AMD dominating Market?
The company’s growing clout in the graphics card market will be one of the catalysts contributing to its growth and AMD’s outlook indicates that its rally may not be over just yet. AMD thanks to the launch of improved graphics processing units (GPUs) in 2019 that has made solid inroads into rival NVIDIA‘s sandbox.
The company last year launched its Navi-based RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT graphics cards which eclipsed NVIDIA in terms of pricing and performance. In the first quarter of 2020, those cards have played an important role in helping AMD corner a bigger share of the discrete graphics card market. And in the second quarter as well the latest data from the German retailer Mindfactory indicates that AMD may have kept up the pressure on NVIDIA.
AMD strong against NVIDIA
Based on Mindfactory’s sales data, statistics compiled by 3DCenter.org about graphics cards sales indicate that AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card gave the NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER a run for its money. About 9,800 units of AMD card shipped in the second quarter, while just over 11,700 units were shipped off the 2070 SUPER.
The key point to notice is that the 5700 XT graphics card is about 25% cheaper than the 2070 Super, but they give close competition in terms of performance. External sources benchmarks tell us that on average the 2070 Super is just 5% to 7% faster than the 5700 XT. This gives an advantage to 5700 XT a better value proposition for anyone looking to game at 1080p or 1440p resolutions.
Meanwhile on similar price lines, NVIDIA’s RTX 2060 Super is slightly slower than the RX 5700 XT, which tilts the price-to-performance ratio in the favor of AMD. This small advantage translates into the selling of products as well. Also, 3,920 units of the 2060 Super was outperformed by 5700 XT shipments in the second quarter.
But limitations to data of Mindfactory is that it represents sales from just one retailer. Like for first-quarter sales, AMD GPUs made up nearly 42% of market share and NVIDIA held on to the rest. But discrete GPU report of the first-quarter from Jon Peddie Research gave AMD around 31% market share with NVIDIA again claiming the remainder share.
Mindfactory’s data should be considered wisely as it is just one slice of a much bigger market. But at the same time, it does show trends that indicate that AMD could be making further inroads into a space that has long been acquired by NVIDIA.
Will the trend continue?
A 50% improvement in performance per watt over its predecessor, the Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture was delivered by the RX 5700 and the RX 5700 XT graphics cards which are based on the RDNA microarchitecture. This enabled AMD to storm aggressive prices and release powerful graphics cards.
This year with another promise of 50% improvement in performance per watt with the RDNA2 architecture, seems to be good news for AMD investors. AMD’s next-generation graphics cards could be 1.95 to 2.25 times faster than the 5700 XT as suggested by the grapevine.
By the end of the year, the chipmaker says that it is on track to launch its next-generation cards. If AMD can deliver the gains it is promising and manages to price the new cards attractively, it could give NVIDIA’s. After an incredible five-year run, don’t be surprised if
A tough fight is on the road if AMD can deliver the improvements that it is promising with attractive pricings, where AMD stand against the NVIDIA’s upcoming Ampere GPUs, which are also promising impressive gains, which give chance to AMD to corner more of the video game hardware market for itself. It is not surprising that after a 5-year run, AMD remains a top growth stock going forward.