- GPU sales for Q3 are down almost 8% year-on-year
- This is normally a strong period for sales of discrete graphics cards
- It seems that gamers are holding off for RTX 5000 and RDNA 4 GPUs
Normally, this time of year would witness strong sales in the desktop GPU market, but one analyst firm observes that Q3 2024 has seen a distinct drop in buying activity.
This comes from Jon Peddie Research (JPR), which has compiled figures for Q3 sales of ‘graphics add-in boards’ (meaning standalone GPUs that slot into desktop PCs) finding that 8.1 million units were shifted in the quarter.
That’s down 7.9% on the same quarter in 2023, a fairly hefty drop, and it’s also down compared to Q2 2024, with an even larger decrease of 14.5%.
AMD lost a bit more ground here, too, as Nvidia now has 90% of the discrete graphics card market (up from 88% in Q2), with Team Red holding the remaining 10% (down from 12%). Intel Arc products don’t register on the scales for standalone GPUs, sadly for Team Blue - though unsurprisingly it still holds the majority share when it comes to CPU-integrated graphics.
The future also looks gloomy, JPR forecasts, as discrete GPUs are forecast to have a negative compound annual growth rate of -6%, with the market set to shrink further through to 2028.
Analysis: Buyers are playing a waiting game
Obviously, this isn’t great news for any of the GPU giants, but AMD will be particularly displeased to see more market share slip away from it – the company is only just clinging onto double digits at this point.
A year ago, Team Red had a 17% share of the market. So, despite some notably successful Radeon GPU launches in recent times – namely the RX 7900 GRE, which in fact tops our list of the best graphics cards, and the RX 7800 XT, a strong mid-range offering that headed up that list when it came out last year – AMD is floundering, at least according to these stats.
Why are overall GPU sales down in a reversal of the normal picture for the third quarter? That’s surely due to the proximity of next-gen graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, which are about to launch, in theory, at CES 2025 in both cases.
Gamers are likely holding off for those RTX 5000 GPUs and RDNA 4 GPUs – I know I am, as it just makes sense at this stage of the launch timeframe. Indeed, sales may have been affected earlier this year, too, as would-be buyers may have still been hopeful that these next-gen graphics cards could turn up late in 2024 – along with Intel’s Battlemage desktop GPUs (2nd-gen models that were recently revealed). We're also likely to see some potential RTX 4000 and RX 7000 price drops when the new cards are revealed, which cash-strapped PC gamers could be waiting for.
A further issue that Jon Peddie points out is that the attach rate of discrete GPUs relative to CPUs in desktop PCs has dropped, meaning that more PCs are shipping with no discrete graphics card, relying on integrated graphics instead. That attach rate fell by 26.9% in Q3 compared to the previous quarter, which again is a shaky sign for GPU makers.
Finally, the reason for the prediction of negative growth through to 2028 is Trump coming into office in the US and imposing import tariffs (particularly on China) that are potentially going to push up the price of PCs and components by a hefty amount.
So those who are waiting for next-gen GPUs in the US might need to move pretty swiftly when these models (hopefully) go on sale early next year, before potentially major price hikes start kicking in for all manner of consumer electronics.
Via Tom’s Hardware
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