Desktop graphics card shipments hit four-year high of 12.5 million despite increasing prices — Nvidia takes 90% share as gamers rush to beat looming price spikes

Discrete graphics card shipments for desktop PCs in Q2 2026 totaled 12.5 million units, the highest number since Q1 2022 despite record-high prices and cratering shipments of desktop CPUs, according to findings from Jon Peddie Research. The result highlights a broader trend that shows that unit sales of standalone GPUs for gaming have so far remained immune to rising prices, perhaps because gamers are expecting even higher prices in the coming quarters.

The industry shipped 12.5 million standalone graphics cards for desktop PCs in the second quarter of 2026, up around 5.9% sequentially and 7.8% year-over-year. 12.5 million add-in boards (AIBs) is the highest number of graphics cards sold in one quarter since the first quarter of 2022, when the industry shipped 13.38 million AIBs.

It is particularly noteworthy that 2026 is shaping up to be better for unit sales of desktop graphics boards than 2025 despite raising prices. For the first half of 2026, 24.3 million desktop AIBs were shipped, up significantly from 20.8 million graphics cards supplied in the first half of 2026. JPR analysts also note that only around 14 million desktop PCs were sold during the quarter, which — given an unusually high 89% attach rate — largely means that the majority of AIBs shipped during the quarter were aimed at gamers buying in retail and not at PC makers.

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Having shipped about 11.25 million discrete GPUs for desktop computers in Q2 2026, Nvidia remained the undisputed leader of the market with around 90% market share. AMD controlled roughly 8% of the market, shipping about one million discrete desktop GPUs, while Intel's share increased to 2% on shipments of several hundred thousand units. Meanwhile, Jon Peddie Research notes that market share changes were negligible during the quarter: AMD’s overall AIB market share decreased by -0.16% from the previous quarter, Intel's market share increased by 0.3%, and Nvidia's market share decreased by -0.1%.

For Nvidia, the quarter was particularly good as it sold the highest quantity of discrete GPUs for desktop PCs in a single quarter since Q3 2017, when it sold approximately 11.72 million units. By contrast, sales of AMD's standalone graphics cards have been floating below or around one million units per quarter for nearly four years now, with only three quarters being exceptions (Q3 2023, Q4 2023, Q4 2024). Still, one million is higher than the around 700 thousand discrete desktop GPUs the company sold in Q2 2025.

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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

17 Comments Comment from the forums

Jabberwocky79

Cough..cough..I was right.

This has nothing to do with laptops. It's ppl seeing the writing on the wall and getting something before prices and availability go even crazier.

Here's a wild theory.... could this be a bunch of gamers trying to gear up for GTA6? I couldn't care less about the game, but it is such a big deal, I could see it literally driving market decisions.
Reply
txfeinbergs

Jabberwocky79 said:
Cough..cough..I was right.

This has nothing to do with laptops. It's ppl seeing the writing on the wall and getting something before prices and availability go even crazier.

Here's a wild theory.... could this be a bunch of gamers trying to gear up for GTA6? I couldn't care less about the game, but it is such a big deal, I could see it literally driving market decisions.
Honest question, why do you think people care that "you were right.... cough cough".
Reply
Kindaian

Nope... It's just AI... People are buying the cards to run AI local... imho, most gamers don't have 150 usd to buy GTA6 nor 1k usd to buy a card to run it...
Reply
M0rtis

Jabberwocky79 said:
Cough..cough..I was right.

This has nothing to do with laptops. It's ppl seeing the writing on the wall and getting something before prices and availability go even crazier.

Here's a wild theory.... could this be a bunch of gamers trying to gear up for GTA6? I couldn't care less about the game, but it is such a big deal, I could see it literally driving market decisions.

Im almost in the first category. Im a laptop gamer since I do travel often enough for it to make sense. I was planning on upgrading next year or whenever the RTX 6000 series comes out since the 5070Ti is barely 50% faster than my 3070 and I would like to get a PC that can handle 2K at max settings or 4K at medium settings and the current mid - upper mid range cards are not really up to the mark for that use case.
However seeing prices and what not going crazy, Im feeling a bit of panic internally to upgrade now to an even higher tier 5080 or 5090 before things get even crazier.

The other problem is that, like with the crazy premiums over MSRP that we saw with the launch of the RTX 5000 series, since everything still seems to be selling out with the insane prices, I doubt that they will ever return to more palatable levels because people with no self control are sending the wrong message to corporations - we will but whatever you sell us at any damn price
Reply
bigdragon

Gaming is getting more expensive. Consoles are as expensive as they've ever been and expectations are for prices to rise even more. PC isn't in significantly better shape, although there is a thriving used market on PC and a lot wider variety of configurations to choose from.

I expect that people see where the next XBox and Playstation are heading and are jumping ship over to PC gaming. Microsoft and Sony do not have the same level of trust that Valve has cultivated nor do they offer the huge variety of gaming experiences. If you're going to pay more to game then it might as well be on PC.

