NVIDIA Holds 94% GPU Market Share
NVIDIA held about 94% of the add-in board GPU market in Q4 2025, according to Jon Peddie Research. This near-monopoly has major implications for gamers and PC builders seeking budget options, especially as new RTX 3060 GPUs from NVIDIA and Samsung on 8nm process promise better gaming efficiency.
NVIDIA's overwhelming market share is not a recent development; the company held a strong 92% of the discrete GPU market in the first half of 2025. This dominance is significantly fueled by the booming AI industry's demand for their data center chips, a sector that accounts for over 70% of NVIDIA's revenue. The company's proprietary CUDA software platform has also created a powerful ecosystem, making it difficult for customers to switch to competitors. Competitors AMD and Intel have seen their market shares dwindle significantly. By the end of 2025, AMD's share of the add-in board GPU market had plummeted to a historic low of 5%, a steep decline from 17% at the end of the previous year. Intel, despite its efforts with the Arc series of GPUs, has struggled to capture even 1% of the discrete market in a sustained way. The near-monopoly has had a tangible impact on GPU prices. Across the entire RTX 50 series, the average global price increased by 19% in just three months, from November 2025 to February 2026. This surge is largely driven by the high demand and rising costs of memory, which can now account for up to 80% of a graphics card's total manufacturing cost. In an effort to address the budget segment and potential supply shortages, NVIDIA is reportedly restarting production of the older GeForce RTX 3060. This move leverages Samsung's mature 8nm production line, which avoids using the cutting-edge TSMC capacity needed for NVIDIA's newer AI and RTX 50-series chips. The RTX 3060 remains one of the most popular GPUs among gamers, according to the Steam Hardware Survey. Its revival could offer a lifeline for gamers on older hardware, providing access to features like DLSS upscaling, though it lacks support for newer technologies like Frame Generation. The success of a re-released RTX 3060 will heavily depend on its price point. Originally launched at an MSRP of $329, industry watchers suggest a price below $250 would be necessary for it to be a compelling option against newer entry-level cards. It is still unconfirmed whether the revived model will be the original 12GB version or a less powerful 8GB variant.
