A new paywalled report from Jon Peddie Research shows that desktop graphics card sales have hit their lowest point since 2005. In the “JON PEDDIE’S 2022 GPU ROUNDUP” report, statistics show a major downward trend for discreet graphics card shipments with a decrease of 42 percent since Q3 2021. The lack of demand for GPUs by crypto miners is largely attributed to the decline from last year, which saw roughly 12.72 million units shipped then. This current decline has happened despite AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel, all shipping a new generation of cards in Q3 2022.
According to the report (via Tom’s Hardware), there were approximately 6.9 million desktop cards shipped in Q3 2022, along with a similar quantity of discreet laptop GPUs for a grand total of around 14 million units. By comparison, the report shows a total of 20.24 million discreet desktop GPUs shipped back in Q3 2005, or nearly 3x as the same time in 2022. GPU shipments reached their all-time high back in Q4 2007 with 28.51 million units shipped but have since steadily declined.
During this time, from 2005-2022, NVIDIA has managed to not only maintain a lead over AMD but has in fact gained more ground and now has about 86 percent of the market share. Intel surprisingly, with its limited amount of shipped Arc graphics cards, managed a 4 percent foothold while AMD lost close to 10 percent of its market share.
Many factors to consider
Despite seemingly clear numbers to look at in the report there is still a lot to consider with the current state of GPU sales. In the last few years, sales were driven by crypto mining plus the pandemic as users sought to upgrade and/or build new PCs while at home. During this time numerous other factors such as supply chain issues, limited fab production, tariffs, and economic recessions, all combined to affect the ability of manufacturers to develop and ship products. One last detail regarding desktop graphics card sales that cannot be ignored is price. MSRP for desktop GPUs has reached all-time highs leaving many to reconsider their potential purchases and it only gets worse for the average user when they have to contend with many sellers raising prices even further due to market demand.