JPR's Q4 '11 GPU breakdown

[pelov]

http://hexus.net/tech/items/graphic...-according-latest-report-jon-peddie-research/

It's interesting to see just how quickly it's shifted from just a couple of years ago.

 

[tviceman]

This entire analysis needs to be broken down into IGP / embedded graphics and discrete graphics. It will paint a more accurate picture of how AMD's IGP business is doing vs. Intel, and it will also paint a more accurate picture of how Nvidia and AMD fare against each other in the discrete market.

 

[RussianSensation]

I am not sure what you mean how everything has shifted from a couple years ago? Intel had the dominant position with its crappy integrated graphics for years!

I think that data just makes me sad, more than anything. The biggest takeaway from it all:

1) Discrete GPUs declined almost 12% from the last quarter and were down almost 3.5% from last year for the same quarter.

2) AMD's overall graphics market share increased 1,8% from last quarter due mostly to HPU shipments. (chips with graphics, APUs).

Essentially, as long as AMD and Intel continue to ship CPUs with integrated graphics, the market share of discrete GPUs will continue to shrink in relative terms, based on simple mathematics. At least one and often two GPUs are present in every PC shipped, but it doesn't mean both of them are being used; however both are counted for market share purposes. For example, I have a SB CPU and I don't use its graphics and never will. But since I purchased a CPU with an integrated GPU, it just completely offset my AMD GPU purchase. In reality AMD should have gained 1 GPU sold and Intel should have gained 0. As a result, overall market share #s are giving Intel "free" market share gains when the Intel's GPU might not even be used. So did Intel really gain market share? Depends, but for me it didn't.

I think it'd be more useful to see the Discrete GPU market as a standalone; split by AMD and NV and then split across Notebook vs. Desktop and further split up by price brackets. The overall Graphics market share isn't telling us where the growth in Discrete GPUs is taking place, which is really what we care about the most. Unless everyone starts buying at least 2 GPUs for every 1 CPU, every discrete GPU sold will be equally "offset" by IGPs, HPUs, and EPGs, which really provides misleading information imho.

Otherwise, it would be like pulling up the data for family sedans vs. Ferrari and then concluding that there is no growth in market share for sports cars. Obviously, new customers are more likely to buy family sedans than Ferraris, but that doesn't tell us that Ferrari isn't growing. Still I am not going to deny that the popularity of desktop GPUs is likely declining in favour of notebook discrete graphics as the world is moving towards gaming on mobile devices.

 

[Arzachel]

I think that data just makes me sad, more than anything. The biggest takeaway from it all:

1) Discrete GPUs declined almost 12% from the last quarter and were down almost 3.5% from last year for the same quarter.

I don't think this is that bad, both Cayman and GF110 were released Q4 2010, while Q4 2011 saw only 7970? Don't know if that counts towards last year or not.

 

[Idontcare]

Am I reading that table right? Nvidia looks to sure have taken a pretty big hit, bot QoQ and YoY.

 

[LoneNinja]

Am I reading that table right? Nvidia looks to sure have taken a pretty big hit, bot QoQ and YoY.

Either Nvidia has taken a huge hit in market share, that graph is inaccurate, or neither of us are reading that correctly.

 

[blackened23]

Nvidia has traditionally had lower market share (overall) but with higher discrete only market share. They still have higher discrete market share to my knowledge.

 

[RussianSensation]

Am I reading that table right? Nvidia looks to sure have taken a pretty big hit, bot QoQ and YoY.

Nvidia actually had a desktop discrete market share gain of 3.7% QoQ, and 0.1% in notebooks. That's why the overall market share data is very vague. I don't know why they rarely break out the discrete GPU segment (probably because they want you to buy the full report for $2k ).

 

[thilanliyan]

Am I reading that table right? Nvidia looks to sure have taken a pretty big hit, bot QoQ and YoY.

Probably because they have essentially exited the IGP business.

