ATI Passes NVIDIA In GPU Chip Shipments

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To computer hardware enthusiasts, the debate over ATI-NVIDIA is almost as contentious as arguing about your religion or your political party. For the longest time, NVIDIA dominated this market, and this time last year, they had a solid lead at 59% of GPU shipments. Now, a new report by Mercury Research finds that ATI had edged out NVIDIA, taking up 51% of the total chip shipments this quarter.

The bad news just keeps on rolling for NVIDIA. A few days ago, they revised their earnings statements, saying that they wouldn’t meet their forecasted goals. Just before that – the new line of Apple iMacs just unveiled primarily had ATI graphics cards as the default graphics cards of choice. While Macs make up a small percentage of the total number of computers sold each year, it’s definitely a high-profile spot that NVIDIA is losing to ATI.

But, NVIDIA may not be in trouble. NVIDIA has a heavy hand in some non-consumer market areas. For example, they provide the graphics solution for a number of supercomputer around the world. Likewise, NVIDIA also provides graphics for some military applications.

Still, the computer hardware enthusiast community often believes that perception is reality. Even though NVIDIA and ATI sell a small amount of the cutting-edge high-end graphics cards (GeForce GTX 295, Radeon HD 5970) every year, whichever card holds the spot for “fastest card ever” often establishes the perception as that whole generation, from top to bottom, must be better than the other guy.

NVIDIA’s Q2 earnings is coming on August 12th.