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How Computer Enthusiasts Have Received AMD’s Recent GPU Releases And What’s Coming Next

Data pulled from builds on PCPartPicker demonstrate a clear preference among PCPartPicker computer enthusiasts for Intel CPUs paired with Nvidia GPUs. In fact, this preference has intensified in the last six months. Before drawing conclusions from this, it’s important to note (as this PCWorld article rightly points out) that this data is based on builds, not sales, and is representative of the enthusiasts on PCPartPicker.

The much anticipated AMD Zen CPU and Vega GPU releases may reverse the trends we noted in previous articles in Q1 2017.

Unfortunately for AMD, according to the builds on PCPartPicker, consumers have preferred each release of the Nvidia GPUs over their counterpart generation at AMD. For instance, in 2013, AMD released the Radeon 200 series. That same year, Nvidia released the GTX 700 series. The build data shows a significant difference in preferences among the builders.

Each Nvidia Release Produced Increasing Demand While The Same Wasn’t True For AMD

In each subsequent release of the Nvidia GeForce cards, the newest generation has outperformed the last one. Although this trend didn’t hold at the model numbers (the 970 had much better initial sales than the 1070), it did with each new generation.

On the other hand, for AMD, the R9 300 series really struggled among builders versus the Radeon 200 series. This may have been due to the R9 300 offering only a slight improvement over the 200 while builders were anticipating the 400 series. This depressed interest among enthusiasts really hurt the marketshare of AMD in the build data versus Nvidia.

The Rx 400 Series Is Doing Well Versus The R9 300 Series

The high-end consumer card in the Rx 400 series, the Rx 480, was rated very highly in many reviews, and you can see consumers adopting it much faster than the counterpart in the 300 series (the R9 380). The Rx 480 was the cheapest card on the market matching the specifications and requirements of VR. Although exact comparisons are difficult, Nvidia’s counterpart retails for almost $100 more (the GTX 1070).

Vega And Zen Will Have A Big Impact On The Market

In early 2017, AMD is releasing highly anticipated CPU and GPU lines that promise to outperform recent releases from Intel and Nvidia. This has the PC enthusiast and gaming markets pretty excited. This anticipation may be depressing the recent numbers for AMD in both markets. AMD is counting on a big release to reverse their marketshare declines in recent years. We’ll definitely report back when there are enough builds in 2017 to see how those releases impact the overall trends.

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