Jon Peddie Research Add-in-Board report
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Q1’09 anything but pretty ... but it did hint at better times ahead
The market for graphics add-in boards (AIBs) was anything but immune to the global economic downturn. In Q4’08, the graphics market took more than its fair share of the beating, with declines substantially exceeding those of the broader PC market.
We attribute much of the market’s excessive punishment to the inventories in place at the time. Deeper inventories are a safety valve, making it a lot easier for buyers to stop buying — at least for the short term — while allowing them some time to sort out the situation and determine how to proceed before making any new orders. Drain inventory for a bit to keep systems flowing, and build it back up later when the coast is clear.
But tapping inventories more than buying new product means inventories had to shrink, and reports indicated that was certainly the case. And since inventory can’t shrink to nothing, eventually shipments had to at least reach some type of equilibrium, something we’d expected for Q1’09. And looking back now at the quarter, it appears that was the case, though perhaps not completely.
Q1’09 saw 16.2 million graphics cards shipped, up 7.4% from Q4’08. Now, the -33.1% decline in units (year-over-year) might otherwise have made industry participants sick to their stomachs, were it not viewed in context of Q4’08’s -42.7%. Thankfully, Q1’09 was better than Q4’08 — not by leaps and bounds, granted, but not a trivial improvement either.
Nvidia gains overall share, despite more competitive AMD offerings
It’s no secret that AMD’s latest round of Radeon HD cards — namely the 4000 series spawned from the recent RV770 GPU, or derivatives chips thereof — is giving Nvidia a much tougher run for its money. Yet in Q2’09, Nvidia actually extended its lead over AMD, moving from 63% share of the overall market to 68%.
But rather than contradicting AMD’s improved market position, the company’s lost share in Q2’09 can be traced to several factors, most notably Nvidia cutting prices on its own products to better compete with AMD. And for the second quarter in a row, AMD’s products did gain modestly on Nvidia in the higher-end segments, a trend which bodes well for AMD’s overall market share moving forward.
As expected/hoped, Q1’09 hints at a bottom
Q4’08 was ugly, as expected, and Q1’09 was never expected to show any kind of major recovery. There’d simply been too much carnage across global economies and markets to expect any quick recovery.
But what we did hope was that Q1’09 wouldn’t be worse than Q4’08 and possibly a bit better. And with those expectations, we have to take some heart in Q1’09, as it was both sequentially and year-over-year better than Q4’08.
Table of contents
- Introduction and definitions
- Intel’s platform making the transition from front-side bus to direct-attach memory and high-speed I/O bus
- Add-in Board segments
- Workstation
- Enthusiast
- Performance
- Mainstream
- Value PC and Server
- Segmenting by price band
- Benchmarks are at best a tool, not an end-all assessment
- Beware of relying too heavily on a handful of hardware metrics
- The market is usually the best judge
- The graphics AIB market does not exhibit the typical price/volume relationship
- Recent Add-In Board (AIB) product highlights and market developments
- AMD
- AMD re-organizes
- The RV770 generation
- Q2’09: the Radeon HD 4890 derived from the 55 nm RV790
- Q2’09: AMD first to 40 nm with RV740 and Radeon HD 4770
- The RV770 architecture
- OpenCL and Havok it is
- Previous R600 generation still shipping
- Getting its birds in a row for Windows 7
- What’s coming
- Nvidia
- Q1’09: More GT200 generation cards ... and some repackaged G92 stuff as well
- The latest for Q2’09: Nvidia’s “Price/Performance Champ” GTX 275
- The GTX 200’s 2nd generation unified architecture
