Discrete GPU Shipments Drop to Levels Not Seen in Over 10 Years

As 2023 plods along, more bad news for the PC hardware industry has arrived from Jon Peddie Research. The market analysis firm has tallied up shipments of CPUs as well as discrete GPUs for the fourth quarter of 2022, and it’s not pretty. The numbers haven’t been this bad for GPUs since 2011. In addition, the firm predicts the GPU market will grow very slowly over the next five years.

The banner news from the report is the massive drop in GPU shipments in the past year. That’s not just for discrete GPUs either, but for all GPUs. The report claims that overall shipments declined 38% YoY. Broken down, desktop GPU shipments declined by 24% and notebook GPU shipments fell by 43%. This led to small changes in market share for AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. Intel still holds the lion’s share of the GPU market thanks to the integrated graphics that ship in most of its CPUs. On a year-over-year basis, though, AMD has lost 6% of the market while Nvidia has lost 2%.

GPU market share for Q4. (Image: Jon Peddie Research)

The quarter was rough on all three companies when it comes to shipping GPUs to gamers. Nvidia’s shipments declined 11.7%, Intel’s numbers fell 16.5%, and AMD shipped 12.7% fewer GPUs. Overall, the companies shipped 15.3% fewer GPUs in what is typically a strong holiday season. It’s been previously reported that last year’s holiday sales were atypically bad, but it’s also not a surprise. The economy started to creak a bit in the months leading up to it, which fueled some economic anxiety that persists to this day. Peddie notes that Q4 is usually flat or up, but this year it was way down.

The news on the CPU front is also negative. CPU shipments decreased 17.4% from the previous quarter and 35.3% year-over-year. For context, 84 million CPUs were sold in Q4 of 2021. The following year only 54 million were shipped. The analysis shows that of all the CPUs in customers’ hands, almost two-thirds are in notebooks. The other third are desktop CPUs, highlighting the importance of mobile chips in overall sales.

Despite the doom and gloom, there were a few bright spots in the report. For example, shipments of add-in boards for desktops increased by 7.8% from the past quarter. The attachment rate for GPUs was also up 3% as well. Despite the relatively grim numbers, the few bright spots have prodded the Peddie group to remain optimistic. The report concludes by saying the sky is dark but not falling.

In general, the industry is expected to continue to be soft for the next quarter. It doesn’t seem to be a reflection of any one company’s products or strategy, either, as all companies have been affected. However, there’s plenty of uncertainty about when things will turn around. When Intel posted its quarterly earnings recently, it said it could only provide guidance for this quarter we are in now. Intel’s CEO said “macro weakness” could make for a rough first half of 2023, with the possibility of a rebound later this year.

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