As demand for personal computers softened in recent quarters, sales of CPUs declined in Q4 2022, and so did shipments of GPUs since most client systems feature integrated graphics. Jon Peddie Research estimates that 64.2 million discrete and integrated GPUs in total were sold last quarter, a 15.4% decline sequentially and a 38% decrease year-over-year.
Jon Peddie Research reports that around 54 million CPUs for client PCs were shipped by Intel and AMD in Q4 2022, down from 66 million units in Q3 (a 17.4% decline) and 84 million units in Q4 2021 (a 35.3% decrease). The market research firm also estimates that around 7.43 million discrete graphics cards for desktops were sold in the fourth quarter, a 7.8% increase sequentially, but down 43.7% year-over-year.
Keepin mind that Nvidia only introduced very expensive GPUs in the GeForce RTX 4080 and GeForce RTX 4090 in Q4, whereas AMD rolled out its Radeon RX 7900 XT/XTX boards very late in the quarter,.So i'ts not particularly surprising that unit sales of discrete desktop GPUs did not grow significantly compared to the previous quarter.
It is noteworthy that shipments of notebook GPUs declined by 43% in Q4 2022, whereas sales of desktop GPUs dropped by 24% quarter-over-quarter, according to JPR.
While sales of Intel's CPUs and GPUs declined the most in Q4 2022 — which is logical as the company is the No. 1 processor supplier in the world — it maintained its position as the world's largest GPU vendor with a 71% market share. Nvidia came second with a 17% share, whereas AMD's share remained at around 12%, which is a historical low for the company. Meanwhile, AMD and Nvidia managed to slightly increase their share from Q3 at Intel's expense.
"This quarter's total graphics processor shipments (integrated/embedded and discrete) decreased an astounding -15.3% from the previous quarter, contributing to a decline in the historical 10-year average rate of 6.8%," said Jon Peddie, president of JPR. "A total of 64 million units were shipped in the quarter, which was a decrease of -38.5 million units from the same quarter a year ago, indicating the GPU market is negative on a year-to-year basis."