Wednesday, November 23rd 2016
AMD and NVIDIA Add-in-Board GPU Market Share from 2002 to Q3/2016
The folks over at 3dcenter.org have compiled comprehensive historical GPU AIB market share data for our digestion. While we recently reported on Q3'16 and its comparison to the quarter before and the same period last year, this information spans a near 14 year quarter-on-quarter time frame. The compilers have quite helpfully included points of reference along the timeline which highlight the two major GPU manufacturers milestone desktop product line debuts.
It is worth noting that their exact numbers differ slightly to the ones Jon Peddie Research provided as 3dcenter have also cited the work of Mercury Research, which appears more conservative. The figures provided in their own graph split the difference between the two sources to give us a more impartial look at the market.
Back in 2002, the two GPU manufacturers were in the earlier stages of their rivalry to dominate the desktop graphics card market. A typical PC powered by either would have utilized an "ATI" (Before their purchase by AMD in 06') Radeon 8/9000 Series or GeForce 2 MX/Ti series graphics card. The average amount of on-board video memory was 64 or 128MB accompanied by 2, 4 or if you were lucky, 8 pixel shader units. The most popular screen resolution was 1024x768, and probably on a CRT monitor. Leading API's at the time were DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3.
Fast forward to anno 2016 and some 10-15 generations of GPU later, your average on-board video memory is closer to 4 or 8GB, and now far more complex clusters of computational units that have superseded shaders number in the thousands. A typical gamers screen resolution is 1920x1080 or in many cases, beyond - not to mention the advent of VR. Both major API's are evolving too, now aiming to have much more efficient low level hardware access and less resource overhead with Microsoft's DirectX 12 and the Successor to OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan.
It is worth noting that their exact numbers differ slightly to the ones Jon Peddie Research provided as 3dcenter have also cited the work of Mercury Research, which appears more conservative. The figures provided in their own graph split the difference between the two sources to give us a more impartial look at the market.
Fast forward to anno 2016 and some 10-15 generations of GPU later, your average on-board video memory is closer to 4 or 8GB, and now far more complex clusters of computational units that have superseded shaders number in the thousands. A typical gamers screen resolution is 1920x1080 or in many cases, beyond - not to mention the advent of VR. Both major API's are evolving too, now aiming to have much more efficient low level hardware access and less resource overhead with Microsoft's DirectX 12 and the Successor to OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan.
45 Comments on AMD and NVIDIA Add-in-Board GPU Market Share from 2002 to Q3/2016
What was horrible was the naming. I'm a hardware enthusiast and I could never find my way around the GT, GTS, GTX, GS, GSO and GTO nomenclature. That was a clusterfuck by itself.
And I don't think this is a case of cutting anyone slack. Users unrealistically expect entire new lineups each year. That's not economically feasible and it doesn't happen. But of the two strategies, I find Nvidia's less confusing (at least for non-techies), that's all.
The 7900GTO was a downclocked 7900GTX sold on the cheap to clear out the stock before the 8800 made it worthless.
8800GTS 320/640MB vs the 8800GTS 512. Same line up, same name, different chip. The 8800GTS 512 then became the 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, GTS250 and GTS250G. Nvidia actually took something sold and marketed as a upper midrange and convinced everyone it was a top tier card the next generation. I'm not even mad that's impressive, but on that note if AMD would have taken the R9 290 and resold it as the R9 390x you would have ostracized them and accused them of everything under the sun.
Move onto a couple gens later and we have the 580 vs the 480 which was purely a single SP unlocked and a mature process.
This isn't a new trick. Companies rebrand crap, hell nvidia still sells the 8400GS and god knows what GPU it's actually based off this week.
nVIDIA doesn't rebrand flagships.
A very smart man at Intel once told me that when designing a microprocessor you can either build a new architecture, or move to a smaller manufacturing process, but you don't do both at the same time. The reason you don't do both is because it significantly complicates the design, validation and manufacturing processes - you want to instead limit the number of variables you're changing in order to guarantee a quick ramp up and good yields of your silicon.
NVIDIA followed this rule of thumb with the GT200, building its "brand new" (or at least significantly evolved) architecture on a tried-and-true 65nm process instead of starting at 55nm. Despite AMD building both RV670 and the new RV770 GPU on TSMC's 55nm process, NVIDIA hadn't built anything on a smaller than 65nm process, including the 1.4 billion transistor GT200.
-Anandtech
Also for note a wise man once said the sun revolved around the earth.
Not to mention amd and nvidia just moved new gpus to a brand new process.
You should thank AMD instead of bashing.
Intel will not split for the same reason Nvidia is not going to split. We could also say that Nvidia should split because it will be the only remaining company selling DirectX compatible discrete GPUs into the x86 market. But no one says anything about Nvidia. Why? Because none of those companies will have any problems with, for example, FTC. None will split. The reason why we think that Intel would split, is because we are remembering this argument from a long time ago, when the market was completely different.
Intel will just point the finger to the ARM platform.
Nvidia will just point the finger to Intel's 70% market share when counting integrated GPUs.
Also 50%-50% is not the best percentage we should hope for. No, the best is 40% AMD - 60% Nvidia. Because AMD, if it doesn't build another bulldozer again with Zen, will gain GPU market share anyway, thanks to the APUs. So to have a balance, we need Nvidia to remain the stronger GPU company in the discrete GPU market. Just not in the extend it is now. We need a more balanced market where AMD has at least 25% of the CPU market, sells plenty of APUs and also it is as competitive to Nvidia as it was a few years ago, before the Maxwell series.