[GameGPU] Q1 2015 GPU Market share

[n0x1ous]

I really hope Nvidia invents a new code-name scheme with Pascal that doesn't make any sense, so all this talk about what is and isn't high end, mid range, small, big, fat, ugly, cheap, and crappy can just go out the window and the discussion can stick to about what really matters - performance metrics.

I don't. The way they do it now lets informed enthusiasts know what to expect.

So you would prefer to buy the next x80 card from nvidia without knowing if its 300-400mm2 vs 500-600mm2 and where it sits in their stack? I guess if you like your milking extra thick......

 

[therealnickdanger]

I can't understand how the 960 even sells.

Don't you remember the huge marketing push NVIDIA rolled out for the 960? It "was built for esports", hence all the attention surrounding its performance in StarCraft 2, Dota 2, LoL, CS:GO. The most popular games in the WORLD now have an "official GPU". AMD should have thought of that sooner. It was a brilliant move on NVIDIA's part.

 

[SimianR]

Don't you remember the huge marketing push NVIDIA rolled out for the 960? It "was built for esports", hence all the attention surrounding its performance in StarCraft 2, Dota 2, LoL, CS:GO. The most popular games in the WORLD now have an "official GPU". AMD should have thought of that sooner. It was a brilliant move on NVIDIA's part.

This is a really good point. The games that the majority of people are playing just aren't demanding titles. When the average joe wants to get a new video card he asks his buddy on steam or League and they say "oh yeah grab that $200 nvidia card - AMD drivers suck". Or better yet, AMD isn't even mentioned or on their radar. AMD needs to do something to change this. Perception is everything.

 

[exar333]

This is a really good point. The games that the majority of people are playing just aren't demanding titles. When the average joe wants to get a new video card he asks his buddy on steam or League and they say "oh yeah grab that $200 nvidia card - AMD drivers suck". Or better yet, AMD isn't even mentioned or on their radar. AMD needs to do something to change this. Perception is everything.

Good points.

The 960 is a great card for those titles, but so are a lot of AMD cards priced at or below. The marketing is HUGE for sub $250 GPU options. Very true...

 

[shady28]

This is a really good point. The games that the majority of people are playing just aren't demanding titles. When the average joe wants to get a new video card he asks his buddy on steam or League and they say "oh yeah grab that $200 nvidia card - AMD drivers suck". Or better yet, AMD isn't even mentioned or on their radar. AMD needs to do something to change this. Perception is everything.

What do you suppose happens when Joe puts an R9 290 into his HP Envy 700xt performance desktop? Or his Dell XPS? Or his Asus Rog G20?

Snap.. Crackle..Pop.. :'(

What does AMD have for these systems?

 

[Kuiva maa]

Source

Fermi and Kepler owners must be upgrading to Maxwell in droves and HD5000-7000 series owners are tired of waiting! With 980Ti out, many HD5870/6970/7970/R9 290X owners will finally give in!

AMD is in serious trouble now. Their market share is reaching extremely dangerous levels whereupon NV's dominance of the market gives them even more leverage to control prices (which is bad for us gamers) and influence game development with GameWorks. All of that will make it that much harder for AMD to recover which could mean we are slowly moving to a monopoly position, similar to Intel vs. AMD in the CPU space.

With all the focus on Fiji Fury, I am starting to wonder if AMD has really lost focus of how important the mobile dGPU market segment is in the overall GPU industry. They keep putting all their eggs into the desktop basket which has shaped their GPU development into the wrong direction. With NV's bottom-up approach, their smallest units that make up the GPUs are very power efficient and thus NV can scale their graphics to various market segments. AMD's top-to-bottom approach to GPU building seems outdated in 2015.

NV has announced mobile G-Sync and it shouldn't be too long before 965M/970M/980M get refreshed with higher clocked parts come 2H of 2015. Without AMD having a strong mobile dGPU lineup for R9 300 series, they are soon going to drop < 20% market share if they have nothing to compete in the mobile dGPU segment until Pascal in 2H of 2016. I am one of the strong proponents that AMD should have focused a lot more on the mobile dGPUs, a faster growing market segment than desktop cards. Even if Fiji is competitive, it will do little to stop the bleeding considering NV's mobile dGPU stack is basically uncontested and besides Apple throwing a bone to AMD, no one is really interested in using AMD's mobile GPU chips in their laptops.

