JPR - AMD GPUs Up Double Digits, Intel Up, Nvidia Down (AMD Mobile Skyrocket 30%)

[ShintaiDK]

I wouldn't say that just yet. You'll have to let impact of used miner cards subside before you can confidently make that call.

I believe there will still be an increasing demand for discrete GPUs. Things like 4k and possibly virtual reality can fuel consumer demand. What might put a stop to this whole thing though is if AMD and Nvidia can't put a cork on this power escalation. 100 to 200 to 300 and now 500 watts is not an acceptable mass consumer solution unless startrek like hologram rooms because the next big thing.

That miner card myth is long dead.

Whatever will drive the future demand is to be seen. Price for 4K for example would have to be dramatically reduced before it even stand any chance in terms of increasing volume.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Does not AMD separate APU sales into separate category, such that CPU are simply units without an integrated graphics (ie opteron, fx).

AMDs CPU division contains CPUs and APUs for the PC segment. Only the graphics division contains APUs for console.

 

[RussianSensation]

I wouldn't say desktop discrete GPUs are dying per say. The demand for them just depends very heavily on major PC games coming out and upgrade cycles. With software far behind hardware, many people are taking far longer to upgrade their desktop/laptop. If the next popular game like WoW, LoL, Starcraft 3 or BF5 come out and they make 750Ti feel slow, there will be millions of upgraders. We cannot expect desktop dGPU sales to continue growing quarter after quarter when there is a serious drought of next generation PC games at the moment. We are just entering the current generation of consoles and it will take some time for developers to move on from PS360 outdated game engines and targeting that userbase.

It's just a foregone conclusion that Intel will continue to grow GPU market share because every fall when kids go back to school, there is bound to be a desktop or a laptop sale but not everyone of those will need a dGPU for games. I can't remember a time when I haven't upgraded the GPU in nearly 3 years but it's closing in very quickly. Obviously there are going to be less and less people upgrading to GPUs every generation as in the past if the increases in GPU performance are no longer 0.75-2x but are more like 30-40% and there are very few upcoming demanding PC games.

The greatest consequence is likely higher mid-range and high end desktop dGPU prices. We first saw more or less an elimination of the <$100 dGPU space on the desktop and I think soon the $150 space will start getting encroached once AMD/Intel move on to some form of stackable memory to drive APU bandwidth. GM200/210 at $700-800 and GK104 at $450-500 is probably going to be the new normal whereas in the past these were $250-350 and $500-650 GPUs.

 

[Mand]

With software far behind hardware, many people are taking far longer to upgrade their desktop/laptop.

My HD5870 is still running strong nearly five years in. It can handle 1080 on decent settings for most games. Only in the past couple of years have I been having to nudge things down to continue to get decent framerates. If there's anything you can point to that would indicate just how true this is, that would be a nice example.