While Intel remains a key player in the PC gaming ecosystem due to its leading position in processor sales—most of which come with integrated graphics—the company’s footprint in the discrete graphics card market has seemingly vanished.
Jon Peddie Research (JPR) reports that PC graphics card shipments surged to 9.5 million units in the second quarter of 2024, a 9 percent increase from the first quarter. This rise is surprising against a 10-year trend showing a typical 7.1 percent decline during this period, attributed to the launch of new graphics cards earlier in the year.
The situation presents a more intriguing narrative regarding the competition among AMD, Nvidia, and Intel in the discrete graphics space. Intel’s share of the market has now dropped to zero, a significant decline that began earlier this year after dwindling from a mere 2 percent a year ago.
This development leaves the discrete graphics market primarily dominated by two contenders: Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia boasts an impressive 88 percent market share, up from 80 percent last year, while AMD retains the remaining 12 percent, previously shared with Intel. Jon Peddie stated, “The add-in board market continues to surprise and astonish market watchers who have been predicting its doom for decades,” despite an overall reduction in shipments compared to two years ago. Peddie maintains a hopeful outlook for future growth, buoyed by promising new games that will demand high-performance graphics.
This situation is particularly ironic, as Intel has just rolled out its Lunar Lake mobile processor, featuring a new Xe2 graphics core intended for a future discrete GPU dubbed Battlemage, which has already faced delays. Meanwhile, the anticipation for Nvidia’s GeForce 5000 series (“Blackwell”) continues to grow. JPR analyst C. Robert Dow indicated that while graphics card prices are likely to remain stable until the next-gen releases from Nvidia and AMD, regaining market share for Intel will require a significant turnaround effort.