Gaming PC and graphics card shipments will grow into 2025 'due to economic improvement as well as new GPUs'

It's been no secret that shipments of gaming PCs and GPUs have been on a downward slide these past few years. On the other hand, high refresh rate gaming monitors have bucked that trend and sold like hot cakes on a frosty morning. However, market analysts International Data Corporation (IDC) are forecasting some significant changes once this year is over, with the growth in performance GPU shipments outstripping mainstream chips and gaming PCs.

The report from IDC paints a somewhat underwhelming picture for 2024, with shipments of normal gaming monitors falling roughly 4% compared to last year and total gaming PC shipments only increasing by a few percent. Premium gaming monitors (i.e. those with fresh rates greater than 165 Hz) are expected to improve by more than 20%, so at least that's nice.

But forget this year and just look at the forecasts for 2025 and further. The year-on-year shipment growth for gaming PCs is expected to be positive for the next four years, and while the actual figures aren't spectacular (around 6% in 2025, down to 2% by 2028), it's better news for the industry than in recent times.

The real stand out is for shipments of performance GPUs, with an 8% growth compared to 5% for premium GPUs. We're expecting Nvidia to announce the graphics version of its Blackwell AI GPUs around September this year, with the first cards potentially hitting shelves before the end of the year. Then, as the calendar rolls over into 2025, we should start to see the more mainstream cards in the series appearing.

We're also expecting the next generation of GPUs from AMD and Intel, RDNA 4 and Battlemage, later this year so by the end of 2024, there will potentially be a glut of new graphics cards to snap up.

IDC is clearly expecting them all to be very popular, especially those towards the middle of the performance spectrum. For its part, IDC classifies the 'Performance GPU' as an entry level discrete card, such as the Nvidia RTX xx50/60 level GPUs. The 'Premium GPU'