but that 10% that is amd is mostly APUs. some of those were IGPs and some were discrete cards, id think atleast 1/4 of that 10% went from discrete to APU, so around 2-3% of all laptops that use to carry amd discrete cards now dont. granted nvidia saw probably a worse decline. its almost like this explains the decline of discrete gpus.

[tajoh111]

http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?...g&mid=12013727

This is from mercury reports. Considering Nvidia surpassing expected earnings and AMD having a less than profitable income in terms of earnings, I wonder which one is more true. Also from steam hardware survey AMD has been on the losing end.

overall
AMD 28,155 units 22.8% share, -1.8% from Q1, -1.3% from Q2-2011
nvidia 18,950 units 15.3% share, +0.2% from Q1, -4.5% from Q2-2011
intel 75,80 units 61.4% share, +1.7% from Q1, +6.0% from Q2-2011

discrete
AMD 14,000 units, 42.9% share, -2.1% from Q1, -2.5% from Q2-2011
nvidia 18,600 untis, 57.1% share, +2.1% from Q1, +2.5% from Q2-2011

They had Nvidia gain marketshare over AMD, although rates are pretty similar.

What makes me believe that the mercury report is more accurate is their financials in their most recent report. AMD's revenue shrunk from their graphics division from 382 to 367 in a quarter that is usually up. In contrast, Nvidia's revenue grew in the graphic area 579 to 668 million. I have a hard time believing the Jp report considering their financials.

These are from their financial reports.

http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases...2012jul19.aspx
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....&p=irol-irhome

[Ket]

Now if only AMD/ATI could make half decent drivers they would be on to something... slashing prices to stupidly low levels (£220 for a HD7950 anyone?) alone won't win them the war. I'll be glad when the new generation of consoles hit, they should really at least have the equivalent of a GTX460/560 in them, which while far from cutting edge would be a significant and welcome push in the right direction. Might actually see games start to go forwards again instead of backwards.

[e[N]eq]

Will be interesting to see how the console market goes, one can argue wether they will move towards higher quality games (which naturally incurs increased development costs) or if they stay with the current stage (with some improvements) thinking its good enough and it improves margins.

However the BIG change coming in the next generation or the next one depending on how the TV/Monitor market adopts the tech is the 4k and above displays, the biggest reason for the stagnant discrete GPU market is ofcourse that even a low end gfx card is good enough to play most games (including onchip solutions) but when move away for the crappy 1080p generation (which should have died a long time ago) things will def. change.

/Q

[Final8ty]

http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?...g&mid=12013727

This is from mercury reports. Considering Nvidia surpassing expected earnings and AMD having a less than profitable income in terms of earnings, I wonder which one is more true. Also from steam hardware survey AMD has been on the losing end.

overall
AMD 28,155 units 22.8% share, -1.8% from Q1, -1.3% from Q2-2011
nvidia 18,950 units 15.3% share, +0.2% from Q1, -4.5% from Q2-2011
intel 75,80 units 61.4% share, +1.7% from Q1, +6.0% from Q2-2011

discrete
AMD 14,000 units, 42.9% share, -2.1% from Q1, -2.5% from Q2-2011
nvidia 18,600 untis, 57.1% share, +2.1% from Q1, +2.5% from Q2-2011

They had Nvidia gain marketshare over AMD, although rates are pretty similar.

What makes me believe that the mercury report is more accurate is their financials in their most recent report. AMD's revenue shrunk from their graphics division from 382 to 367 in a quarter that is usually up. In contrast, Nvidia's revenue grew in the graphic area 579 to 668 million. I have a hard time believing the Jp report considering their financials.

These are from their financial reports.

http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases...2012jul19.aspx
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....&p=irol-irhome

AMD have had the right effect!

Today over 100pc of 7950 sold and over 250pc of 7800 series in a day - WOW!

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...9#post22624449

[qcmadness]

http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?...g&mid=12013727

This is from mercury reports. Considering Nvidia surpassing expected earnings and AMD having a less than profitable income in terms of earnings, I wonder which one is more true. Also from steam hardware survey AMD has been on the losing end.

overall
AMD 28,155 units 22.8% share, -1.8% from Q1, -1.3% from Q2-2011
nvidia 18,950 units 15.3% share, +0.2% from Q1, -4.5% from Q2-2011
intel 75,80 units 61.4% share, +1.7% from Q1, +6.0% from Q2-2011

discrete
AMD 14,000 units, 42.9% share, -2.1% from Q1, -2.5% from Q2-2011
nvidia 18,600 untis, 57.1% share, +2.1% from Q1, +2.5% from Q2-2011

They had Nvidia gain marketshare over AMD, although rates are pretty similar.

What makes me believe that the mercury report is more accurate is their financials in their most recent report. AMD's revenue shrunk from their graphics division from 382 to 367 in a quarter that is usually up. In contrast, Nvidia's revenue grew in the graphic area 579 to 668 million. I have a hard time believing the Jp report considering their financials.

These are from their financial reports.

http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases...2012jul19.aspx
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....&p=irol-irhome

Q2 is the weakest quarter in a year.

