AMD一年内丢掉22%的显卡市场，就这么输给NVIDIA了？

小编语：近年来，AMD在CPU和图像处理市场上一路下滑，让人很为它忧心，似乎摆在它面前的悬念只有一个：谁会是接盘侠呢？可能会有人来骂小编白痴了，“你知不知道AMD的存在对英特尔和NVIDIA有多大意义？”是滴，英特尔和NVIDIA能放心大胆在CPU和显卡市场赚钱都要感谢AMD一直以来的坚持。但是，注意，现在情况开始有所不同了，CPU领域开始有ARM阵营的出现，AMD最终很有可能是要被收购的，你同意吗？

在独立显卡市场上，AMD一直是千年老二的角色，第一被NVIDIA长年占据。但直到一年前，AMD的市场份额还颇为壮观，2014年第二季度期间，该公司独立显卡出货量还占到40%市场份额。但自此以后，AMD的市场份额持续跌落。

去年9月，NVIDIA发布了新产品GTX 970和GTX 980，开启了AMD市场份额下滑的闸门。2015年第一季度期间，AMD在独立显卡市场上的份额跌至22.5%。AMD新产品在6月发布，一系列产品剑指高端。但根据调研机构的数据显示，NVIDIA在第二季度还在不断侵蚀AMD的市场。AMD的市场份额已经掉到了18%。

Nvidia Market Share Q

SOURCE: JON PEDDIE RESEARCH AND MERCURY RESEARCH.

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) has played second fiddle to NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) in the discrete graphics card market for years. Up until about a year ago, AMD was still putting up respectable numbers; during the second quarter of 2014, the company shipped about 40% of all discrete graphics cards.

Since then, AMD has been bleeding market share. In September of last year, NVIDIA launched some disruptive products, the GTX 970 and GTX 980, beginning a trend of market share losses for AMD that has yet to let up. During the first quarter of 2015, AMD's share of the discrete graphics card market had declined to just 22.5%, according to Jon Peddie Research.

New graphics cards from AMD launched in June, both a series of rebrands as well as brand new high-end products. But according to numbers from Mercury Research, NVIDIA won even more market share from AMD during the second quarter. AMD's market share has now fallen to just 18%.

With AMD's discrete graphics card market share cut in half over the past year, and with those share losses accelerating during the second quarter amid an extremely weak PC market, the situation is looking dire for AMD.

Why aren't people buying AMD's graphics cards?
Since the launch of the GTX 980 in September of last year, AMD hasn't really had a competitor at the high end of the market. The Radeon Fury and Fury X, which launched at the end of June, corrected this issue, but with availability issues plaguing the high-end cards, NVIDIA still effectively owns the high end. Nearly two months after launch, the Fury X is still completely sold out on Newegg.com. And even if it was available, the GTX 980 Ti, which NVIDIA launched in early June, offers generally better performance for the same price.

Most of the volume happens at lower price points, and AMD has a much stronger lineup in the value segment of the graphics card market. Tom's Hardware routinely publishes a list of the best graphics cards at different price points based on performance-per-dollar, and AMD's GPUs were deemed the best buy at the $100, $115, $150, and $200 price points in the latest update.

Why, then, has NVIDIA been winning so much market share? Part of the problem is that all of AMD's lower-end graphics cards are based on old GPUs. The entire Radeon 300 series are rebrands of the Radeon 200 series with slightly tweaked performance, and some of the Radeon 200 series cards are themselves rebrands of even older cards.

Meanwhile, NVIDIA has been filling in its low-end and mid-range lineup with brand-new cards based on its Maxwell architecture. The GTX 960 was launched in January for $199 and the GTX 950 in August for $159. Raw performance isn't the only thing that matters; power consumption, features, and software are also important.

The core problem at AMD is that the company doesn't have the resources to keep up with NVIDIA. AMD's PC business is suffering huge losses, and research and development spending has been slashed over the past few years. NVIDIA has been able to launch brand-new graphics cards; add features like Dynamic Super Resolution, which allows for improved image quality; and develop software like GameWorks, which allows developers to easily add advanced graphics features to their games -- features that are optimized for NVIDIA GPUs. AMD is being out-innovated, plain and simple.

With AMD's high-end cards still in short supply more than halfway through the third quarter, it's hard to imagine the company winning back much market share in the near term. AMD is in a very tough spot, and barring a massive misstep by NVIDIA, I don't see things getting much better for the company anytime soon.