Global GPU Shipments Rise in Q3’19

The global GPU market has been strengthening towards the end of the year, which is in line with seasonal trends, but JPR reports some surprising spikes in specific categories.

Jon Peddie Research says that discrete GPU shipments increased 5.13% over last quarter and are now in 32.1% of PCs, which is a significant improvement for the industry.

Nvidia’s shipments showed a giant 38.3% increase from last quarter. The company leads in discrete GPUs and this quarter shipped more than all of AMD’s total GPUs (including APUs).

For comparison, AMD’s overall unit shipments increased 8.7% quarter-to-quarter, Intel’s total shipments increased 5.4% from last quarter, and as mentioned, Nvidia’s increased 38.3%. Last quarter was transitional for Nvidia and the company ramped up at the end of the quarter. Channel inventory is now healthy says the company, Q4 notebook will be seasonally down. Nvidia says RTX doing well and represents 66% of its gaming revenue.

JPR's research found:

The attach rate of GPUs (includes integrated and discrete GPUs) to PCs for the quarter was 128% which was up 1.7% from last quarter.
Discrete GPUs were in 32.1% of PCs, which is up 5.13% from last quarter.
The overall PC market increased by 9.21% quarter-to-quarter and increased by 3.7% year-to-year.
Desktop graphics add-in boards (AIBs) that use discrete GPUs increased 42.2% from last quarter.

	Q3'18	Q2'19	Q3'19
AMD	14%	16%	16%
Intel	70%	69%	65%
Nvidia	16%	15%	19%
*Total GPU market share over time**
* “TOTAL” includes discrete GPUs and integrated GPUs (the type found in Intel’s and AMD’s CPUs).

In seasonal cycles of the past, overall graphics shipments in the third quarter are typically up from the previous quarter. For Q32'19, it increased by almost 11% from last quarter and was greater than the ten-year average.

A total of 89 million units were shipped in Q3'19 which decreased by 6 million units from the same quarter a year ago indicating the market is down on a year-to-year basis. However, this is the second quarter in a row of increased GPU shipments.

GPUs are traditionally a leading indicator of the market, since a GPU goes into every system before it is shipped, and most of the PC vendors are guiding optimistically for next quarter, an average of 7%.