[It's no secret that shipments of gaming PCs and GPUs have been on the decline for the past few years. Meanwhile, high refresh rate gaming monitors have bucked the trend and are selling like hot cakes on frosty mornings. However, market analyst International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts a sea change will occur as this year comes to a close, with performance GPU shipment growth outpacing that of mainstream chips and gaming PCs.

The IDC report offers a somewhat unsatisfactory outlook for 2024, with regular gaming monitor shipments down about 4% from last year and total gaming PC shipments up only a few percent. Premium gaming monitors (i.e., those with fresh rates above 165 Hz) are expected to improve by more than 20%, which is at least a good thing.

But let's forget about this year and look at the projections for 2025 and beyond. Year-over-year growth in gaming PC shipments is expected to be positive for the next four years, and while the actual numbers are not spectacular (about 6% in 2025, down to 2% in 2028), they are better news for the industry than they have been recently.

What really stands out is performance GPU shipments, which are up 8% versus 5% growth for premium GPUs. We expect Nvidia to announce a graphics version of the Blackwell AI GPU around September of this year, with the first cards potentially hitting store shelves by the end of the year. Then, as the calendar turns to 2025, more mainstream cards in this series should begin to appear.

Also, with AMD and Intel's next-generation GPUs, RDNA 4 and Battlemage, expected later this year, new graphics cards could be available in large numbers by the end of 2024.

Clearly, IDC expects all of these to be very popular, especially those in the middle of the performance spectrum; IDC has categorized "performance GPUs" as entry-level discrete cards like the Nvidia RTX xx50/60 level GPUs It categorizes them as "performance GPUs. And the "premium GPU" tier covers cards of the Nvidia RTX xx70 series and higher levels.

This is also evident in our projections for 2025-2026 and beyond. Initial interest in the performance segment will wane, and the premium range will remain strong for two years, but all GPUs will begin to decline as consumers begin to wait for the next new GPU to arrive. [The concern, however, is that all graphics card manufacturers will launch their flagship models first, and what IDC considers performance GPUs will not be available until well into the life cycle of the new generation. Blackwell, or what Nvidia calls the RTX 50 series architecture, won't be available until the end of this year or early next year, we won't see affordable cards until mid-2025.

However, this may be too Western a view; IDC believes that the backlash is due not only to the new generation of cards, but also to improvements in the global economic system, especially in China and emerging markets.

"The 2025 rebound is due not only to new GPUs, but also to improving economies." Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC, said. "China plays a big role here because it is a big consumer, but its economy has slowed significantly more than the rest of the world, and we expect it to improve by 2025. Other emerging markets are playing a similar role in the recovery."

Vendors of gaming PCs, components, and peripherals will no doubt hope that IDC's predictions are accurate. But the only thing consumers will really care about is whether the cost of PC gaming will become even remotely affordable in the coming years.