Published in Graphics

46.4 million systems ready for VR

by on16 March 2016

Jon Peddie research counted

AMD made many announcements at the Games Developers Conference and we wanted to follow up the claim that 83 per cent of the total addressable market for dedicated Virtual Reality HMD, Head Mounted Displays figures would be AMD. 

Fudzilla was right that AMD number included PlayStation 4 numbers. Jon Peddie, who is a legend in the graphics market and probably the most powerful analyst in the GPU business, claimed that a serious FPS, AAA game player needed a dedicated HMD running on a powerful GPU and the rest of the system. This the league where you need an AMD or Nvidia GPU and a powerful rig with an Intel or AMD CPU.

Casual gamers might be happy with HMD with smartphones such as Samsung Gear VR but that is another story.

For the HTC Vive or the Oculus. you need a high end system, enthusiast-class add-in boards (AIBs) and a Core i7 PC / high end eight core AMD FX CPU to qualify. Peddie believes that there are some 10.4 million of systems out there capable of providing a good VR experience.

He also thinks that Higher performance VR-ready PC systems are currently domi­nated by Nvidia. "Given the faster upgrade cycles, we expect the segment to grow rapidly."

If you don’t want to use PC Sony PlayStation 4 is an alternative. Sony should provide its PlayStation VR in October. So far there are 36 million people who own a PlayStation 4. This number is likely to increase by October too.

If you add these two numbers the TAM or the Total Amount of Market for dedicated HMD (Oculus and HTC Vive) you get 46.4 million.

"Given that AMD makes the GPU in the PlayStation 4, and is a supplier to the PC Enthusiast segment, we calculate that AMD-powered systems currently rep­resent 83 per cent  of the TAM for dedicated VR HMDs." Peddie claimed.

Most of our readers don’t need to be reminded that the GPU performance of three year old architecture in a console is definitely inferior to a modern GPU such as Fiji X or Geforce GTX 900 series. Not all of these 46.4 million users will buy a Virtual Reality glasses either.

The good news for AMD is that their GPUs are inside of 83 percent of these 46.4 million, making the Total Amount of Market for AMD quite high. That is a good head start but if you only look at the discrete HMD market, for Oculus and Vive, Nvidia will be in four out of five systems.

Last modified on 16 March 2016
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