 

[tviceman]

Nvidia actually had a desktop discrete market share gain of 3.7% QoQ, and 0.1% in notebooks. That's why the overall market share data is very vague. I don't know why they rarely break out the discrete GPU segment (probably because they want you to buy the full report for $2k ).

Which makes me wonder - are they going to start counting the gpu's in tablets and cell phones? I know cell phones might be a stretch, but tablets are, for all intents and purposes, competing for the same dollars (same price range) many of the Intel and AMD IGP-equipped cpu's are competing for.

 

[ViRGE]

Probably because they have essentially exited the IGP business.

Bingo. In Q4 2010 they were still selling the 320M Northbridges by the boatload, particularly to Apple.

 

[sontin]

Bingo. In Q4 2010 they were still selling the 320M Northbridges by the boatload, particularly to Apple.

Only to Apple. They never intruduced 320m to other OEMs or the retail channel. :'(

 

[ViRGE]

Only to Apple. They never intruduced 320m to other OEMs or the retail channel. :'(

Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure HP also used it.

 

[Idontcare]

Nvidia actually had a desktop discrete market share gain of 3.7% QoQ, and 0.1% in notebooks. That's why the overall market share data is very vague. I don't know why they rarely break out the discrete GPU segment (probably because they want you to buy the full report for $2k ).

Ah yes, I succeeded in reading the table but failed in reading the text:

Nvidia is exiting the integrated graphics segments and shifting focus to discrete GPUs. The company showed good desktop discrete market share gain (3.7% qtr-qtr), and 0.1% in notebooks. Nvidia credits strong connect with new Intel Sandybridge notebooks. Ironically Nvidia enjoyed some serendipitous sales of IGPs in Q4 due to some older AMD CPU sales in Asia.

Just surprised me to see their market share crater from ~22% to ~15% in just one year.

 

[pelov]

I think people really underestimated the value the 6xxx brought to the table, despite not being a huge improvement over the 5xxx. The prices of the GPUs were so damn cheap that AMD was able to hop right over nVidia. The prices were, and still are, so good that AMD has been having trouble pricing their new 7770s and 7750s =P why buy an expensive 7770 when you can get better performance for cheap with a 6870? or comparable performance for even cheaper with the 6850?

 

[Skurge]

I am not sure what you mean how everything has shifted from a couple years ago? Intel had the dominant position with its crappy integrated graphics for years!

I think that data just makes me sad, more than anything. The biggest takeaway from it all:

1) Discrete GPUs declined almost 12% from the last quarter and were down almost 3.5% from last year for the same quarter.

2) AMD's overall graphics market share increased 1,8% from last quarter due mostly to HPU shipments. (chips with graphics, APUs).

Essentially, as long as AMD and Intel continue to ship CPUs with integrated graphics, the market share of discrete GPUs will continue to shrink in relative terms, based on simple mathematics. At least one and often two GPUs are present in every PC shipped, but it doesn't mean both of them are being used; however both are counted for market share purposes. For example, I have a SB CPU and I don't use its graphics and never will. But since I purchased a CPU with an integrated GPU, it just completely offset my AMD GPU purchase. In reality AMD should have gained 1 GPU sold and Intel should have gained 0. As a result, overall market share #s are giving Intel "free" market share gains when the Intel's GPU might not even be used. So did Intel really gain market share? Depends, but for me it didn't.

I think it'd be more useful to see the Discrete GPU market as a standalone; split by AMD and NV and then split across Notebook vs. Desktop and further split up by price brackets. The overall Graphics market share isn't telling us where the growth in Discrete GPUs is taking place, which is really what we care about the most. Unless everyone starts buying at least 2 GPUs for every 1 CPU, every discrete GPU sold will be equally "offset" by IGPs, HPUs, and EPGs, which really provides misleading information imho.