[dasa]

Now if only AMD/ATI could make half decent drivers they would be on to something... slashing prices to stupidly low levels (£220 for a HD7950 anyone?) alone won't win them the war. I'll be glad when the new generation of consoles hit, they should really at least have the equivalent of a GTX460/560 in them, which while far from cutting edge would be a significant and welcome push in the right direction. Might actually see games start to go forwards again instead of backwards.

nvidia seem to have more problems with drivers at the moment than amd
not so much that amd has gotten better but more that nvida has gotten worse

i dont hold much hope for next gen consoles if they move to 1080p on really cheap hardware i doubt the level of graphics is going to improve

[Tao~]

IMO the graphics card shipments will slowly decline until we finally get a new generation of consoles. Right now no one needs a better GPU, that will change when the consoles hit (a good 4 years late)

great point but I am not sure it will hold this time around. new consoles -> game devs ++ the graphics -> IGP not good enough -> upgrade with budget gpus . however, this holds when the increment in graphics capability of consoles is more than that in IGP, which was true in the intel chipset period. I am not sure how much faster next gen consoles will be compared to the then contemporary integrated gpus (>=haswell/kaveri) . as i see it, the budget segment is gone, which is a loss in volume shipment for nvidia and amd (who can probably make up with apus). even the mid-range cards are under threat , soon it seems anything <todays $150 will be useless for buying a gpu.

[Lanek]

Maybe allready posted so hence i post it there.

AMD announced they've hired John Gustafson as Chief Graphics Product Architect. Gustafson has significant experience in parallel computing and is known as the guy behind the Gustafson's Law.
AMD announced today that the visionary behind Gustafson's Law, John Gustafson, has joined the company as senior fellow and chief product architect, Graphics Business Unit. In this role, Gustafson will set the technical vision for the AMD graphics business unit, driving the technology roadmap and platform for the AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro product lines as well as new technology planning and execution of business objectives. Gustafson will be based in Sunnyvale and will help evangelize AMD graphics leadership internally and externally.

"Our industry-leading graphics technology predicates that we consistently deliver the most differentiated and superior graphics processor unit (GPU) architectures and products -- without compromise," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics. "With the growing importance of parallel compute in defining the computing experience, John brings the full package of industry experience and knowledge needed to help us expand and execute our AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro graphics technology programs, and will help forge an aggressive long-term roadmap that allows AMD to continue to lead and win with our gaming and virtualization technologies."

Gustafson is a 35-year veteran of the computing industry. He joins AMD from Intel, where he headed the company's eXtreme Technologies Lab, conducting cutting-edge research on energy-efficient computing and memory, as well as optical, energy and storage technologies. Prior to that, he served as CEO at Massively Parallel Technologies and CTO at ClearSpeed Technology, a high-performance computing company. Gustafson has also held key management and research positions at numerous companies including Sun Microsystems, Ames Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.

In 1988, Gustafson wrote Reevaluating Amdahl's Law to address limitations of Amdahl's Law, which models the maximum potential performance improvement from parallel processing. Gustafson proved that processors working in parallel can solve larger problems, marking a change in how the industry viewed parallel processing. Today, Gustafson's Law is widely accepted among academia as the standard for parallel processing education.

"I look forward to working with my teams to expand the AMD graphics technology roadmap," said Gustafson. "The next decade will serve as a watershed era for GPUs in graphics rendering power and compute capabilities, creating the opportunity for multi-teraFLOPS APUs. In terms of raw performance, the evolution of discrete graphics has far exceeded that of the CPU, and the programmable characteristics of today's GPUs have thrown open a door that could very well see it rival the CPU as the most critical element of computer performance in the near future."

Gustafson holds both a master's and a doctorate degree in applied mathematics from Iowa State University, and a bachelor's degree in the same from the California Institute of Technology. He also holds numerous patents and has authored an extensive array of technical publications.

[Ket]

nvidia seem to have more problems with drivers at the moment than amd
not so much that amd has gotten better but more that nvida has gotten worse

i dont hold much hope for next gen consoles if they move to 1080p on really cheap hardware i doubt the level of graphics is going to improve

Nvidia have started to slack off with their drivers, but they are still lightyears ahead of anything AMD/ATI can offer. I seriously put this down to the fact the nvidia driver team actually do their job unlike AMD/ATI driver team who seem to be more interested in tweeting and blogging. From everything I've seen it does look like next gen consoles will take a huge and welcome leap in GPU power, HERE is the expected specs for the PS4. IT wouldn't surprise me if the GPU gets further upgraded considering how cheap mid table GPUs are.

[dasa]

thats your experience\opinion on amd drivers i guess just like i know some people that have a dozen dead amd cards and no dead nvidia
but i have always had much the same amount of problems with amd vs nvidia and would say that typically there is no difference they both have problems in some games most of which get fixed eventually although it seems to take nvidia longer to fix the lately often ~6 months
what i am seeing on forums from people asking for help is also in line with this

that ps4 info looks rather dodgy

[Ket]

I used to have a lot of problems with nvidia drivers and no problems with ATI drivers, now it is very much the case of a role reversal. AMD/ATI tend to have pretty poor scaling with anything more than 2 GPUs, poor multi monitor support (well not necessarily poor but not well supported), not to mention the inability to fix such things as the GSOD. These are all more or less fundamental aspects of the drivers, if you can't pull these things off either give up the GPU arena or fire the current driver coding team. I would pick the latter of the two, at least for the moment.

[Manicdan]

my 680 is nearing 6 months old, and theyve released ONE update since then.
the moment i switch to nvidia, they fail hard on their drivers. i guess its all my fault really, sorry guys.

(no i dont count beta drivers because theres a reason they never finalized them)

[zalbard]

(no i dont count beta drivers because theres a reason they never finalized them)

They are only Beta because WHQL certification takes a lot of time and money. So it only belongs to major updates once in a while.
This is true for both brands.

[Particle]

Right now no one needs a better GPU

I can appreciate where thinking like this comes from, but it doesn't reflect reality very well. There are a large number of gamers who are always on the lookout for something faster, myself included. I've been waiting patiently for HD 8K series cards to launch so that I can replace these two 6970s I have. They're not really cutting it in some of the games I play at the resolutions I play at and with the detail levels I'd like to run.

[situman]

I'm still on my 5870 running it with IB and pairing it with Virtu MVP. Instant GPU life extension. The 7870, but I just dont see the need at this point.