The GPU market is back, baby, and astonishing 'market watchers who have been predicting its doom for decades'

There's been relatively little news on the discrete graphics card front for a while. The most exciting developments have been regarding integrated solutions such as those found in AMD Strix Point laptops. It's a little surprising, then, to find out that the discrete graphics card market did pretty damn well last quarter.

Research from Jon Peddie Research (JPR) says there were increased shipments in the graphics add-in board (AIB) market compared to Q2 2024 and last year. We're talking a 9.4% increase compared to Q1 and a 47.9% increase year-on-year.

The analyst firm explains, «AMD’s quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments increased 9% and increased 3% from last year. Nvidia’s quarter-to-quarter unit shipments increased 9.7% and increased 61.9% from last year while continuing to hold a dominant market share position at 88%.»

However, it points out that Intel «remained flat, as the company has yet to gain significant traction in the add-in board market.» This isn't so surprising given that there's been diminishing hype over the company's discrete Arc A750 and A770 graphics cards.

While the president of JPR, Jon Peddie, points out that «overall shipments are down compared to two years ago,» it's nevertheless a good sign that graphics card shipments have mostly been on the up since then. In fact, the past year has been pretty consistently great for graphics card shipments, as Peddie points out, «With one little dip in Q1 (seasonally normal), we’ve seen four quarters of growth.»

Q2 2024 shipments roughly match Q4 2023 according to JPR's chart, but note that fourth quarter sales are usually higher than other quarters because of the holiday season, especially Black Friday. A Q2 matching a Q4 is good news. 

What's more is there's been a steep increase in «attach rate», meaning the proportion of graphics card shipments «attached» to desktop desktop CPU shipments. In other words, graphics card shipments have increased not just absolutely but proportionally to