Otherwise, it would be like pulling up the data for family sedans vs. Ferrari and then concluding that there is no growth in market share for sports cars. Obviously, new customers are more likely to buy family sedans than Ferraris, but that doesn't tell us that Ferrari isn't growing. Still I am not going to deny that the popularity of desktop GPUs is likely declining in favour of notebook discrete graphics as the world is moving towards gaming on mobile devices.

So how do they count a system with say and A8 with an AMD graphics card?

 

[tviceman]

So how do they count a system with say and A8 with an AMD graphics card?

I think they count 2 GPU's with that.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I think people really underestimated the value the 6xxx brought to the table, despite not being a huge improvement over the 5xxx. The prices of the GPUs were so damn cheap that AMD was able to hop right over nVidia. The prices were, and still are, so good that AMD has been having trouble pricing their new 7770s and 7750s =P why buy an expensive 7770 when you can get better performance for cheap with a 6870? or comparable performance for even cheaper with the 6850?

No, read the posts above...NVIDIA's increased it's DISCRETE GPU share.

The hardware we care about in here.

But if you look at Steam survey, there are more GTX580's than 6970's..about 2 times as much.

So I think you are mistaken...

 

[SirPauly]

Thanks for link pelov!

 

[RussianSensation]

So how do they count a system with say and A8 with an AMD graphics card?

2.

Imagine 5 years ago, 2 PCs were sold, one with Athlon X2 + AMD graphics card and another with Intel Core 2 Duo + NV graphics card. NV got 50% GPU market share, Intel got 0%, AMD got 50%.

Imagine 2 PCs were sold today, one with A8 CPU + AMD discrete Graphics and one with a Sandy Bridge CPU + NV Graphics. Now that's 4 GPUs added to the market, 2 of them for AMD, 1 for Intel and 1 for NV. AMD just captured 50% of new GPU market share, with Intel and NV taking 25% a piece. In the past, that would have given AMD 50% and NVidia 50%.

Now imagine 2 PCs were sold with Sandy Bridge and no discrete graphics. In the past, someone had to go out and buy either AMD or NV low-end GPU, or get a motherboard with integrated AMD or NV graphics. Now Intel gets 100% of that automatically in this example.

Now imagine 100 PCs were sold with Sandy Bridge CPUs and only 10 of those PCs had separate discrete draphics (let's say 5 for AMD and 5 for NV). Suddenly Intel just got 100 new "GPUs" to the market vs. 10 discrete GPUs. But who really plays modern games on Intel's HD3000? It's like giving away camels for free every time someone buys a car and then publishing a market share finding that states more people own camels and/or family sedans than sports cars. How does that translate to how many people race camels on racetracks vs. sports cars? The amount of sports car sales might have increased relative to the past but a free camel is given away with any car purchase, offsetting any additional sports car sales. Now one might be tempted to conclude people are replacing their sports cars with camels.

That's why people assume that NV lost a lot of market share but in reality it didn't. That's just mathematics at work. The only way to see if NV lost market share is if we look at their standing in Discrete desktop and notebook markets. Otherwise, expect to see NV's overall market share approach ~.00001% in 100 years if you clump APUs into the overall scenario since almost every single CPU sold now has a graphics card in it.

 

[blackened23]

No, read the posts above...NVIDIA's increased it's DISCRETE GPU share.

The hardware we care about in here.

But if you look at Steam survey, there are more GTX580's than 6970's..about 2 times as much.

So I think you are mistaken...

I think most of their discrete market share comes from the days when they almost didn't have competition, ie 8800 series. Discrete GPUs were also the norm during that era, the norm for the "average" non technical user now is an integrated GPU. AMD has a higher share of discrete DX11 GPUs, simply because AMD had a *ton* of contracts with PC builders like dell, apple, among others. But NV still has a lot of legacy discrete share from the 8800 and 200 series, if you look at the steam survey most of it is outdated stuff such as that. Looking at DX11 only cards from steam, AMD holds the lead there due to its contracts with big name PC builders. Another note the 500 series sold surprisingly well, NV did very well despite having fewer big name contracts from PC makers - as you said the 6970 has fewer users than something like 570 for example.

