As the PC market has lost some casual consumers to smartphones, the hardcore gamer has turned into the engine that drives the GPU market. That was once again the case in the third quarter of this year, and that trend helped Nvidia grow its share of the market with a 29.53 percent quarter-to-quarter increase in total GPU shipments, according to industry-tracking firm Jon Peddie Research. AMD shipped 7.63 percent more and Intel was up 5.01 percent during the same period.
“The Gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was once again the bright spot in the market in the quarter,” reads the Jon Peddie Research report. “The desktop gain is attributed to gaming and cryptocurrency. That helped AMD and Nvidia gain market share.”
Discrete GPUs, which are the high-end video cards that gamers purchase when they build their systems, were in 39.55 percent of all PCs. That is up 4.18 percent quarter-over-quarter. But it’s not all about powerful consumer GPUs from Nvidia and AMD.
“AMD’s shipments of desktop APUs, increased 7.1 percent from the previous quarter,” Jon Peddie Research’s report reads. “AMD’s notebook APU shipments were up 2.2 percent. Desktop discrete GPUs increased 16.1% from last quarter, and notebook discrete shipments increased 5.2%. AMD’s total PC graphics shipments increased 7.6% from the previous quarter.”
Intel, which doesn’t produce discrete GPUs, still saw the normal seasonal boost. Its desktop integrate graphics increase 5 percent and its notebook graphics jumped 5.9 percent.
But it was still Nvidia that saw the biggest increase.
“Nvidia’s discrete desktop GPU shipments were up 34.7 percent from last quarter, and the company’s discrete notebook GPU shipments increased 22.4 percent,” reads the report. “Total PC graphics shipments increased 29.5 percent from last quarter.”
The PC Gaming channel is presented by Intel®‘s Game Dev program.