Want a prediction? Depending on time to market and general availability of new radeons, AMD market share will be 25-30% next quarter and around 35% by Q3. The main reason they lost market share is that they simply had no new cards. If you wanted to upgrade from 290 or 290X,well, you had nowhere to go but nvidia. If you were a returning radeon customer with an old or weaker card that wanted to upgrade to a 290 or a 290X ,there is an endless amount of quality used models everywhere for dirt cheap. Even people that simply browsed the market, were less likely to choose a radeon - outside the 285 and the niche 295x2, the rest of their cards are 2013 SKU. Even adding a bit of frequency,rebadging ,renaming and giving them a new cooler would boost their sales, let alone actually tweaking the chip itself.

 

[therealnickdanger]

What do you suppose happens when Joe puts an R9 290 into his HP Envy 700xt performance desktop? Or his Dell XPS? Or his Asus Rog G20?

Snap.. Crackle..Pop.. :'(

What does AMD have for these systems?

I put a WF 290 in a 430W Dell Inspiron midtower and it plays games really well. No problems so far. Worst case scenario, I have to replace the PSU if it ever explodes.

 

[SimianR]

For those less demanding titles (CS:Go, Dota2, etc) a 290 isn't going to come anywhere near it's peak power usage anyway, especially with Vsync on. But a 285 or a 270X would be a lot more practical I would think. AMD does need to get new cards out ASAP, even if they are rebrands, people don't like buying cards that have been out since 2013.

 

[shady28]

I put a WF 290 in a 430W Dell Inspiron midtower and it plays games really well. No problems so far. Worst case scenario, I have to replace the PSU if it ever explodes.

And this is why people will dislike AMD.

The 430W is a dell sourced upgrade to the normal Inspiron 300W PSU.

Even at that, you're advocating putting a card rated for a 600W PSU into a system with a 430W PSU.

And that's the type of thing you must do if you must for some reason go AMD.

Fortunately, there is another choice.

 

[ocre]

I really don't see any reason to drop the 970 to $299. What does AMD have that can force a price cut? $200 Tonga and $240 Hawaii isn't doing it now, so why will it when AMD just crosses out the 2 on the box and changes it to a 3 in their model numbers this month? I agree the 980 at $500 makes no sense when the 970 offers almost the same performance at $329 and the 980 Ti offers far superior performance at $649.

You guys dont seem to understand.

Nvidia is not making moves against AMD, they are making moves because they have shareholders.
Nvidia gained marketshare sure, but look at the numbers. They actually slipped 7% in overall shipments. You guys dont seem to understand that selling GPUs is how nvidia makes their money.

The game bundles, two triple AAA games with the 980 and 970, is it hard to imagine that this could be an attempt to boost sales? Why? Because the bulk of the people who were gonna buy the 980/970 bought them. Sales for a new GPU are strongest at launch. The demand dwindles over time.

Nvidia needs to sale GPUs in a shrinking market.

the 980ti came after the titanX. You can make up all the stories you want about how they were afraid of fiji. The truth is, Nvidia needs to sell their cards regardless of what AMD does.

You can bet nvidia had a rough idea of how many titanX gpus they would sale. And they needed to pick up more sales with the 980ti.

This is nvidia competing with themselves.

 

[ocre]

Not that either will move marketshare much it's the mobile dGPU and mainstream desktop dGPU sales that have produced the majority of the marketshare shift.

If you look at the report, i think you are mistaken

Jon pedddie highlights specifically state

• AMD&#8217;s quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased -14.6% .

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/add-in-board-report

The mobile share was lost sometime ago. The move this quarter wasnt due to the lost of mobile market share.
they dont even bring up mobile for AMD. that usually means it wasnt relevant in this report.

 

[Headfoot]

What do you suppose happens when Joe puts an R9 290 into his HP Envy 700xt performance desktop? Or his Dell XPS? Or his Asus Rog G20?

