It’s frustrating to see just one brand grab such a monopoly and run with it. But the graphics card market is very much living that out right now as Nvidia heads the market by a strong margin. As Jon Peddie Research highlights, although it dropped in a year, Nvidia shipped 80% of the market’s add-in boards. Now with Intel also competing in the market, that leaves 20% between it and AMD. But Intel only has 1% more recently with AMD at 19%. This seemingly isn’t too bad but given AMD’s recent news, it’s not enough.
AMD gaming revenue decline
Just recently AMD reported a 48% drop in its gaming revenue for the first quarter year on year, even though its shares in the market have risen. That might just show the slowdown in the market overall. However, AMD also talks of not expecting a recovery till next year in 2025. So it might not even be the next-generation RX 8000 GPU releases that are going to help resolve this. That’s contrary to seemingly its CPU market that has been pretty strong including the 7800X3D that leads the way.
But then as Tech Jesus Gamers Nexus goes over, its competition from Nvidia is just flooding the market with its own products. With its wild success in the AI sector and general power in products, it is no surprise it is able to target a wide range of price points and be such a well-known brand. Especially as you really don’t stop hearing about Nvidia, constantly being in the news spotlight and being a well-known brand in the sector.
Also previously AMD’s GPUs had been known for driver issues, but even now there are some driver issues that pop up every so often that won’t exactly be good for its brand. Whilst Nvidia is known for its stability, and day zero drivers, and is the first choice you see wherever you look, flooding out even AMD out of the picture. Especially for those casual buyers who might not be up to date on all the news and finding what’s actually a better value.
What AMD can do about it?
The first thing is to target the top end, for the most part, it doesn’t make sense. Although the 7900 XTX of the current generation was powerful, it couldn’t match the 4090 at all. That’s where the casual looker will look, seeing the best graphics card right at the top and going for something they can afford in that generation instead. So AMD getting out an 8900 XTX blazing past a 4090 would be ideal. However, it seems AMD is taking a break from a whole range of RDNA 4 cards with only key mid-range cards planned.
It also just has to go for the price to perform even more. Although it does attempt that currently, it’s not quite good enough, it would have to undermine Nvidia quite severely. Something like offering a 4080 performance at the price of a 4070 would really make it an easy recommendation and hard to not choose for as a great value GPU.
Also going for exposure is one way to do so. As Nvidia is everywhere you look and the primary look AMD really has to be on par to get itself out there and be known as a good choice. But unfortunately, that’s a hard battle to go up against. AMD might not have the same resources for silicon or marketing which makes it a lot harder to battle the giant that just seems to keep accumulating more and more, that seems to be getting more powerful each time. We can only hope that AMD is at least in RDNA 5 as everyone’s moved on already or Intel Battlemage has a good go of knocking down the giant.