- G9X derivatives (still) extending the life of the G80 generation
- Next up: the GT300 GPU
- Q1’09: More GT200 generation cards ... and some repackaged G92 stuff as well
- Get ready for Intel’s (re) entry into the discrete GPU market
- S3 still hanging on
- AMD
- Q1’09 Add-in Board (AIB) market results
- Q1’09 anything but pretty ... but it did hint at better times ahead
- A more competitive AMD making Nvidia less comfortable
- The workstation market remains Nvidia’s domain
- As expected/hoped, Q1’09 hints at a bottom
- Table 1: Workstation AIB sub-segments
- Table 2: AIB classes
- Table 3 The flagship RV770 GPU physical specifications
- Table 4 How the ATI Radeon HD 4890 stacks up with the original 4870 and 4850
- Table 5 The new ATI Radeon HD 4770 compared to the 4670
- Table 6 Comparison of Nvidia GTX280 to GTX295
- Table 7 GeForce GTX 200-series card specifications
- Table 8 AIB market value history, by quarter
- Figure 1: What the Intel architecture’s mostly been ... but it’s changing
- Figure 2: AMD-based architecture
- Figure 3 With Nehalem and the X58, Intel adopts a new system topology: memory attached to the processor, with graphics AIBs sitting off high-speed QPI I/O
- Figure 4 Q2’08 AIB distribution by ASP ... a fairly typical picture
- Figure 5 So far, AMD executing on strategy: shoot for middle, then scale up and down to fill the line
- Figure 6 New for Q2’09: AMD’s ATI RV790 - based Radeon HD 4890
- Figure 7 JPR’s MTTL benchmarks the ATI Radeon HD 4890
- Figure 8 The industry’s first 40 nm GPU: AMD’s RV740
- Figure 9 The Radeon HD 4770 positioning and Q2’09 transition to new 4000-series SKUs
- Figure 10 Pmarks: Radeon HD 4770 vs. Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX (Intel platform)
- Figure 11 Vantage: Radeon HD 4770 vs. Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX (Intel platform)
- Figure 12 Pmarks: Radeon HD 4770 vs. Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX (AMD platform)
- Figure 13 Vantage: Radeon HD 4770 vs. Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX (AMD platform)
- Figure 14 ATI’s recent graphics AIB introductions: models, dates and pricing
- Figure 15 Others may criticize, but Nvidia’s proud of the GT200’s die size
- Figure 16 Nvidia’s latest top-of-the-line single-GPU card: the GeForce GTX 285
- Figure 17 Nvidia’s product positioning, circa Q2’09
- Figure 18 Nvidia’s latest GTX 275, built around the 55 nm GT206 GPU
- Figure 19 Nvidia reports substantial performance gains with R185 generation driver
- Figure 20 Nvidia’s recent graphics AIB introductions: models, dates and pricing
- Figure 21 Larrabee’s x86 core
- Figure 22 Larrabee’s core – vector unit detail
- Figure 23 Larrabee chip diagram
- Figure 24 Add software libraries to map to DX and OpenGL, and Larrabee becomes a GPU
- Figure 25 Intel’s envisioned software stack for Larrabee
- Figure 26: S3 Graphics’ new Chrome 500 GPU and AIB
- Figure 27 Discrete add-in boards held their own in battle with IGPs
- Figure 28 Head-to-head: ATI/AMD and Nvidia AIB shipment history
- Figure 29 ASP history for Nvidia, AMD and the market overall
- Figure 30 Vendor shares in Performance segment
- Figure 31 Vendor shares in Enthusiast segment
- Figure 32 Vendor shares in Value segment
- Figure 33 Vendor shares in Mainstream segment
- Figure 34 Historical breakdown of AIB market, by segment
- Figure 35 Vendor shares in Workstation segment
Pricing and Availability
The Q4’08 edition of Jon Peddie’s Market AIB Report is available now in both electronic and hard copy editions. The report provides an in-depth look at the PC graphics market and includes unit shipment and segment market share data, and trend analysis.
The annual subscription price for Jon Peddie’s AIB report is $6,000 including four quarterly issues, and single issues are available for $2,000.
For more information contact Jon (Jon@jonpeddie.com) or ORDER NOW.