Discrete Desktop GPU Market Trends Q3 2016: GPU Shipments Hit Two-Year High
by Anton Shilov on November 28, 2016 9:00 AM ESTGaming GPUs Are Gaining Traction, But Mainstream GPUs Are Still Strong
In our overview of Q2 2016, we mentioned that shipments of higher-end graphics processors were growing, whereas sales of mainstream GPUs were declining in the recent years as a result of major improvements of AMD’s integrated graphics and Intel’s iGPUs. In particular, sales of enthusiast-class adapters hit 5.9 million units in 2015, which was a record. This year is not that good for expensive graphics cards, but shipments of gaming-grade desktop GPUs are still very high.
Sales of enthusiast-class desktop AIBs in Q3 2016 were considerably lower than sales of enthusiast-class standalone desktop GPUs in the same period a year ago. Nonetheless, we are still talking about around ~1.5 million units, which seems to be higher than what we have seen historically. Moreover, since JPR considers everything that costs between $250 and $900 as “enthusiast”, it is obvious that unit shipments do not necessarily reflect revenues earned by AMD and NVIDIA. Moreover, since AMD and NVIDIA officially sell the Radeon RX 480 and the GeForce GTX 1060 for $249 and demand for these products (which performance is on par with much more expensive predecessors) was probably very high during the quarter, it is likely that some of the “enthusiast” buyers were classified as “performance” ($249 and below) buyers in Q3 2016.
| Fall 2016 GPU Pricing Comparison | ||||||
| Market Segment | AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| Enthusiast $250 - $900 |
$1200 | TITAN X (Pascal) | ||||
| $599 | GeForce GTX 1080 | |||||
| $379 | GeForce GTX 1070 | |||||
| Performance $100 - $249 |
Radeon RX 480 (8GB) | $249 | GeForce GTX 1060 6GB | |||
| Radeon RX 480 (4GB) | $229 | |||||
| Radeon RX 470 | $199 | GeForce GTX 1060 3GB | ||||
| $139 | GeForce GTX 1050 Ti | |||||
| Radeon RX 460 (4GB) | $119 | |||||
| Radeon RX 460 (2GB) | $109 | GeForce GTX 1050 | ||||
| Mainstream <$99 |
No New GPUs | <$100 | No New GPUs | |||
Despite the fact that shipments of higher-end standalone video cards dropped year-over-year (YoY) in the third quarter, gaming-grade graphics adapters (enthusiast + performance) hit around seven million units. The industry still supplied over five million of mainstream boards in Q3, which is quite a lot. Nonetheless, performance and enthusiast-class desktop AIBs have been outselling mainstream graphics cards for five consecutive quarters now.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
Shadowmaster625 - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
It's actually rather sad that discrete GPU sales are only up 10% vs a year ago when they had been sandbagging on 2011 process tech for 4 years. I would have expected 14nm/16nm to provide a larger boost to sales.lefty2 - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
This is because no one is buying desktops anymore. All the top tech companies give there employees laptops, not desktops: http://www.techworm.net/2016/11/computerlaptop-big...TheinsanegamerN - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
And the majority of those desktops were using integrated solutions, not dedicated ones. Business moving to laptops hasnt had that big of an impact.Sarah Terra - Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - link
The slower sales are because of this reason: Nvidia has been milking process and architures for abnormal periods in order to maximize profts. As such a 2-3 generation old GPU is usually still "good enough" for most poeple, much like how users clung to sandy bridge. Back in the day, if you had a 3 year old GPU you were left in the dust, upgrades were far more frequent and necessary to keep pace. Nvidia is eseentially monopolizing themselves to a smaller market share, more competition will boost sales.Atique786 - Friday, October 1, 2021 - link
This is a very informative and interesting article. I have enjoyed reading your post and have come to the conclusion that you are a professional writer.https://realrelaxmassagechairreview.com/
<a href="https://realrelaxmassagechairreview.com/">... Relax Massage Chairs</a>
<a href="https://realrelaxmassagechairreview.com/real-relax... Relax Massage Chair Review</a>
<a href="https://realrelaxmassagechairreview.com/real-relax... Relax 2020 Massage Chair</a>
OldManMcNasty - Thursday, December 8, 2016 - link
Our engineers get whatever they want, I have a SurFace Pro 4 but I also have a virtual workstation with a Nvidia vGPU. If you're not an engineer, you're given a virtual desktop or you can select an iPad.Amna - Monday, February 14, 2022 - link
I really like the blog.I have shared your site with many friends and family. It is always a pleasure to read.<a href="https://realrelaxmassagechairreview.com/real-relax... Real Relax Massage Chair</a>
nathanddrews - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
Larger than 10%? Why would you expect that?DanNeely - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link
Steadily bigger died and more efficient 28nm designs kept the performance gains coming, despite the process lag there wasn't a correspondingly huge buildup of demand.BurntMyBacon - Thursday, December 1, 2016 - link
@Shadowmaster625: "It's actually rather sad that discrete GPU sales are only up 10% vs a year ago when they had been sandbagging on 2011 process tech for 4 years."You are making a perhaps faulty assumption that most people buying GPUs know or care what processes nodes do for the video card they are buying. In my estimation, more people are concerned with how much it costs and if it does what they want it to do. I don't suspect many of them track how new cards compare to the last gen products, much less the several generations back that they would need to know to be aware of the process node stall.