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NV-vs-AMD Nvidia

Later on Nvidia's record-breaking quarter earlier this month, it was clear that the overall gaming market had to be in adequately skillful shape. New data confirms this trend, both relative to the previous quarter and the same menses a year agone. No thing where you look, overall gaming shipments are up — but the gains from those improvements aren't being spread every bit betwixt AMD and Nvidia.

This new data is courtesy of John Peddie Research and has been extensively discussed by Anandtech. First, the general marketplace news — gaming GPU sales take rebounded to an estimated 13 meg unit shipments between AMD and Nvidia, with AMD accounting for roughly 3.eight million units compared to Nvidia'southward estimated nine.25 one thousand thousand units. That's the best quarterly performance since 2013 and it arrives while the residual of the PC industry continues to contract. Clearly there's some truth to the argument that gaming and other high-end boutique products have become the success story of the PC business organisation. It besides explains why nosotros've seen then many firms trying to push into loftier-end machines as opposed to refreshing mass market hardware.

JPR besides reports that sales of mainstream cards are dropping off compared to higher-cease equipment. This has always been expected to some degree, since steady improvements to APU hardware inevitably obviates the graphics cards that used to compete in that space. AMD and Nvidia both refreshed their $100 segments in 2016, but information technology wouldn't surprise us if both companies eventually transition to focusing on the $150 and upward segment.

I of the well-nigh interesting aspects of this report is AMD's GPU shipments past quarter from 2009 to the present day.

JPR-QuarterlyShipments

AMD's unit shipments held adequately steady throughout 2013 only declined sharply thereafter. In Q1 2014, AMD shipped four.9 one thousand thousand GPUs. In Q2 2015, the company bottomed out at ane.69 million GPUs, a decline of 66%. In Feb 2014, we worried that the surge in cryptocurrency mining could have catastrophic consequences for AMD's GPU market share, and in retrospect, that's precisely what happened.

For those of yous who don't recall: In 2013, cryptocurrency mining and rampant speculation sent GPU prices skyrocketing, just equally AMD launched its new Hawaii refresh. This situation took months to settle downwards, kneecapping AMD's ability to seed GPUs into the marketplace. GPUs that should accept sold for $300 were hitting $500, while $500 cards were upwardly to nearly $grand. While this might have been a price that cryptocurrency miners were willing to pay, the gaming market place wasn't — and since AMD wasn't behind the increased prices, the visitor didn't log any increased revenue off the gouging.

According to Anandtech's data, Nvidia's shipments increased from 8.68 million GPUs in Q2 2013 to ix.74 million in Q4 2013, while AMD'due south sales figures actually fell, from 5.32 meg units in Q2 to five.25 1000000 in Q4. By the middle of 2014, the cryptocurrency boom was over, but by then Nvidia's Maxwell family was on the horizon. Republic of the fiji islands helped refresh AMD's production line, but the big jump from 2.82 million to 3.eight 1000000 units in Q3 2016 was the first serious surge we've seen for Team Red in years. It's a positive evolution, but it also highlights just how far AMD had fallen. Nvidia's huge gaming acquirement heave, from $781 million in Q2 of its FY 2017 to $1244 million in Q3 FY 2017 is further evidence that much of the PC revenue gains are piling up on Team Green'due south side of the equation.

AMD is picking up its own increased revenue thanks to the Xbox Ane S and PlayStation four Pro refresh cycles, merely it makes relatively depression margins on its console business due to how it structured its royalty payments from Microsoft and Sony. AMD's full CPU and GPU business revenue (Calculating and Graphics) segment was $472 1000000 in Q3 2016. V years ago, AMD recorded Q3 2011 CPU and APU sales of $one.286 billion, while graphics deemed for $403 million. In other words: AMD's combined CPU and GPU business, not counting its console revenue, is just 27% the size it was 5 years ago. We're glad to see the GPU side of the PC business recovering, only AMD has however to unveil more information about its Vega launch plans beyond stating it will launch the architecture in the first one-half of 2017, and right now, high-end gamers are clearly snapping up Pascal hardware, not waiting around to see what AMD can build.