By Nvidia dominates the desktop graphics card market, despite gamers’ complaints about declining value and growing costs. As of the first quarter of 2025, a research organization claims that Big Green holds over 90% of the market following a sharp decline from rival AMD. By many measures, Nvidia is already on the verge of becoming the desktop GPU monopoly, or has already done so.
Nvidia holds 92 percent of the desktop graphics market share for the quarter that ended in March, according to the latest figures from Jon Peddie Research. AMD fell from 15% to 8%, significantly below its Q1 representation from the previous year, although recording increases in Q4 2024. The situation is as dire for Intel, which is battling for any market share with its Arc discrete cards, now holding a zero percent market share (or at least less than the 0.1 percent recorded in Q1 2024).
It scarcely improves the situation to put the numbers in context. Although Nvidia and AMD unveiled new consumer graphics card designs in the first quarter of 2025, according to Tom’s Hardware, demand for Nvidia’s GPUs seems to have greatly exceeded supply, and prices are still significantly higher than retail. The “AI” market’s explosion, as both startups and well-established corporations rush to outfit data centers with GPUs to increase their capacity for generating AI services, may be the more significant story.
During the same period, desktop PC CPU sales fell by about 15% year over year and by more than 20% quarter over quarter, according to Jon Peddie Research. AMD has been making significant strides with new CPU offerings, particularly in the gaming industry with its popular X3D series for gamers and video creators, so that is somewhat dampening the fun.
Things are a little less dire for AMD when the perspective is expanded beyond desktop computers. In terms of graphical representation, AMD is moving slowly but steadily ahead of Nvidia, rising to 17.6 percent as of May, according to the most recent Steam hardware survey. But there are a few restrictions. AMD’s APU systems (such as the chip found in the Steam Deck and many other PC gaming handhelds) are more represented in this data set because Steam is a survey of PC gamers that leans more toward consumers and power users, and the broad “video card” category includes desktops and laptops plus integrated graphics.
The second quarter, which ends at the end of June, might show advancements for AMD. In comparison to their Nvidia equivalents, the Radeon RX 9070, 9070 XT, and RX 9060 XT all provide better value and appear to be much easier to purchase (though it’s still rather challenging to locate one at retail pricing). Additionally, AMD is still the industry leader in enthusiast desktop CPUs and low-power, effective laptop and mobile graphics. However, it doesn’t appear that Nvidia’s hegemony will be challenged very soon.
