Your next GPU could be from AMD, not Nvidia, if Team Red’s success with PC gamers continues

We’ve heard that AMD’s RX 9070 launch has been a storming success
A marketing manager for AMD in Japan has claimed that “Radeon’s sales share in Japan has reached 45%”
Other recent reports of ‘unprecedented’ demand for RX 9070 GPUs appears to back up this notion, and Team Red seems to be going great guns now

AMD’s RDNA 4 launch has been a big success by all accounts, and we’ve just had another indication of just how much of a victory the new RX 9070 graphics cards have been for Team Red.

VideoCardz reports that AMD (and its card-making partners) held a press event in Japan, where a representative of the company observed that “AMD isn’t used to selling so many graphics cards.”

AMD’s Yoshiaki Sato, who is marketing manager for Japan, also shared some eyebrow-raising information, as aired via a report from Ascii (a Japanese site – so bear in mind this is translated from Japanese).

Sato claimed that “[AMD] Radeon’s sales share in Japan has reached 45%, and we are at our peak now.” A representative from ASRock, Mr Haraguchi, observed that AMD was still “below the majority” and added “let’s aim for 70%” of market share.

It’s also worth remembering that at the tail end of last week, David McAfee, AMD’s Corporate VP and General Manager, explained that the RDNA 4 GPU launch was “really unprecedented” in terms of the demand witnessed for these boards. This was in a lengthy interview with Hot Hardware.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Analysis: A golden GPU opportunity for AMD

Regarding the mentioned statistic from Japan, this is a bit of an odd one, because in terms of global market share, AMD is way behind Nvidia, and very much the underdog – or at least this was certainly the case before the RX 9070 GPUs were launched. Typically, Nvidia holds 80% or more of the discrete desktop graphics card market – it actually reached 90% in December 2024 – so the gulf between Team Green and Red is huge.

Unless the situation is quite different in Japan – or something has been lost in translation here – it seems that perhaps the figure of 45% of ‘Radeon sales share’ might only refer to the most recent sales activity (since the RDNA 4 launch).

Furthermore, we’re not told anything about the source of this stat, so we need to treat it cautiously – the percentage is just plucked out of the air, and there are questions about this. For example: could it be based on the sales of a single retailer? We don’t know, but if it really does reflect the wider picture of the Japanese situation, owning almost half the market for desktop GPUs sounds like a major turnaround for AMD, frankly – but I have my reservations here.

That said, there’s no doubt AMD has done very well with its new RX 9070 graphics cards – although there’s one sticking point, namely that demand is well outstripping supply for these GPUs. Indeed, it’s still very hard to find an RDNA 4 graphics card (check out our where to buy guide for some help on that front, incidentally), which is a frustrating situation for PC gamers.

Now, launch stock levels may have been much better for AMD than Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, but that’s not saying much, and what we’re seeing is the inflation of prices even at retailers (rather than just scalpers) for both RDNA 4 and RTX 5000 products.

Indeed, at the press event over in Japan, AMD’s partners complained about not being supplied with enough GPU chips to make RX 9070 boards, and Team Red rather deflected the issues raised (which is where the comment about AMD not being used to selling graphics cards came in).

What we have heard elsewhere, from the aforementioned interview with David McAfee, is that AMD is “ramping supply of Navi 48 very aggressively,” with Navi 48 being the chips that power the RX 9070 graphics cards.

AMD’s Frank Azor also recently informed us that more supply of RDNA 4 GPUs is coming ‘ASAP’ which sounds promising. What gamers also need, though, is for some of that inventory to arrive at MSRP pricing for entry-level graphics cards, because during the launch, only a limited number of models appeared to be available at that price.

This is a big opportunity for AMD to really leverage an advantage over Nvidia, and take back turf in the mid-range GPU space, growing its market share to a healthier percentage than ever before – which is apparently already happening in Japan.

There’s lots of frustration currently being vented at Nvidia – over the lack of RTX 5000 stock, pricing, and (rare) hardware-level faults with its new Blackwell GPUs (or indeed issues around crashing) – so if AMD can secure enough supply of RX 9070 models, sold at a fair price, this could be the turning of the GPU tide, possibly in a big way in the favor of Team Red.

Here’s hoping, because that can only be good for competition in the market, and putting pressure on Nvidia to lower Blackwell GPU pricing (hopefully).