Intel has completely lost its position in the discrete graphics card market, losing its share to Nvidia and AMD. Despite the overall market growth, sales of Arc Alchemist video cards were so low that the company was not included in Jon Peddie Research’s global reporting statistics.
Image Source: Intel
According to JPR, sales of discrete desktop GPUs grew significantly in the second quarter of 2024 for all major manufacturers except Intel, whose sales remained flat last quarter. However, after entering the AIB market with the Arc Alchemist series in 2022, the company briefly achieved a 4% market share by the end of that year, but by the beginning of 2024 it had completely lost its share.
Image source: techspot.com
Global graphics card shipments reached approximately 9.5 million units, up 9.4% from the first quarter of 2024 and 48% more than in the second quarter of 2023. However, market king Nvidia benefited the most, posting quarterly growth of 9.7% and year-over-year growth of 61.9%. As for AMD, although its shipments increased by only three percent year on year, the quarterly result is comparable to Nvidia. Team Red also maintained its 12 percent market share from the first quarter.
Meanwhile, Intel Arc processors (codenamed Alchemist) were supposed to become an alternative to competing mid-range video cards. However, delivery delays have left the company behind Nvidia’s Ampere, Ada Lovelace and AMD RDNA 3 chips in terms of price/performance.
All three GPU manufacturers for discrete video cards are preparing new generations of graphics processors. Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture, likely called the RTX 5000, is expected to debut at CES in January 2025 and will likely cost at least $1,000. AMD could introduce RDNA 4 (Radeon RX 8000) around the same time, focusing on components that could significantly improve mid-range GPUs.
Despite the problems with Alchemist, Intel doesn’t seem to be abandoning its plans for Arc Battlemage graphics cards. Recent news indicates that the company remains targeting deliveries by the end of 2024. It is unclear whether Intel will try to compete with Nvidia in the high-end segment, where the latter currently has no competitors, or will release another series of mid-range video cards. According to experts, if Intel manages to avoid the delays that occurred with Alchemist, its new chips could become one of the best on the market, even if only for a short time.