Jon Peddie Research's quarterly report on the AIB discrete GPU market is out, and as is often the case it makes for interesting reading. The research, which has been gathering and publishing GPU shipment data over years, helps to flesh out movements and trends in a market which is typically fairly opaque in its dealings. This also filters out information from more general sales figures, where the large general purpose market dwarfs discrete sales. JPR's Q1 2018 report is no less insightful, and although the full text runs to 110 pages they also provide some handy cliff notes.



Primarily, the first piece of uplifting information if you're a supporter of AMD (or just a more competitive market) is that their market share of discrete AIB GPU shipments is up this quarter. AMD was the GPU manufacturer in 34.9% of discrete graphics card shipments from the ecosystem of 48 board partners (AIBs), up from 33.7% in the last quarter and 27.5% in 2017 as a whole. NVIDIA meanwhile retain strong but slightly eroded primacy with 65.1% of AIB GPU shipments, down from over 72% last year.

This data does not include shipments of GPUs in laptops or many desktop PCs sold as a configured unit from system integrators. In these markets AMD has even more of an up-hill battle.

AIB partners themselves enjoyed a bumper quarter. Despite a general downturn in discrete GPUs shipped with desktop systems, the 48 AIBs who are partners of NVIDIA, AMD or both enjoyed a 6.4% larger market over the previous quarter. On the surface this indicates that the PC gaming market, where single component upgrades are relatively common compared to entire desktop system sales, enjoys continued strong performance.



According to JPR, an uptick in AIB sales in Q1 is unseasonable, as usually a slow downward trend after the holiday-strewn Q4 before picking up again in Q3 has historically been more common. This may partially be due to cryptocurrency mining, which began to have a measurable affect GPU sales in 2015, but the thriving eSports scene is another factor to consider.

Recent stories coming out of AIBs separate from this report paint a mixed picture of expectations for Q2 as they suffer from a cryptocurrency-induced hangover. Whether that turns out to be the case remains to be seen, but JPR's Q2 report will be an excellent tool for assessing just that.

SOURCE: JPR Q1 2018 Add-in Board Report