Gamers Buy More GPUs Than Ever in Q2 2026, Even as Prices Keep Climbing

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Desktop AIB GPU shipments rose to 12.5 million units in Q2 2026, the highest quarter since Q1 2022, despite sustained price pressure.

Quick Report

Desktop graphics card shipments hit 12.5 million units in Q2 2026, the highest quarterly total in years, according to research from Jon Peddie. The figure represents a 5.9% increase over the prior quarter and a 7.8% rise compared with the same period a year earlier, even as GPU prices continued to climb.

The data points to strong end-user demand despite higher pricing and ongoing memory shortages. It also suggests the market is being driven by a combination of replacement demand, the pushing of older cards to their limits, and a continued desire to buy before future tariff or memory-related price spikes. That makes the quarter stand out as an unusually strong buyer market even in a period of widespread cost inflation.

Written using GitHub Copilot MAI-Code-1.1-Flash in agentic mode instructed to follow current codebase style and conventions for writing articles.

Source(s)

  • TPU