Here's the current top 10 from steam:

NVIDIA GeForce 9800
ATI Radeon HD 5770
NVIDIA GeForce 8800
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
NVIDIA GeForce 9600
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 150
ATI Radeon HD 4850
ATI Radeon HD 4870
ATI Radeon HD 5850

DX11 only:

ATI Radeon HD 5770
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
ATI Radeon HD 5850
ATI Radeon HD 5870
ATI Radeon HD 6950
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580
ATI Radeon HD 6870
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
ATI Radeon HD 6850
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550
ATI Radeon HD 5750
ATI Radeon HD 5670
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
ATI Radeon HD 6970
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
ATI Radeon HD 6700
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
NVIDIA GeForce GT 430

Most of those discrete cards are legacy cards from years ago, while the 460 and 560 have the top spots for NV, Meanwhile the 5770/5850 hold spots as well, the 5770 is found in a *ton* of apple and dell systems. Tallying DX11 only cards, AMD has a higher %'age likely from the vast number of contracts they currently have. Honestly, its pretty shocking that most people have such dated hardware with active accounts, I can't imagine trying to play modern games on a 8800 level GPU.

It should be noted however, that the steam hardware survey is *not* indicative of the market as a whole nor is it anywhere close to tracking overall sales. Obviously not everyone plays games, and steam is just a rough guess of what gamers are using - not what the entire market is using. Intel is the clear winner in overall graphics share in the big picture.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think most of their discrete market share comes from the days when they almost didn't have competition, ie 8800 series.

What you are discussing is overall videocard usage by brand/model type, not current market share. I'll explain why there is a huge difference between the 2.

If in Q4 2010, 100 new discrete GPUs were sold, 50 went to NV and 50 went to AMD (both have 50/50% market share). Now let's say in Q4 2011 NV sold 54 new GPUs and AMD sold 46 GPUs for 100 new cards sold, NV just increased its market share QoQ by 4% (50 vs. 50 Q4 2010 vs. 54 / 46 Q4 2011).

Using your explanation for market share, the overall market share would be 104 NV / 200 cards sold? So it would only gain 2% (or half)?

Think about what you are saying.

Imagine if since 1985 NV sold 1 Billion cards and AMD sold 1 Billion cards. If you counted all NV and ATi/AMD videocards since inception of the 2 companies, then even if NV sold 20 million videocards last quarter and AMD sold 0, that would be a drop in the bucket against 1 billion videocards ATi/AMD sold in the last 20 years (the numbers I just used as an example, but you get the picture). The market share #s would barely move. But market share #s moved a lot. In fact, NV gained 3.7% qtr-qtr. If you included all videocards from the past sold by AMD, how in the world could NVidia gain 3.7% market share against 1 Billion ATI/AMD cards going all the way back to 1985? That's because market share tracks new sales in that period of time not overall usage by brand.

Market Share (%) = sales of the business, product or brand / total sales in the market at any given specified period of time (i.e, monthly, quarterly, annually).

Products that have already been sold years ago are not counted in market share report of this kind. Only sales of existing products on the market are included (which includes newer generations such as HD7000 and older such as HD5000, if they are available for sale). But GPUs from the past are not counted. Market share counts new sales. If I own an 8800GTS I bought 4 years ago, that's not counted this quarter at all. That's market share in the past. Steam counts it, but not this research report. This report tracks new sales of competitors in the last quarter vs. how they sold relative to each other the quarter 12 months ago. This is why you see such a sudden collapse for NV since they don't sell IGPs anymore.

Market share is a key indicator of market competitiveness—that is, how well a firm is doing against its competitors. This metric, supplemented by changes in sales revenue, helps managers evaluate both primary and selective demand in their market. That is, it enables them to judge not only total market growth or decline but also trends in customers’ selections among competitors.

