Report confirms AMD gains on Nvidia

Advanced Micro Devices' new graphics chips are taking market share from Nvidia, a report issued Wednesday confirmed.

"AMD has by all accounts exceeded expectations with its Radeon HD 4000 series," according to report issued by market researcher Jon Peddie Research (JPR).

Aggressive pricing by AMD's ATI graphics unit made the difference, bringing down prices on add-in graphics boards. "Priced aggressively yet delivering solid performance, AMD's new line not only took back some market share--jumping up to 40 percent from 35 percent the quarter prior--it forced Nvidia (and partners) to cut prices on its recently released GTX 200 series product," JPR said.

Prices for graphics boards based on Nvidia GTX 260 and 280 graphics chips were slashed back in July. This happened only a few weeks after Nvidia launched the chips.

"Discounts cut into ASPs (average selling prices), taking a toll on revenue for both Nvidia and the market overall, the latter down 27 percent (year-over-year) to $3.8 billion," JPR said.

Graphics add-in board unit shipments were up sequentially but down year-to-year

(Credit: Jon Peddie Research)

The sequential growth for add-in boards tracked the growth in the aggregate market for graphics chips (which also includes motherboard-integrated products). The latter saw an increase (sequentially) in unit shipments of 17.8 percent in the third quarter. Unit shipments for add-in boards increased 11 percent to 21.9 million sequentially but fell 15 percent year-to-year.

[AppleSuxLeo]

-15.2% who are you trying to kid? ATI runs hotter , uses more power , and costs more. But most of all , ATI has poorly written drivers.

[3tire]

ATI runs hotter....?!?! What are you, 12 years old? How do your statements prove the market share loss didn't happen?

[tipoo_]

blind fanboyism right here. even in the face of all the recent driver problems Nvidia has had, you are saying this?

[sharmajunior]

Applesuxleo clearly has no idea of what he is talking about.

Market research and aggresive tests have shown over and over again that ATI has performed better in recent years against NVIDIA. Looking at windows vista, NVIDIA caused over 70% of system crashes due to poorly drivers. Its true that ATI did have more problems with drivers in the beginning but their drivers are more stable now than ever. ATI drivers caused about 18% of crashes on vista and the remaining caused by Intel's GMA. Moreover, NVIDIA hid their flaws in their chipsets that shipped with Macbooks and iMacs which is a total disgrace. People today still have more problems with NVIDIA's chipsets than ATI chipsets.

ATI costs more. What does that mean? You get what you pay for, like a 2GB GDDR5 card 512Mb for about 400 bucks is not bad. Thats what its supposed cost comparing it to other cards of similar type and from different companies.

[3rdalbum]

I don't know if ATI-based graphics cards run hotter or use more power in reference design, but the "run hotter" part all depends on the OEM's cooling system. It seems that few OEMs stick to the reference design, and instead put better coolers in or overclock the cards... or both. ATI cards are cheap compared to similar performers from Nvidia, and having run both ATI and Nvidia on Linux I can testify that Nvidia's drivers crash all the time. I hear the problem is the same on Windows.

[Philips]

You make overall valid point except the "ATI-based graphics cards run hotter" and "all depends on the OEM's cooling system".

ATI semi officially, through support channels, confirmed that PowerPlay on current generation of Radeon 4000 cards doesn't really work. For 4870x2 they even introduced BIOS hack to turn down frequencies when the card isn't used in full-screen 3D mode.

As was established by fans, main power consumption problem and one of the main sources of heat is GDDR5 memory. BIOS tweaking of the RAM frequency brought idle system from total ~140W to total ~105W (as was measured on outlet). IOW, RAM alone in Radeon 4870 is sucking hooping ~35W.

Read on here: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=67928 - scroll down to post with screenshots.

[AppleSuxLeo]

ATI is part of AMD=Amateur Micro Devices.

[gdmaclew]

Now there's an intelligent statement.

[tipoo_]

AppleSuxLeo is part of the internet troll federation.

[Mr. Dee]

nVidia's lousy device drivers probably caused this. Running an nVidia Geforce FX 5200 Ultra 128 MB AGP and a Geforce 6200 512 AGP on another system and both are not supported by pre-beta Windows 7 release. I am reverted back to AERO Basic. This shows that they are not supported by WDDM 1.1 driver.

In my laptop, I have an ATI X1600 Mobility Radeon which is supported by WDDM 1.1 with the same 64-bit device drivers I used for Vista. Quite obvious who really does a better job here.

[ashwinkn]

That's actually not a fair comparison. The nVidia cards that you are referring to are older than the ATi card.

[kitabata]

This article really does little for me from the perspective of a consumer. It says AMD is gaining on Nvidia - good for AMD, but it doesn't say it has surpassed them. That's like saying it's running a closer second in a 2 horse race.

[bunkey91405]

I applaud this news. After having horrible experiences with NVidia motherboards, 680i and 780i, I have vowed to stay away from NVidia products. You add the report of failing NVidia notebook GPUs and ATI making a competitive GPU in the 4800 series, at least someone looking for something other than NVidia, now has a valid alternative. And the numbers prove I am not the only one doing this.

[tipoo_]

awesome, i hope they put that cash into R&D for their new processor architecture.