Personally, the new XBox and PS6 are dead on arrival to me. I'd rather spend the money I would have put towards one of those consoles towards the purchase of a GPU. This does mean missing out on a few first-party franchises, but those have been circling the drain for years without any expectation of escaping the live service mandates.
Reply
EzzyB

Jabberwocky79 said:
Cough..cough..I was right.

This has nothing to do with laptops. It's ppl seeing the writing on the wall and getting something before prices and availability go even crazier.

Here's a wild theory.... could this be a bunch of gamers trying to gear up for GTA6? I couldn't care less about the game, but it is such a big deal, I could see it literally driving market decisions.
I'm not so sure. I was playing around with the Steam survey yesterday. I own a 5070ti and was much surprised to fine the laptop version had nearly double the users as the desktop version.
Reply
rluker5

M0rtis said:
Im almost in the first category. Im a laptop gamer since I do travel often enough for it to make sense. I was planning on upgrading next year or whenever the RTX 6000 series comes out since the 5070Ti is barely 50% faster than my 3070 and I would like to get a PC that can handle 2K at max settings or 4K at medium settings and the current mid - upper mid range cards are not really up to the mark for that use case.
However seeing prices and what not going crazy, Im feeling a bit of panic internally to upgrade now to an even higher tier 5080 or 5090 before things get even crazier.

The other problem is that, like with the crazy premiums over MSRP that we saw with the launch of the RTX 5000 series, since everything still seems to be selling out with the insane prices, I doubt that they will ever return to more palatable levels because people with no self control are sending the wrong message to corporations - we will but whatever you sell us at any damn price
I got a new card last year when they were cheap. I prefer to own things and didn't want to sign up for a GPU feature subscription plan as that is what I see Nvidia has settled into: my 3080 is basically 2/3 a 5070ti minus the paid subscription fee for new software locked features.

This policy is just intensifying gen after gen with Nvidia so I just went with what seemed like a good deal on a card that was good at doing everything but these. I've been compromising on settings as long as I have been gaming and for that time I've weighed whether a settings visual improvement was worth the framerate cost and many are just not. Like hairworks, fancy smoke, fancy clouds, motion blur, most DOF, chromatic aberration, vignetting, almost all raytracing, and all pathtracing. I do not mind turning these settings off in the least and they are most of what the Nvidia subscription plan has to offer. Reducing the loss in framerate to enabling raytracing and pathtracing.

My priorities are apparent resolution(with full texture detail), draw distance, plausibly realistic lighting, and frametime+latency consistency and I game at 60 fps, 4k, usually with monitor frame interpolation to 120 added.

Perhaps I shot myself in the foot by going with the 9070xt at $599 instead of the 5070ti at $750 as Nvidia's upscaling is superior and apparent resolution is one of my priorities, but then again IDK if it was worth paying 1.25x as much and I am glad to be out of the rat race of being on the latest unwanted feature subscription plan.

As far as DLSS5, I do like how it makes the still shots of models look. But I play story games and I've seen DLSS5 give lazy/distracted face to NPCs during cutscenes that trash their performances in critical cutscenes. Losing a vested interest in playing a game is a dealbreaker for me and I only get one chance to play it the first time. If I had a 5070ti I could be tempted to turn on DLSS 5 say, during the next Witcher 3 expansion and there exists a significant possibility that DLSS5 could turn that from an emotional experience to a better looking waste of time. Not having the option to take that chance is one reason I'm grateful I went with the 9070XT. Sure, I could just turn it off, but would I when I would already be excited to play and there would be this excited hype to go along with it?

But video cards have gotten a lot more expensive and given the choice of a $800 9070XT, a $1150 5070ti, or just keeping my money and 3080, I would probably stick with the money+3080.
Reply
Jabberwocky79

txfeinbergs said:
Honest question, why do you think people care that "you were right.... cough cough".
I was intentionally being silly, but if you want to get your underwear in a bunch, be my guest.
Reply
Jabberwocky79

EzzyB said:
I'm not so sure. I was playing around with the Steam survey yesterday. I own a 5070ti and was much surprised to fine the laptop version had nearly double the users as the desktop version.
Well, the article said these sales figures are specifically regarding discrete GPUs, so it's not counting laptops.
Reply
thestryker

I definitely got my 9070 XT back in June because the writing was on the wall about pricing. I wasn't at all worried about short term, because I was happy enough with my 3080 12GB, but we're not going to see a new generation of card until next year at the earliest and there's pretty much no chance of them being reasonably priced. That meant looking more 2028+ for a purchase time so I opted to buy now. I did end up spending more than I wanted to, but I wanted a model with triple power connectors and vapor chamber cooler. The one I ended up getting was priced $10 more than its historical low so I pulled the trigger.

I imagine I'm hardly the only one who looked at it this way as things are extremely dire across the whole market.
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