AMD is #1 in graphics, ahead of Nvidia
At its financial analyst meeting, AMD claimed the crown of the graphics market with 50.5% market share over Nvidia’s 49.5%.
To make the numbers work, AMD’s senior vice president Rick Bergman threw in the total of graphics chips sold for desktops, laptops but also the Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii video game consoles.
“My question was, why aren’t the gaming platforms not in those numbers. ATI graphics technology is used in Microsoft Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii. And I tell you that the folks at Microsoft and Nintendo certainly think that they’re shipping performance graphics… And the gap would have been even greater if we’ve added the integrated graphics that we ship with our platforms,” explains Bergman.
Rick Bergman, the general manager of AMD's graphics business
Without the video game console and the integrated chips, AMD graphics market share falls at 40.7% versus 58.9% for Nvidia.
In his presentation, the AMD’s head of its graphics’ business also noted that the vast majority of PC buyers select PCs with integrated graphics: 65% in the case of PCs and up to 88% for notebooks sold in U.S. retail. Bergman also claims that AMD notebook and desktop platforms off up to 2-3 times the 3D performance of Intel integrated graphics.
AMD’s graphics price suitespot is in the $200 to $300 range
For AMD the suitespot for graphics cards is in the $200 to $300 price range. But in a departure of what worked before for AMD/ATI, Bergman said that instead of creating graphics chips with “mega dies”, AMD will instead combine several smaller dies to stay competitive with Nvidia’s high end chips.
“We’ll put 2 graphics chips on a board. That gives us the flexibility to go very high in performance as well as very low in price. Nvidia with its strategy of creating this mega die is having a much harder time to reach those lower price points. I’m still waiting for the low end derivatives of Nvidia chips this year!,” explains Bergman.
Bergman also said that AMD will target the high-end workstation graphics market with some specific products. “It’s maybe just 2% of the market in volume but 15% in revenue,” adds AMD’s graphics chief.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …. The revengeance of ATi grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr