GPU market bounces back, AIB shipments see significant rise in Q3

[nanoguy]

The big picture: Earlier this year, things started looking more positive for the GPU market as it showed the first signs of recovery after two years of what market analysts are now calling "the post-Covid" black death. Graphics card sales rose 16.8 percent in Q3 compared to Q2, but organizations like Jon Peddie Research are recommending cautious optimism as we head into 2024.

The GPU market is still a peculiar mix of fake deals and good offers. It's quite difficult to navigate for gamers looking to build a new rig or upgrade their aging graphics card for recent AAA releases like Alan Wake II and Baldur's Gate 3. As our own Tim Schiesser pointed out in his latest GPU pricing update, the only hope is that Nvidia will price its upcoming RTX 40 Super series more sensibly than the regular models. This might also push AMD to adjust pricing for some of its RX 7000 and RX 6000 series cards.

Either way, the GPU market is showing signs of recovery after two years of supply chain chaos and post-pandemic hangover. Analysts at Jon Peddie Research (JPR) are even declaring that "the post-Covid black death is over," and their latest report includes some good news for gamers worried about the generative AI craze and its effect on high-end GPU pricing and availability.

Related reading: Guide to Choosing a New Graphics Card

Graphics card add-in board shipments already saw a small rebound in the single digits during the second quarter of this year, but the 16.3 percent increase going into the third quarter suggests there's enough momentum for further recovery in the coming year.

The figure includes both discrete and integrated graphics solutions, but JPR says desktop cards were one of the biggest drivers of growth with a 37.4 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in shipments, which is double that of the overall GPU market. Contrast that with the situation last year when both the CPU and the GPU markets cratered towards the second half of the year, and you can see why industry watchers are having a collective sigh of relief.

Also worth noting is that Intel and AMD are both chipping away at Nvidia's market share, though Team Green will no doubt remain dominant in the PC GPU space for years to come. AMD saw the biggest increase in shipments of the bunch at 36.6 percent, while Nvidia and Intel's shipments rose 25.2 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively. AMD now sits at 17 percent market share, but according to JPR that's mostly down to a significant shift in integrated graphics.

Jon Peddie, the president of JPR, said that while the data seems to indicate a more positive outlook for the GPU market in particular and the PC market as a whole, 2024 is unlikely to be a year where we'll see explosive growth. Peddie calls for cautious optimism and explains that the 2008 recession, the crypto-mining boom, and the Covid lockdowns all sparked economic roller coaster rides, and every time the market rebounded to a more modest level than before.

PC industry watchers are much more optimistic than JPR despite reading the same signs of a stabilizing market. A common view is that Arm-based chipsets from Apple and Qualcomm as well as next-generation Intel CPUs with neural processing units are going to rejuvenate the market thanks to the growing number of applications for generative AI.

In this sea of enthusiasm, there is one organization that believes the industry is in for a "cold shower" in 2024, and one has to hope that will lead to fewer availability issues for enthusiast-level graphics cards like the RTX 4090, where many Ada GPUs being repurposed for AI infrastructure or bought in bulk by AI startups.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101066-aib-shipments-see-significant-rise-q3-gpu-market.html

 

[RandomWAN]

The market "heals" as the primary chip engineering companies shoot it in the foot.

It'll reach a saturation point as everyone levels off on their "AI" buying spree. They'll have a point where they slow/stop their buying as they have to generate a ROI on all of the GPU purchases and the consumer sector isn't going to make up the difference with the way prices keep going up.

 

[yRaz]

The market "heals" as the primary chip engineering companies shoot it in the foot.

It'll reach a saturation point as everyone levels off on their "AI" buying spree. They'll have a point where they slow/stop their buying as they have to generate a ROI on all of the GPU purchases and the consumer sector isn't going to make up the difference with the way prices keep going up.

great, we'll have 100GB AI GPUs selling for 4090 prices. Realistically, I'm beginning to think that the reason nVidia put so little VRAM on their consumer GPUs is so that they couldn't be used on the AI market were they were selling for 50k+ each. That's one reason that the 7900xtx is still priced at $1000+ while the 7900xt is starting to dip below $800. Startups trying to save money are buying the 7900xtx's en-masse because it's Priceerformance is very competitive in AI workloads compared to the H100. The H100 has started to sell for 35-40k but it was pushing 60k US for awhile. You can have a couple racks full of 7900XTX's for the cost of a single H100

 

[Neatfeatguy]

The GPU market isn't really up, it's the stupid "AI" market in China that was working hard at getting their hands on Nvidia chips before everything was getting blocked. 4090s were being sold like the good old crypto mining days were back! Even AMD got some sales in there for their 7900XT/XTX models.

Discrete GPUs are really not selling that much better than they were this quarter when compared to last quarter if you disregard all the 4090s getting sold directly to China.

 

[toooooot]

The market "heals" as the primary chip engineering companies shoot it in the foot.

It'll reach a saturation point as everyone levels off on their "AI" buying spree. They'll have a point where they slow/stop their buying as they have to generate a ROI on all of the GPU purchases and the consumer sector isn't going to make up the difference with the way prices keep going up.

I await with hope for the time when companies that just started to, or are still developing chips for AI, do not need Nvidia or AMD anymore. We had years of crypto fever, now AI and millions of GPUs go that direction keeping prices high.

 

[Burty117]

Built a couple of PC’s in the last couple of months.

One with a 4070Ti in (end user refused to go AMD) and another the the 7600 in it.

Honestly very impressed with the 7600, really quite a powerful card for the money, it’s 3060Ti levels of performance for £120 less. Gives you quite a bit more budget for more RAM or a better CPU.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The AI market is already cooling off, and dedicated AI chips are much faster then GPUs. Much like bitcoin, the big players will move to those dedicated chips and GPUs will only be used by small time players.

2024 is shaping up to be quite a cold shower year. Record bankruptcies, record debt, record repos.

 

[Peter Farkas]

Once the custom AI chips are in good supply, Nvidia will have to create another fake frenzy to boom their GPU sales and inflate prices. Don't expect prices going down folks. It's all driven by Nvidia having a monopoly. They do whatever they want.