AMD gaining marketshare in declining discrete GPU market

It's an interesting story really Market research firm Jon Peddie Research JPR reports shipments of discrete graphics cards totaled 14.8 million units in Q2 2012 a decline of 1.1 million units seven...

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Good for AMD but .

 

Here's my question. Who is buying S3 products to give them .1% market share?

 

S3 products?

deltatux

 

S3 is a graphics manufacturer that used to make discrete desktop cards that were supposedly aimed towards the high end. I had the misfortune of having an S3 Savage 2000, which never functioned as intended, and as far as I know all of them sold were defective.

 

S3 was actually rather competitive back in the mid-90's. Then VIA bought them out and transitioned them from discrete graphics to integrated graphics.

 

Agreed. A good % of gamers out there are not really that picky when it comes to eye candy that new games have to offer, as long as the game has good fps with no lag. This is also the reason why mainstream cards (gtx 460, 560, 660) sell the most

 

Yeah, that is funny about the S3 cards. I just wonder who is buying those anymore? And, yes, good to see AMD keeping competitive in the graphics market. I just hope this stagnation goes away soon so that the market can get moving again. It's sad that a game from 5 years ago is still one of the toughest to run today.

 

Awhile back they re-entered the discrete graphics market somewhat with some low end cards under the title of "Chrome". Aside from that I assume they just make integrated parts, I don't know though.

 

Games have very little, if anything to do with this, the high end has always been the minority.

As per the article, the fact people have to be more conservative with money these days will clearly affect sales, not helped by new products that are more expensive than previous years.

Also mentioned is the increase in performance of APU’s that seems to have had an impact on the low end discrete GPU market.

 

http://www.s3graphics.com/en/products/class1.aspx?seriesTypeId=1

 

Has a look at those the other day out of curiousity, seems rather crap but kinda cheap if you can find em.

 

And that gives me a happy face.

 

Second that.

My brother plays skyrim with a gtx 260 at 1080p with the high preset. Rarely goes under 40fps...

Damn you consoles.

 

Skyrim is nearly a year old wouldn’t have sold anywhere near as much if it didn’t have lower requirements, even moreso with Diablo3 which my GF can play on her 2 year old laptop.

I don’t get the not needing to upgrade thinking, my card isn’t even that old and it’s already too weak for most new games.

 

Which games? My card still runs almost every game at high/max setting @1680x1050 with some AA very decently.

If you want to play every game with max settings, max AA at very high resolutions only (like 2048x1440), and are only pleased with a constant 60fps or higher, you'll have to upgrade a lot indeed.

 

Recently, Alan Wake, Max Payne 3, The Secret World and Sleeping Dogs all pushed this card more than I was comfortable with, but as you said it all depends on what you’re happy with.
Some people are happy with an average framerate is 60fps, for me that has to be the minimum, if not then I will cap it to 50, and sometimes even 30fps.

Graphics wise many people are lucky as they don’t like performance heavy features like motion blur, DOF and AO…… unfortunately I do, so more and more games get added into the “play when I upgrade” list.

Cost has to be one of the main reasons for lower sales of discrete GPU’s.
It certainly is for me, so the fact the 2011/2012 GPU’s all launched at higher prices that the 2010/11 cards, (especially the AMD cards) has to of put many people off.