TIBURON, CA—February 20, 2014— Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics add-in-board (AIB) shipments and suppliers’ market share for Q4, 2013.
JPR’s AIB Report tracks computer add-in graphics boards, which carry discrete graphics chips. AIBs are used in desktop PCs, workstations, servers, and other devices such as scientific instruments. They are sold directly to customers as aftermarket products, or are factory installed. In all cases, AIBs represent the higher end of the graphics industry using discrete chips and private high-speed memory, as compared to the integrated GPUs in CPUs that share slower system memory.
The news was encouraging; quarter-to-quarter, the market grew 3 % (compared to the desktop PC market, which increased 4.45%).
On a year-to-year basis we found that total AIB shipments during the quarter increased 3%, which is more than desktop PCs which declined of 6.1%.
GPUs are traditionally a leading indicator of the market because a GPU goes into every system before it is shipped; most of the PC vendors are guiding down to flat for the next quarter.
The overall PC desktop market increased quarter-to-quarter including double-attach—the adding of a second (or third) AIB to a system with integrated processor graphics—and to a lesser extent, dual AIBs in performance desktop machines using either AMD’s Crossfire or Nvidia’s SLI technology.
The attach rate of AIBs to desktop PCs has declined from a high of 63% in Q1 2008 to 42.8% in 2013 4Q, and from 43.4% last quarter.
The quater in general
JPR found that AIB shipments during 2013 4Q behaved according to past years with regard to seasonality, but the increase was less than the 10-year average. AIB shipments increased 3.% from the last quarter (the 10-year average is 12%).
• Total AIB shipments increased this quarter to 15 million units.
• AMD’s quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased 3%.
• Nvidia’s quarter-to-quarter unit shipments increased 3.6%.
• Nvidia continues to hold a dominant market share position at 65%.
• Figures for the other suppliers were flat to declining.
The change from quarter to quarter was slightly less than last year. Quarter-to-quarter percentage changes are shown in Table 1.
The AIB market now has just four chip (GPU) suppliers, who also build and sell AIBs. The primary suppliers of GPUs are AMD and Nvidia. There are 51 AIB suppliers, the AIB OEM customers of the GPU suppliers, which they call “partners.”
In addition to privately branded AIBs offered worldwide, about a dozen PC suppliers offer AIBs as part of a system, and/or as an option, and some that offer AIBs as separate aftermarket products.
We have been tracking AIB shipments quarterly since 1987—the volume of those boards peaked in 1999, reaching 114 million units.
Pricing and Availability
Jon Peddie Research's AIB Report is available now in both electronic and hard copy editions and sells for $1,500. Included with this report is an Excel workbook with the data used to create the charts, the charts themselves, and supplemental information. The annual subscription price for JPR's AIB Report is $4,000 and includes four quarterly issues. Full subscribers to JPR services receive TechWatch (the company's bi-weekly report) and are eligible for a 10% discount. Bundle packages are also available. For information about purchasing the AIB Report, please call 415/435-9368 or visit the Jon Peddie Research website at www.jonpeddie.com.
JPR also publishes a series of reports on the PC Gaming Hardware Market, which covers system and accessories and looks at 31 countries. More information can be found here: http://www.jonpeddie.com/publications/pc_gaming_hardware_market_report/.
Contact Robert Dow at JPR ([email protected]) for a free sample of TechWatch.
About Jon Peddie Research
Dr. Jon Peddie has been active in the graphics and multimedia fields for more than 30 years. Jon Peddie Research is a technically oriented multimedia and graphics research and consulting firm. Based in Tiburon, California, JPR provides consulting, research, and other specialized services to technology companies in a variety of fields including graphics development, multimedia for professional applications and consumer electronics, high-end computing, and Internet-access product development. Jon Peddie Research's AIB Report is a quarterly report focused on the market activity of PC graphics controllers for notebook and desktop computing.
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