Snap.. Crackle..Pop.. :'(

What does AMD have for these systems?

You keep on with this nonsense. Any system that can handle a 970 can handle a 290. A 960 isnt even remotely in the same class as the 970 or 290. Stop with this fud garbage. OEM PSUs are hardly enough to power anything but what comes stock. A 960 will more often than not be too much. It's not AMD's problem or nVidias problem. It's the nature of designed an integrated system that people try to modify after the fact.

 

[shady28]

You keep on with this nonsense. Any system that can handle a 970 can handle a 290. A 960 isnt even remotely in the same class as the 970 or 290. Stop with this fud garbage. OEM PSUs are hardly enough to power anything but what comes stock. A 960 will more often than not be too much. It's not AMD's problem or nVidias problem. It's the nature of designed an integrated system that people try to modify after the fact.

So you say it's nonsense to point out the flaw of running GPUs rated by the Manufacturer (AMD) for 600W PSU's on a 430W PSU??

If you believe that recommending to stick with what the manufacturer (AMD) says is FUD, maybe you should be asking AMD why they have such high requirements when, according to you, they should be much lower? I mean, your qualifications must be significant to do that right? You must at least have a masters with decades of experience in the field, right?

And BTW, here on AT is the only place I see a hand full of people going around making those kinds of recommendations (running R9 290s on 400W PSUs).

 

[Headfoot]

So you say it's nonsense to point out the flaw of running GPUs rated by the Manufacturer (AMD) for 600W PSU's on a 430W PSU??

If you believe that recommending to stick with what the manufacturer (AMD) says is FUD, maybe you should be asking AMD why they have such high requirements when, according to you, they should be much lower? I mean, your qualifications must be significant to do that right? You must at least have a masters with decades of experience in the field, right?

And BTW, here on AT is the only place I see a hand full of people going around making those kinds of recommendations (running R9 290s on 400W PSUs).

Lol, nice dodge. You (intentionally?) miss the part where I say:

Any system that can handle a 970 can handle a 290

They pick a power supply for the original shipping configuration, and nearly nothing else will work properly. That's what you get going into an OEM machine. Be prepared to switch from the garbage PSU they provide you if you want to upgrade it. That's just how it is

 

[xthetenth]

But if you buy a card that's overpriced for its performance and don't get a PSU, you can repeat the experience next time you buy a card ad infinitum! /s

 

[Erenhardt]

But if you buy a card that's overpriced for its performance and don't get a PSU, you can repeat the experience next time you buy a card ad infinitum! /s

That was funny.. yet it shouldn't.

 

[Headfoot]

But if you buy a card that's overpriced for its performance and don't get a PSU, you can repeat the experience next time you buy a card ad infinitum! /s

Unless AMD comes out with a lower power consumption architecture relative to nVidia, in which case power consumption would no longer matter.

 

[Azix]

What do you suppose happens when Joe puts an R9 290 into his HP Envy 700xt performance desktop? Or his Dell XPS? Or his Asus Rog G20?

Snap.. Crackle..Pop.. :'(

What does AMD have for these systems?

I think the PCIe pins are a bigger problem. The power consumption on an i7 system with 285 is around 250W for example. It's not a big deal for 400 watt systems. 277 with 290, 314W with 290x. The actual output of the PSU does not need to be epic, but what they use might not have the connections easily.

http://www.techspot.com/review/946-nvidia-geforce-gtx-960/page7.html

Ultimately I think its advertising though. People don't buy the best always

 

[RussianSensation]

RS, I have enjoyed reading your thought provoking posts these last few months, but this one seems overly pessimistic. Regardless, I have high hopes for AMD, DX12 and the future of PC gaming.

