Apple’s Choice for Discrete Graphics Helps AMD Reclaim Leadership

AMD has reclaimed its position as leader in the discrete graphics market, due in part to the recently announced refresh of Apple’s iMac and Mac Pro lines. The company also announced that a number of technology partners are planning to release an inexpensive Single Link DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter.

Particularly, the adapter is being added thanks to the rapidly growing ATI Eyefinity ecosystem, the company said, which comes on the heels of the recently announced increase in AMD-powered discrete graphics options for Apple’s line of desktop Macs.

AMD also reaffirmed its return to market-share leadership in discrete graphics, revealing numbers recently released by Mercury Research which show that AMD regained the unit volume lead in discrete graphics with 51.1 percent of the market share in Q2 2010.

This is up 10.5 share points from Q2 2009, said Advanced Micro Devices.

“In the desktop discrete graphics market, AMD gained 10.9 points in the year, standing at 44.5 percent market share,” AMD was also proud to inform.

“Additionally, quarter over quarter AMD gained 6.6 share points in the mobile discrete graphics market, finishing the quarter at 56.3 percent market share,” the company said in a report.

“With OEM design wins continuing to roll in, including the recently announced refresh of Apple’s iMac and Mac Pro lines, an even greater number of consumers can enjoy the benefits of AMD consumer and professional graphics solutions,” AMD concluded.

In related news, analysts are cutting NVIDIA expectations, one of the factors being Apple’s shift to AMD solutions, Barron’s reported on Monday.

NVIDIA's stock is down 43 cents, or 4.3%, to $9.69.

The latest generation of iMac and Mac Pro computers from Apple’s desktop offerings now feature powerful new processors, and discrete graphics thanks to the powerful ATI Radeon HD 5750, and the ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.