Graphics Cards Coming On Strong

The release of Windows 7 in no small way has pushed the graphics board market ahead, when the the computer market is just now waking from the long sleep induced by the economy.

In an effort to supply a better Aero graphics experience, many users not otherwise upgrading hardware have purchased new add-in boards, and manufacturers that might have otherwise let on-board graphics stand in their offerings have beefed up rendering power with discrete graphics to the tune of about 20 million units for the third quarter.

TechConnect gives more of the finer details on this waking monster -

As with other segments, the graphics add-in board market has shown good signs of recovery in Q3, with Jon Peddie Research reporting that card shipments reached 20.34 million units, a solid 21% sequential increase, although on-year it means a 7.2% slip.

While in Q3 it had good results, the AIB segment is a ‘late bloomer’ as the graphics market as a whole – which includes discrete and integrated GPUs, has begun its rise in Q2, going up 31% compared to Q1. In the Q1/Q2 time frame the AIB market remained flat, with shipments hovering around in the 16 million zone.

No much changed in the vendor battlefield in Q3 as Nvidia still ruled with a 64% unit share while AMD gained one point sequentially and reached 36%. More twists and turns are expected this quarter though as AMD has started its DirectX 11 offensive with the Radeon HD 5800 and HD 5700 series cards while Nvidia is still working away on its Fermi-based products.

No doubt AMD/ATi will pick up share with its newest line, much more if it can solve the supply problems plaguing Oriental fab TSMC.  Certainly AMD/ATi could have made big strides if it had been able to deliver while rival nVidia has been having its own brand of supply problems.

While nVidia and ATi slug it out, news of add-in board vendors being lined up as partners for Intel’s Larrabee have died down somewhat; there’s no way of telling if no news is good news.

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better graphics on your computer…

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