Size of market and impact of accelerated processing units on video card sales

Video card shipments totaled 14.5 million units in the third quarter of 2016, a 17% fall from Q3 2016 levels.The traditional PC market is shrinking as tablet computers and smartphones gain share.

Now, AMD and Intel's accelerated processing units, which combine graphics processing with CPU functions on the CPU die itself, are putting further pressure on video card sales. AMD introduced a line of combined processors which it calls the AMD A-Series APU Processors (A4,A6,A8,A10) while Intel, rather than marketing an exclusive line of APUs, introduced its "4th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors", some of which are APUs.

They are branded as having Intel HD Graphics or Intel Iris Pro Graphics. As an example, the Intel Core i7 4750HQ with Iris Pro Graphics 5200, an accelerated processing unit for notebook computers, allows users with mid-range graphics requirements to use a notebook computer without a video card. In a September, 2013 review of the Intel Core i7 4750HQ accelerated processing unit the website hardware.

And the tests leave no doubt about it, both 3DMark and the gaming benchmarks confirm that the [Intel] Iris Pro Graphics 5200 is on the same level of or slightly below that of the GT 650M.The GeForce GT 650M is not sold through retail channels, but an EVGA desktop GTX 650 was selling for around $120 in late 2016.

(A video benchmarking website that tabulates user-submitted benchmarks shows Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200, based on a very small sample of 8 submissions, scoring a G3D Mark of 912,versus 1296 for the Nvidia GeForce GT 650M,[21] with higher scores being better. If the benchmark is linear, that puts the Iris Pro Graphics 5200's performance at about 70% of the GeForce GT 650M Intel was targeting. AMD's A10-5750M mobile APU with Radeon HD 8650G graphics scores 858 on this graphics benchmark.) With anticipated price reductions, it is predicted that APUs will eventually replace low to mid-range dedicated video implementations. That will leave only the high-end enthusiast and professional market segments for video card vendors.