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.
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tipoo - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
This is an important counterpoint to the "PC shipments are falling" doom and gloom. PC shipments are falling because a 5 year old 2500K can still run modern games if the GPU allows. But PC /gaming components/ are on the upswing, so it's still a great time to be a PC gamer. Complete system sales are tertiary.BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
This sums up the state of the declining computer sales nicely. While CPU performance and platform features (minor nod to USB) haven't pushed the performance envelope enough to matter AND software isn't demanding more, the GPU industry is driven by pent-up demand for a die shrink and widespread increases in screen resolution.Threska - Sunday, December 4, 2016 - link
Well the killer uses for GPUs are going to be VR and machine learning.0ldman79 - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
That's not necessarily a problem.We need tech to settle a bit. That might actually increase overall ownership and total market penetration. Having to upgrade the machine every two years just to keep up has kept a lot of people out of the market for anything but the cheapo computer.
Strunf - Thursday, December 8, 2016 - link
People didn't upgrade the machines every two years to keep up, CPU wise we have reached a good enough CPU for the average user like 10 years ago, people who upgrade every 2 years are enthusiasts and they will keep to do so, the ones who stopped upgrading are the ones that have a already good enough PC... or the vast majority of PC users and companies.There isn't really a problem, PC shipment will keep going down cause a PC has nowadays a very long useful life and cause of other technologies, tablets already replaced the PC on many households... my guess in a few years Gamers will represent the vast majority of the PC users and until then desktop PC sales will keep going down, and even then there are new technologies that allow to play PC Games over the network without even having a PC.
stephenbrooks - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
Another thing to bear in mind with these graphs is the comparative improvement of integrated graphics over the time frame. It must be eating the low-end of discrete GPUs by this point.Samus - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
The problem isn't just a 5 year old 2500K is adequate for most common games, but many other tasks, especially simple content consumption, are clearly delegated to other devices most prominently smart phones and tablets.Unless you desire a PC for gaming, or you are a business owner that is sticking to the legacy operations schema (and not modernizing your IT infrastructure) then desktop PC's don't offer any clear compelling advantage over laptops and mobile devices.
Meteor2 - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link
Well, AIOs look nice, and are nice to use. Whether they're actually 'desktops', as they use laptop components, is another question.