AMD Overtakes Nvidia in Graphics Shipments for First Time in 5 Years

AMD saw its share of the graphics market surge in Q2 2019, with total shipments larger than Nvidia for the first time in five years. At the same time, Nvidia retains a hard lock on the add-in board market for desktops, with approximately two-thirds of total market share. And while these gains are significant, it’s also worth considering why they didn’t drive any particular “pop” in AMD’s overall financial figures for Q2.

First, let’s talk about the total graphics market. There are three players here: Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. Because this report considers the totality of the graphics space, and 2/3 of systems ship without a separate GPU, both AMD and Nvidia are minority players in this market. AMD, however, has an advantage it builds CPUs with an onboard graphics solution, like Intel. Nvidia does not. Thus, we have to acknowledge that the total market space includes companies with a very different suite of products:

Intel: Integrated-only (until next year), no discrete GPUs, but accounts for a majority of total shipments.
AMD: Integrated GPUs and discrete cards, but with very little presence in upper-end mobile gaming.
Nvidia: No integrated solutions. Discrete GPUs only.

According to JPR, AMD’s shipments increased by 9.8 percent, Intel shipments fell by 1.4 percent, and Nvidia shipments were flat, at 0.04 percent. This jives with reports from early in the year, which suggested that AMD would take market share from Intel due to CPU shortages. Separately from its global report, JPR also publishes a separate document on the desktop add-in board (AIB) market. This report only considers the discrete GPU space between Nvidia and AMD (Intel will compete in this space when it launches Xe next year). AMD and Nvidia split this space and again, AMD showed significant growth, with a ten percent improvement in market share.

If you pay attention to financial reports, however, you may recall that AMD’s Q2 2019 sales results were reasonable, but not spectacular. Both companies reported year-on-year sales declines. Nvidia’s fiscal year Q2 2020 results, which the company reported a few weeks back, showed gaming revenue falling 27 percent year-on-year. AMD doesn’t break out GPU and CPU sales it combines them both into a single category but its combined Compute and Graphics revenue reports were lower on a yearly basis as well:

During the first half of the year, AMD was thought to be gaining market share at Intel’s expense, but these gains were largely thought to be at the low-end of the market. AMD launched its first Chromebooks with old Carrizo APUs, for example. This explains the growth in unit shipments in the total GPU space, as well as why the company didn’t show a tremendous profit from its gains. Growth in the AIB market may be explained by the sale of GPUs like the RX 570. This card has consistently been an incredibly good value Nvidia didn’t bother distributing review GPUs for the GTX 1650 because the RX 570 is decisively faster, according to multiple reviews. But GPU sales have been down overall. According to JPR, AIB sales fell 16.6 percent quarter-to-quarter, and 39.7 percent year-on-year.

This explains why AMD’s strong market share gains didn’t translate to improved C&G sales revenue. The company earns less revenue on low-end sales compared with high-end cards. And its market share improvements have been overshadowed by a huge decline in AIB sales year-on-year, likely due to the combination of lingering crypto hangover and a weak overall enthusiast market in Q2.

Q3 will be a much more significant quarter for both companies. Not only does it typically improve on the basis of seasonality alone, but both Nvidia and AMD introduced price cuts and new products. AMD’s Navi powers the excellent 5700 and 5700 XT, which are both faster than the Nvidia refreshes of the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 (now dubbed the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super, respectively). Nvidia, in turn, offers ray tracing and variable rate shading two features that are used in very few games today but may become more popular in the future. AMD lacks these features.

The two companies have staked out opposing strategies for boosting their respective market share. It’ll be interesting to see how consumers do or don’t respond to their separate value propositions.