AMD Enjoyed 11% GPU Shipment Boost in Q2

It’s not often enough that we get to write about a positive quarter for AMD, but according to Jon Peddie Research, AMD’s Q2 was one of those unfortunately rare ones. Quarter-to-quarter, AMD’s GPU shipments rocketed ahead 11%, to settle at 17.9%. By contrast, NVIDIA’s shipments fell 8.3%, leaving the company with a 14.7% share. Despite already dominating the market, Intel saw a 4.1% increase, representing a massive 67.3% chunk of the marketshare pie.

Overall GPU shipments increased 3.2% from Q1 to Q2, but while that seems all fine and good, Q2 still represents a 4.5% drop compared to Q2 2013. JPR notes that Q2 performance is usually quite mixed, so there’s no need to put too much credence into that simple statistic.

JPR’s report doesn’t speculate on why AMD had such a strong quarter, and I can’t come up with technically sound speculation, either. The company released its Radeon R9 280 just before Q2, but that wouldn’t have likely caused any sort of a spike. Likewise, the company’s latest Never Settle campaign also likely had little to do with it. What’s left? Could AMD’s strong relationship with Raptr have anything to do with the spike? We’ll find out soon enough, if this growth continues.

On the NVIDIA front, I should mention that while the company saw its GPU shipments decline, it had a fantastic last quarter revenue-wise, so it’s not exactly going to be upset by this news. The company’s GTX 800 series is expected to launch next month, so the roles could be reversed moving into Q4.