Thanks a lot for the positive feedback! I try to be objective, which is why I can't really be optimistic about the current dGPU market based on the hard data we are seeing. These are Q1 2015 numbers and I expect things to get even worse for AMD for Q2 2015 (April-June 30, 2015) because NV lowered 980's price to $499 and has 980Ti ready 3 weeks before Fiji even drops. Even by selling R9 270 for $130, R9 280 for $150, R9 290 for $240-250 and R9 290X for $270-300 USD in US, AMD still lost market share in Q1 2015. What does that tell us about Q2 2015? We didn't see any dramatic changes from AMD in April-May 2015 which tells me NV most likely will gain even more market share over Q2 2015. We should probably expect AMD to lose yet another 1.5-2% in Q2 2015.

There is way too much importance placed on Fiji, very few people buy graphics cards in that range. Nvidia did not gain marketshare because they are selling Titan X in droves but because they released the GTX 970 while AMD in the same time frame released the appallingly priced R9 285...

I completely agree with you. I do not work in the GPU industry but just based on what I've seen in the last 5 years, NV really started to pull away from AMD once it got 300 design wins with Kepler in the mobile sector and they continued this push with Maxwell. Since NV keeps releasing brand new architectures every 2 years but AMD is using the older style approach where their design architectures to last 4-5 years (remember VLIW lasted from 2006 all the way to 2011!), AMD starts off good in the first 1-2 years of a new architecture but then it starts to age considering NV brings out a brand new architecture 2 years after. By the time Pascal is released in 2016, NV will have gone through 3 brand new architectures in 5 years (2012-2016), while AMD will still be on GCN, which traces its roots back to December 2011. It's a very risky strategy that AMD has implemented to rely on the same architecture and improving it over the course of 4-5 years to remain competitive.

I understand why AMD needed to create a new flagship chip to maintain their image and they can reuse it as shrunken 14nm HBM2 mid-range chip for next gen but they can't fit a 250-300W Fiji chip into laptops. What's their plan a 2048 shader Tonga XT again? They really need a 2560 or even 2816 shader card in laptops at 100-125W TDP and I have my doubts this is happening with R9 300M series.

It sounds like AMD will continue to ignore the mobile dGPU space for yet another 1.5 years until 14nm+HBM2. This is a devastating strategy because mobile dGPUs comprise > 50% of the entire discrete GPU market segment.

Now with GSync on laptops and fast and power efficient Maxwell gaming cards, why would the majority of mobile PC gamers buy a laptop with an AMD graphics card? They wouldn't! AMD is basically conceding the entire mobile dGPU market to NV (for gaming) and Intel (for basic tasks). Also, the pricing for AMD's mobile Tonga in laptops seems out of line with the superior 970M.

I am surprised AMD's mobile dGPU market share is not close to 0% at this point.

That picture is false. Kepler can support resource binding TIER2. I wrote the support for it to our engine last week.
Please, if you guys don't understand how is this works, than don't try to explain it.

Also GCN can support unlimited number of UAV, which is also a tested feature by me, because our engine can't activate every graphics effect on resource binding TIER2. We use more than 100 UAVs for the pipeline.

I am surprised how people who do not work in the industry or make software for games are even trying to argue with you, considering you even said you make software for the latest GCN and Kepler/Maxwell cards.

 

[shady28]

Lol, nice dodge. You (intentionally?) miss the part where I say:


They pick a power supply for the original shipping configuration, and nearly nothing else will work properly. That's what you get going into an OEM machine. Be prepared to switch from the garbage PSU they provide you if you want to upgrade it. That's just how it is

And if this is AMDs mentality, then so be it. AMD and you says "screw 80% of the market". Nvidia doesn't. So don't whine when AMDs market share reflects that.

Frankly I think this is your mentality, not AMDs. AMD simply doesn't have the R&D / engineering capability to compete.

 

[AtenRa]

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...pments-dropped-13-in-q12015-from-last-quarter

Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter

AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip
Year-to-year total GPU shipments dropped 2.9%—Desktop graphics down 12.6%, notebooks up 4.2%

Quick highlights

• AMD’s overall unit shipments decreased -17.80% quarter-to-quarter, Intel’s total shipments decreased -12.01% from last quarter, and Nvidia’s decreased -13.5%.
• The attach rate of GPUs (includes integrated and discrete GPUs) to PCs for the quarter was 148%, which was up 2.95% from last quarter, and 30.57% of PCs had discrete GPUs, which is up 0.39%.
• The overall PC market decreased -14.77% quarter-to-quarter, and decreased -6.5% year-to-year.
• Desktop graphics add-in boards (AIBs) that use discrete GPUs decreased -8.79% from last quarter—less than the PC market.

