facebook rss twitter

AMD claws back discrete graphics market share

by Mark Tyson on 18 September 2015, 13:31

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacurw

Add to My Vault: x

A recent report from MKM Partners is said to show that AMD has managed to claw back some market share from Nvidia in the discrete GPU (dGPU) market. Barron's financial magazine published a story based on the MKM report, earlier in the week, headlined "AMD Retakes Ground in Graphics".

That last time we heard about the state of play in the dGPU market was only a month ago. Mercury Research published its latest quarterly data showing that in Q2 2015 Nvidia had widened the gap with AMD. That data suggested Nvidia had captured an 82 per cent market share leaving AMD with only 18 per cent.

At that time it was too early to gauge any success on AMD's part with the launch of its pioneering HBM equipped graphics cards or its refreshed R300 series. Well it looks like enough time has passed to see some improvements for AMD but unfortunately MKM hasn't provided much hard data to get our teeth into. The firm seems to use pricing and supply data to infer sales volumes.

AMD's recent pricing performance is better than the historical average. It usually suffers from high-single-digit percentage declines per quarter. The data infers that AMD hasn't had to use cut-throat pricing to sell in the current quarter. Barron's reveals that the retail prices of the AMD R9-390X and R9-380 are slightly above the MSRPs, which is positive for AMD. Looking at the AMD HBM flagships, the pricing is flat but stock is also said to be scarce. It is reported that fewer AiB partners are now making such cards available to retail.

From the above observations, and similar data from Nvidia retail pricing, it is concluded that AMD has gained ground at $200 and $400 price points but Nvidia "dominates the premium high end."

While we don't get any hard figures from the above, it's interesting to see this data while we wait for Q3 and Q4 2015 dGPU shipment figures to be published by the likes of Jon Peddie or Mercury.



HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
I wonder how AMD will do now, the 3XX while they are rebrands they are still good cards for their money and the dx12 support will give them a good selling point (before pascal is out at least).

Also I want to see what is going on with the fury line because I haven't seen much availability and seems like a wasted opportunity since they can perform pretty nice for the price.
Well, I hope so, I'm buying a whole new PC with an R9 390 and I don't want to be left with a GPU from a dying company.

I'd go for a R9 390X, but over $100 premium for extra 10% performance, which, if I'm lucky, I'll get from overclocking, wouldn't be money well spent. And even if I get a poorly overclocking unit, it'll still be a decent performer. Maybe I'll even add a second one at the end of the year…
I think that AMD suffer from the “old tech, rebranded” train of thought (amongst those who have some knowledge of graphics), whereas nVidia can seem to be new tech developers.
Most folk though have absolutely no idea or actual interest in graphics, as long as their devices perform to the level they want. Bigger numbers impress though, so a salesperson/flyer saying graphics XXXX is 4GB while xx is only 2GB can help garner a sale.
Personally my ageing HD 6950 2GB (with unlocked pipes) is still playing all my games fine in fine detail up to the max resolution on my monitor of 1200P.

I'm holding off 'til at least the Rx 4xx series and hoping AMD finally puts rebranding to bed.
Myss_tree
I think that AMD suffer from the “old tech, rebranded” train of thought (amongst those who have some knowledge of graphics)
Let's not forget how various 9800 were rebranded 8800. And that even the GTX was 9800GTX+ ;)

My guess is that it is not really the goal of either company to rebrand over and over, but it is a delay tactic when for one reason or another, they could not get their next big thing in the market on time. Missing even one product cycle can prove fatal to a company (re: 3DFX).