It’s safe to say that 2023 turned out to be a good year for the discrete graphics market. According to the latest data, both AMD and Nvidia saw an increase in their add-on card (AIB) GPU shipments in the last quarter of 2023, and the year-over-year gains are also huge. While Nvidia still dominates the market, AMD’s share is steadily rising and Intel remains in the shadows.

Today’s round of market intelligence comes from Jon Peddie Research (JPR), and it’s all about discrete GPUs. According to the analytics firm, discrete GPU shipments increased by 6.8% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the previous quarter. That’s above the less impressive 10-year average of -0.6%. The year-over-year gains are even more impressive, however, as JPR reports a 32% increase compared to the last quarter of 2022, with a total of 9.5 million GPUs shipped (versus 8.9 million units in end of 2022).

The split between AMD, Intel and Nvidia isn’t a shock — Nvidia dominates with 80% of the discrete GPU market share. Regardless of the year or quarter, Intel’s share represents nearly 1%, showing that Intel Arc adoption has been slow — and that’s despite the fact that Arc GPUs are a great choice for budget builds right now. However, AMD’s numbers are surprisingly good.

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Nvidia’s graphics card shipment quarter-over-quarter rose 4.7%, and the year-over-year comparison also turned out well, up 22.3%. Meanwhile, compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, AMD’s GPU shipments increased by 117% during 2023, while quarter-on-quarter growth was 17%. This is reflected in AMD’s market share, which increased from 12% in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 19% a year later. Those are some huge numbers, but there are a few ways to explain AMD’s success in 2023.

For starters, AMD only had new GPUs on the market at the end of 2022. The RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 were released on December 13, 2022. This would still have been reflected in the number of shipments, but not as much as if AMD had released these cards earlier in the year. What followed was a year of solid releases for AMD, including the RX 7800 XT, which quickly became a strong contender against Nvidia’s pricier offerings.

AMD’s older GPUs remain competitive in performance and price, which may contribute to these shipment numbers. They are discounted throughout the year and are cheaper to buy than the equivalent cards in Nvidia’s RTX 30 series.

It’s worth noting that JPR’s data focuses on shipments, which doesn’t directly translate into sales numbers. However, the trend remains the same – the GPU market is experiencing a growth period and AMD is holding its ground against Nvidia. The situation may be different when data from Q1 2024 starts rolling in, as Nvidia had three new GPUs from the RTX 40 Super refresh.

Meanwhile, AMD released a fairly unimpressive RX 7600 XT, but followed up with the global launch of the RX 7900 GRE, which may well be AMD’s best card this generation.

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