For several decades, there were only two main developers of graphics cards – AMD (formerly ATI) and NVIDIA. Intel decided to try its luck and become the third force in this highly competitive market in 2022 with the release of Arc series desktop and mobile discrete accelerators. And by the end of the year, Intel managed to match AMD’s share — 9%.
The latest statistics were shared by analysts from Jon Peddie Research, who painted a very bleak picture of the graphics accelerator market at the moment. Graphics card sales have declined after PC sales. GPU shipments in general were down 38% for the year: 24% in the desktop segment and 43% in the notebook segment. The dominant position in the graphics card market is still occupied by NVIDIA.
On the one hand, Intel’s 9% share of the discrete accelerator market isn’t exactly something to brag about to shareholders. Especially considering that the main competitor NVIDIA holds 82%. On the other hand, the fact that Intel quickly snatched away its 9% can only impress. Developing GPUs for Arc graphics cards was a slow process. The release of graphics cards has been delayed several times due to problems with their optimization. There was even talk among analysts that Intel might eventually abandon the idea of producing discrete graphics cards altogether and cut back on the project, which by then had already had billions of dollars invested in it. But it didn’t refuse and bit off a 9% chunk of the total discrete GPU market. The company will not stop there. The development of the second and third generation of Arc graphics accelerators is already underway.
Image Credit: Jon Peddie Research
With the release of the first generation of Arc graphics cards, the company decided to focus on cheaper models compared to the competition. For example, the Arc A750 had a suggested retail price of $290 when it launched a few months ago. However, the company has already lowered its price to $250. And not because nobody buys the card, but quite the opposite. Right from the start, it turned out to be cheaper, but at the same time more productive than the GeForce RTX 3050, which is still offered for 299 US dollars at best. But in terms of performance, the Arc A750 positions itself as a competitor to the more expensive GeForce RTX 3060. So it’s not surprising that the Arc A750 has become the obvious choice for many buyers for gaming in 1080p resolution with support for ray tracing. Intel hasn’t fully resolved the issues with optimizing its graphics cards, but continues to fix bugs with new driver versions with apparent success. At the same time, according to European media, Arc A750 turned out to be much more popular than the more expensive and powerful Arc A770. The younger model outperforms the older by five to one or even more.
In a recent interview with PCWorld, Intel Graphics rep Tom Petersen noted: “If you think about it, we’re one of the few companies in the world that’s managed to break into a market as huge as the discrete graphics market…NVIDIA will likely continue to ignore us.” However, AMD cannot ignore us. And in the years to come, as we gain more confidence in our abilities, the competition with AMD will only intensify.”.
It should be added that Peterson’s previous job was at NVIDIA, where he was the company’s head of technical marketing.
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