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AMD overtakes Nvidia as top discrete graphics vendor

Advanced Micro Devices overtook Nvidia during the second quarter to become the top discrete graphics card vendor, according to market research firm Mercury Research.

AMD, which offers graphics cards under the ATI brand, held a 51.1 percent market share of all discrete graphics cards shipped during the second quarter, compared to Nvidia's 48.8 percent market share, Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, said Thursday.

That is a big jump for AMD, which as recently as the first quarter held a 42.1 percent market share compared to Nvidia's 57.8 percent share. AMD held a 40.6 percent share during the second quarter last year, compared to Nvidia's 59.2 percent share.

McCarron didn't provide specific GPU shipment numbers, but said market conditions worked in AMD's favor. AMD released budget graphics cards in the US$150 range with the latest DirectX 11 technology at the end of the first quarter, around the same time Nvidia introduced its first high-end DirectX 11 graphics card. That gave AMD a price advantage, which helped the company sell more graphics cards than Nvidia.

The low-end budget cards shifted the market in AMD's favor. By comparison, high-end cards have little impact, McCarron said. AMD last year came out with its first high-end DirectX 11 cards, but that didn't cause a market shift, he said.

AMD also had a good quarter selling mobile CPUs, which translated to higher mobile GPU sales, McCarron said. AMD has been effective in packaging CPUs and GPU into systems as part of laptop and desktop platforms. By comparison, Nvidia failed to take advantage of growing mobile GPU volumes because it lagged in chipset development.