South Africa’s graphics card kings

Three brands stand out when it comes to graphics card sales in South Africa in early 2025 — Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI.

There are multiple types of companies involved in graphics card manufacturing. Firstly, there is the graphics processing unit (GPU) maker, which designs the card’s “brain”.

The main GPU makers are Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. While they are broadly referred to as “makers” or “manufacturers,” their GPUs are typically produced by large chip fabricators like TSMC.

Although some GPUs are used for their own “Founders Edition” cards, most are sold to add-in board (AIB) partners, who make most of the finished products that end up in customers’ PCs.

AIB companies integrate the GPUs into a printed circuit board (PCB) with custom cooling, power delivery, software, branding, and additional features.

GPU makers spend most of their money on research and design to maximise the performance of their chips.

They are effectively the inventors in the value chain. AIB partners are distributors and marketers who also customise the product to meet specific customer needs.

AIB partners spend fewer resources researching innovative technologies but manufacture many kinds of devices that require PCBs, including motherboards, monitors, and keyboards.

To be profitable, they add a margin to the costs of procuring, combining, and packaging the components in these products.

While the GPU is the main performance driver, custom PCBs and cooling configurations can significantly impact a graphics card’s performance.

There may be a substantial difference in the frame rates achievable by the cheapest GeForce RTX 5080 card with two fans as its main form of cooling compared to one that is overclocked with three fans.

By making multiple card configurations with the same GPU, AIB companies can cater to a wide range of customers with different affordability profiles and performance requirements.

They can also play around with pricing, knowing that more affluent customers may be more likely to splurge on products with substantial profit margins.

MyBroadband asked six of the country’s biggest online PC hardware retailers which AIB brands were leading their graphics card sales in early 2025.

The three names that featured most frequently were Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI.

Asus was among the top three selling brands for five out of the six online stores, while Gigabyte and MSI were among the top three at four stores.

Lesser-known budget brands Palit and XFX broke into the top three at two of the biggest players — Evetech and Wootware.

One of the country’s biggest online PC retailers for gamers — Evetech — said MSI remained its volume leader.

However, Palit’s aggressive pricing and XFX’s refreshed Radeon line-up had noticeably widened their market share in 2025.

XFX’s Radeon cards have also performed especially well at Wootware, another major gaming-focused retailer. In addition, Palit gained traction across Wootware’s Nvidia line-up.

Wootware said that Asus also continued to be a strong player thanks to its reputation for build quality and thermal performance across both AMD and Nvidia cards.

“Gigabyte is also performing well and trails just behind Asus,” it added.

One of the most well-liked online stores — Dreamware Tech — said its leading brands were MSI and Gigabyte, followed by Asus.

“MSI and Gigabyte often alternate as the top brand, and this fluctuation is generally influenced by their pricing at any given time,” it said.

The table below summarises the top brands of graphics cards sold by six of South Africa’s biggest online PC hardware retailers.