We have read a lot over the last 12 months about AMD’s surge to challenge Intel at the top of the PC processor market, and how the company could do the same in mobile. However, it seems no-one was paying attention to Nvidia. The company enjoyed a major bump in the GPU market over the last quarter.
There was a time when the gaming PC market was niche enough that it could not influence the wider PC market. However, with desktop PC sales declining, gaming rigs are taking up more of the pie.
Casual consumers increasingly don’t want PCs, but hardcore gamers will always be there. With that in mind, the GPU market is still doing well, driven by gamers. Industry tracking firm Jon Peddie Research says Nvidia grew its market share thanks to a 29.53 percent quarter-to-quarter bump in GPU shipments.
This allowed the company to maintain its recent trend of topping AMD in the market. It is worth noting, these are the two major discrete GPU players, while Intel specialises in integrated silicon. Through the third quarter of 2017, Nvidia jumped to 19.3% of the total market. AMD also grew by 7.63 percent or 13% of the market. Overall, AMD’s share shrunk including its integrated business.
Intel continued to dominate the overall market and also grew by 5.01 percent. This allowed the company to take 67.8% of the overall GPU market. However, it is again worth pointing out that AMD and Nvidia are the true competitors for the high-end gaming market.
“The Gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was once again the bright spot in the market in the quarter,” reads the Jon Peddie Research report. “The desktop gain is attributed to gaming and cryptocurrency. That helped AMD and Nvidia gain market share.”
Gaming GPUs Becoming Increasingly Important
Showing that gamers are becoming big, ahem, players in the PC market, discrete GPU shipments accounted for 39.55 percent of all PCs.
“AMD’s shipments of desktop APUs, increased 7.1 percent from the previous quarter,” Jon Peddie Research’s report adds. “AMD’s notebook APU shipments were up 2.2 percent. Desktop discrete GPUs increased 16.1% from last quarter, and notebook discrete shipments increased 5.2%. AMD’s total PC graphics shipments increased 7.6% from the previous quarter.”