^^ Changes are tracked based on existing sales, not what happened in the past or how many users currently hold 5-year-old hardware.

For example, based on videocard usage statistic on Steam, NVIDIA GeForce 9800 has 8.20% market share (usage). GTX560 has 9.47%. Next quarter, when market share #s come out for GPUs, how much market share does 9800 have in JPR's report? 0% since NV doesn't sell GeForce 9800. Steam would still show ~ 8% usage for 9800.

 

[AtenRa]

NV did lost Total market share because they lost the iGPU market.
But today's Total market share numbers combining APUs and discrete GPUs aren't useful anymore.

 

[RussianSensation]

NV did lost Total market share because they lost the iGPU market.

Ya, but how important is this stat? It has nothing to do with Nvidia's total market share in discrete space. It doesn't tell us if the discrete GPU market is growing relative to itself. All it tells us is that more people are buying APUs than discrete GPUs. Since for every new computer sold, every time an APU is counted, Nvidia will always have low "total" market share based on how the metric is currently counted unless people start buying discrete GPUs in larger quantities than APUs.

That would be similar to counting Toyotas and Hondas for every Lamborghini sold and then claiming that Lamborghini is losing total market share among all car manufacturers. That's just stating the obvious, isn't it? Lamborgini could have doubled its units sold despite losing total market share.

 

[exar333]

I am not sure what you mean how everything has shifted from a couple years ago? Intel had the dominant position with its crappy integrated graphics for years!

I think that data just makes me sad, more than anything. The biggest takeaway from it all:

1) Discrete GPUs declined almost 12% from the last quarter and were down almost 3.5% from last year for the same quarter.

2) AMD's overall graphics market share increased 1,8% from last quarter due mostly to HPU shipments. (chips with graphics, APUs).

Essentially, as long as AMD and Intel continue to ship CPUs with integrated graphics, the market share of discrete GPUs will continue to shrink in relative terms, based on simple mathematics. At least one and often two GPUs are present in every PC shipped, but it doesn't mean both of them are being used; however both are counted for market share purposes. For example, I have a SB CPU and I don't use its graphics and never will. But since I purchased a CPU with an integrated GPU, it just completely offset my AMD GPU purchase. In reality AMD should have gained 1 GPU sold and Intel should have gained 0. As a result, overall market share #s are giving Intel "free" market share gains when the Intel's GPU might not even be used. So did Intel really gain market share? Depends, but for me it didn't.

I think it'd be more useful to see the Discrete GPU market as a standalone; split by AMD and NV and then split across Notebook vs. Desktop and further split up by price brackets. The overall Graphics market share isn't telling us where the growth in Discrete GPUs is taking place, which is really what we care about the most. Unless everyone starts buying at least 2 GPUs for every 1 CPU, every discrete GPU sold will be equally "offset" by IGPs, HPUs, and EPGs, which really provides misleading information imho.

Otherwise, it would be like pulling up the data for family sedans vs. Ferrari and then concluding that there is no growth in market share for sports cars. Obviously, new customers are more likely to buy family sedans than Ferraris, but that doesn't tell us that Ferrari isn't growing. Still I am not going to deny that the popularity of desktop GPUs is likely declining in favour of notebook discrete graphics as the world is moving towards gaming on mobile devices.

With recent changes from low-end GPUs into APUs (AMD) and SB-based CPUs you really have to dig-into the numbers to tell what is going on.

Even though discrete went down 12%, does that 12% represent, for example, a drop for more than that for very-low priced discrete GPUs, but an increase for middle and upper-level GPUs? A lot of OEMs are now shipping budget systems with a APU or SB-based CPU and no discrete, when they would have shipped that with a terrible GT 220 or something similar.

What this really does is put the squeeze on the AIBs more than Intel/AMD because their overall volume of boards is being compromised. I would imagine margins are less on very cheap boards, but the components are very cheap and the tolerances are much less than higher-level boards. Curious how this pans-out over time.