Analysis: Q3 2007 GPU shipments reach record highs
Tuesday 30th October 2007, 11:11:00 AM, written by Arun
After Q2 2007 being stronger than historical seasonality, few were expecting Q3 to be up sequentially by more than single-digits. Well, it looks like the skeptics were wrong, as the GPU market is up no less than 20.2% overall, according to JPR. This represents a larger jump than even the 18.6% one experienced in Q3 2002, and that year didn't have to account for a remarkably strong Q2 either!
It is noteworthy to point out that the increase in shipments is a desktop phenomenom; notebook shipments, on the other hand, have barely moved compared to Q2. This shouldn't be a major surprise, however, as Q2 corresponded to the release of the Santa Rosa notebook platform, and you'd expect mobile shipments to be especially strong then for that reason.
Compared to Q207, NVIDIA's shipments grew 25.2% sequentially to 33.14M units, while Intel's grew by 21.6% to 37.2M and AMD's by 17.7% to 18.66M. The overall market grew by 20.2% compared to the previous quarter, achieving record unit shipments of 97.85M units. But if you've been keeping track, you'll notice the numbers only add up to about 91% of the market.
The rest is attributable to Matrox's discrete solutions (0.12M units), SiS's IGPs (2.10M units) and VIA's IGPs and their S3 discrete GPUs (6.63M units). As can easily be seen, VIA and SiS remain non-negligible (although shrinking) parts of the market; it remains to be seen what'll happen in April 2008 when VIA will no longer be able to sell Intel IGPs, as their license will have expired completely.
In the notebook market, NVIDIA lost a slight amount of share to AMD in Q3. This seems strange on first glance, as NVIDIA was supposed to have gained share with their discrete GPUs in the Santa Rosa cycle. But upon further examination, it makes sense: AMD likely gained share in the notebook IGP market thanks to the 690G, which benefits both from superior performance compared to the MCP68 and bundling opportunities with AMD's CPUs.
The desktop numbers are even more mysterious, however. According to other market reports, desktop shipments only increased by 7.7% (although this tends to lag behind chip sales, which seem to have been about 15% higher or so). So why are GPU shipments 20% higher? We believe there could be two explanations to this. First of all, while Q2 results were excellent, inventories seemed to have gone down not only at GPU manufacturers, but also at OEMs and in the channel. In Q3, consumer demand remained strong, and inventory concerns were mostly solved by the end of the quarter. This might have generated a spike in chip sales to refill inventory.
The other factor to consider is that if a computer has an integrated graphics chipset, but you add a discrete GPU, you've actually got two GPU units sold for one PC! As such, it is possible that this boost represents an increase in the penetration of discrete GPUs, while manufacturers have not yet had the time to switch to non-IGP chipsets. That is, if they even want to, since the cheapest motherboards are often based on IGPs!
Another explanation for higher shipments than computer sales numbers would be that more gamers have been upgrading their GPUs (and not their CPUs at the same time). This would seem to make sense, given the release of a number of AAA games in recent and coming months. Furthermore, JPR claims G80 shipments specifically (not G8x) have exceeded all expectations, which would go along well with this theory.
AMD's discrete GPU revenues for Q3 were about 25% higher than in Q2, which makes a relative amount of sense given JPR's numbers. NVIDIA's results for the period (although with a slight offset; NVIDIA's financial quarters are not calendar-based) will come out on November 8th.
It is noteworthy to point out that the increase in shipments is a desktop phenomenom; notebook shipments, on the other hand, have barely moved compared to Q2. This shouldn't be a major surprise, however, as Q2 corresponded to the release of the Santa Rosa notebook platform, and you'd expect mobile shipments to be especially strong then for that reason.
Compared to Q207, NVIDIA's shipments grew 25.2% sequentially to 33.14M units, while Intel's grew by 21.6% to 37.2M and AMD's by 17.7% to 18.66M. The overall market grew by 20.2% compared to the previous quarter, achieving record unit shipments of 97.85M units. But if you've been keeping track, you'll notice the numbers only add up to about 91% of the market.
The rest is attributable to Matrox's discrete solutions (0.12M units), SiS's IGPs (2.10M units) and VIA's IGPs and their S3 discrete GPUs (6.63M units). As can easily be seen, VIA and SiS remain non-negligible (although shrinking) parts of the market; it remains to be seen what'll happen in April 2008 when VIA will no longer be able to sell Intel IGPs, as their license will have expired completely.
In the notebook market, NVIDIA lost a slight amount of share to AMD in Q3. This seems strange on first glance, as NVIDIA was supposed to have gained share with their discrete GPUs in the Santa Rosa cycle. But upon further examination, it makes sense: AMD likely gained share in the notebook IGP market thanks to the 690G, which benefits both from superior performance compared to the MCP68 and bundling opportunities with AMD's CPUs.
The desktop numbers are even more mysterious, however. According to other market reports, desktop shipments only increased by 7.7% (although this tends to lag behind chip sales, which seem to have been about 15% higher or so). So why are GPU shipments 20% higher? We believe there could be two explanations to this. First of all, while Q2 results were excellent, inventories seemed to have gone down not only at GPU manufacturers, but also at OEMs and in the channel. In Q3, consumer demand remained strong, and inventory concerns were mostly solved by the end of the quarter. This might have generated a spike in chip sales to refill inventory.
The other factor to consider is that if a computer has an integrated graphics chipset, but you add a discrete GPU, you've actually got two GPU units sold for one PC! As such, it is possible that this boost represents an increase in the penetration of discrete GPUs, while manufacturers have not yet had the time to switch to non-IGP chipsets. That is, if they even want to, since the cheapest motherboards are often based on IGPs!
Another explanation for higher shipments than computer sales numbers would be that more gamers have been upgrading their GPUs (and not their CPUs at the same time). This would seem to make sense, given the release of a number of AAA games in recent and coming months. Furthermore, JPR claims G80 shipments specifically (not G8x) have exceeded all expectations, which would go along well with this theory.
AMD's discrete GPU revenues for Q3 were about 25% higher than in Q2, which makes a relative amount of sense given JPR's numbers. NVIDIA's results for the period (although with a slight offset; NVIDIA's financial quarters are not calendar-based) will come out on November 8th.
Tagging
b3d ± nvidia, amd, intel, via, sis
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