The quarter in general

AMD’s shipments of desktop heterogeneous GPU/CPUs, i.e., APUs, decreased -22.6% from the previous quarter, and were down -15.0% in notebooks. AMD’s discrete desktop shipments decreased -14.55% from last quarter, and notebook discrete shipments decreased -13.6%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipments decreased -17.8% from the previous quarter. AMD is bringing out a wide range of new products for this year and hopes to pick up sales from them.


Intel’s desktop processor embedded graphics (EPGs) shipments decreased from last quarter by -12.0%, and notebooks decreased by -12.0%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipments decreased -12.0% from last quarter. The company’s overall sales were helped by devices for IoT but not enough to offset the overall decline of Q1 in the PC industry.


Nvidia’s desktop discrete shipments were down -6.96% from last quarter; and the company’s notebook discrete shipments decreased -20.8%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipment decreased -13.5% from last quarter. The company saw strength in gaming from North America and China which helped it buck a down quarter for the industry.


Total discrete GPU (desktop and notebook) shipments from the last quarter decreased -13.66% and decreased -14.28% fromQ1 2014. Sales of discrete GPUs fluctuate due to a variety of factors (timing, memory pricing, etc.), new product introductions, and the influence of integrated graphics. Overall, the CAGR from 2014 to 2017 is now -3%.


Ninety nine percent of Intel’s non-server processors have graphics, and over 66% of AMD’s non-server processors contain integrated graphics; AMD still ships integrated graphics chipsets (IGPs).

 

[thehotsung8701A]

I wish AMD would have 50% of the market share and that way both company will push themselves to the limit while making their GPU much cheaper. Though it is weird, back when I bought my 7600 GT which was many moons ago, I seem to remember that both companies were neck to neck? Whatever happen to ATI and more recently AMD that they can't complete with Nvidia?

 

[bryanW1995]

Doom and glooming.. how expected from you.

So, you care to share with us the benchmarks for Fiji?

He can't share them...because AMD hasn't released jack squat. How can you NOT doom and gloom on AMD right now? Did you even read that handy chart at the top? NV is almost up to 80% market share. If AMD had something killer to release anytime soon, then they would be leaking/hinting/etc etc to keep people from buying 980ti.

I hate to say it, but I think that we all know how this song ends.

It will get 5,000 fps.



...in Quake 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gteDPSJX9m0

 

[AnandThenMan]

Since NV keeps releasing brand new architectures every 2 years....

Nvidia is not releasing brand new architectures every two years. They are evolving their tech just like AMD and Intel do. The difference is Nvidia brands and markets them as such to give the illusion that they are progressing at a faster rate. Really they are not proof is in the longevity of said hardware/architectures and in this respect AMD is ahead of Nvidia.

Now if Nvidia was indeed starting with a clean sheet every two years that would actually be a negative from a support perspective and from a forward thinking metric. If Nvidia really needs a new arch every 2 years they are doing something very wrong. Now don't take the above as saying Nvidia is not on the top of their game, they are. Where Nvidia has beat AMD is in efficiency because NV refreshes their tech more often so we see tweaks/improvements in perf/clock and perf/watt. AMD should have been refreshing GCN at about the same rate Nvidia is coming out with their "brand new" GPUs and they would be in much better shape.

 

[AtenRa]

He can't share them...because AMD hasn't released jack squat. How can you NOT doom and gloom on AMD right now? Did you even read that handy chart at the top? NV is almost up to 80% market share. If AMD had something killer to release anytime soon, then they would be leaking/hinting/etc etc to keep people from buying 980ti.

I hate to say it, but I think that we all know how this song ends.

Same doom and gloom predictions happened at the HD2900XT time as well back in Q2 2007.
AMD still produces GPUs today 8 years later and will continue in the future.

ps. Console APUs are not counted in the reports but AMD are selling millions per quarter.