JPR points to AMD GPU resurgence

AMD's graphics arm has cause to celebrate: Market watcher Jon Peddie Research claims that the company has begun shipping more graphics cards than rival Nvidia - for the first time in half a decade.

That AMD has been struggling to compete with Nvidia in the add-in boards market is no secret: The failure of its long-pipeline Bulldozer CPU architecture, echoing that of rival Intel's NetBurst misstep years earlier, resulted in years of financial losses only stemmed by the sale of its manufacturing arm, headquarters, and other assets. The launch of the Zen architecture was a turning point for the company, but while its CPU products are now competing on a roughly level playing field with Intel's its graphics products lag behind Nvidia's at the very top end.

Consumer interest in AMD graphics products, though, seems to be on the rise - likely thanks to its competitiveness in the low- and mid-range market. According to market watcher Jon Peddie Research, AMD's graphics products shipments increased nearly 10 percent for the second quarter of the year - while Nvidia's own shipments remained flat. That was enough for the two to switch places for the first time since Nvidia overtook AMD in the third quarter of 2014.

Overall, though, sales of add-in boards were down: JPR's research claims that there was a near-two percent decrease in the number of PCs shipped with a discrete GPU pre-fitted, and a 16.6 percent drop in add-in board sales. One thing that hasn't changed is Intel's domination of the graphics market: The company has held a majority share since the third quarter of 2010, thanks to the number of lower-end and mobile-centric parts it sells which use integrated graphics.

More information is available in the JPR Market Watch report, available to purchase on the company's official website.