While the experts can argue all day long over whether the UK will buy more or less than 600,000 graphic cards in 2012, one thing is for certain: The proportion of cards bought from each of the main manufacturers WILL change. With stories on the new Radeon 77xx everywhere, KitGuru investigates the ever changing GPU market.

Once upon a time there was no real graphics. Then there was a separate processor. After a while, it began to do more and more work. Eventually, they became so clever, that the amount of processing power and available memory in your graphic card – began to rival the rest of your entire system.

At its peak, the UK market for graphics was close to 1.5 million a month. In 2012, the total amount of graphic cards sold will probably drop below 600,000. The reasons are many-fold, but Fusion and Sandybridge are two of the biggest. The power of an integrated graphics solution is enough to prevent many people from needing to add in a card. Also, on a day when companies like HIS released its Radeon HD 7750 cards at just over £100, it seemed that companies like Asus were ready to have the faster 6850 drop down to just £89 [And then changed their minds, watch this space – Ed].

The point is that even cards that are an entire generation older, are still good enough to compete. That longevity of design reduces the need for a customer to rush out and buy a new card. Only slightly, but it's there.

At that point, your share of the market comes down to (a) how many loyal customers you have and (b) how good your distribution is for each of the major territories.

Over at the Distree 2012 show in Monte Carlo, VTX3D were recruiting channel partners from early in the morning to last thing at night – with Vivian Huang and Corey Lin leading the charge. Given that VTX3D is part of the enormous TUL group of companies (which includes Powercolor), you can imagines that we're all going to hear more from this company in the future.

UPDATE: We just checked Dabs and it looks like VTX3D will be leading the charge on restructuring pricing on the 77xx series.

KitGuru says: Expect even more price competition on graphic cards in 2012 as the latest Kepler/GTX6xx series from nVidia vies not only with AMD's 7000 range, but also the current GTX5xx series.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

Become a Patron!