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Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) are higher this morning following some positive comments from boutique research firm MScience regarding sales of their respective GPU platforms, whose data may in part refute recent reports of GPU weakness for Nvidia in particular.

Sales in North America are “very strong,” for both AMD and Nvidia, says MScience analyst Mark Bachman in an interview by telephone today.

Asked about the rumors of GPU weakness, Bachman said, “we are not seeing that weakness in GPU pricing,” he tells me, "in fact, Nvidia ASPs have been very stable,” noting that they have fully recovered from any discounting that happened back in November around the Black Friday holiday shopping period.

Some wire services that discussed Bachman's research referred to “checks,” as in channel checks, but Bachman is adamant his firm does not perform those typical types of conversations, which are common. Instead, his firm has "receipt-level data” for the actual sales at retail to consumers. He says this shows “actual prices at which people are shopping,” rather than anecdotal descriptions of inventory movement or distributor feedback that come with checks.

Bachman’s sales data suggest there was “surprising strength” for the “GTX 1080” video graphics cards from Nvidia, as well as the GTX 1080 “Ti” version, which has only been on the market for about 20 days. He says prices for the Ti model have been as high as $750 per card.

For AMD, sales of its older “400-level” graphics cards, featuring an existing “Polaris” graphics architecture, have had a “big rebound” of late, especially the “RX 480” and “RX 470” cards.

That is in advance of what are probably two separate “refreshes” for AMD’s cards this quarter. One is a refresh of Polaris, which Bachman speculates may be designed as “500-level” cards. And then comes “Vega,” the code-name for a new line of graphics cards meant to compete with Nvidia at the “high end” of the market.

The only weakness Bachman has seen is at the low end of the market, as AMD appears to have cut prices for those 400-series cards, perhaps, he speculates, to test out pricing “elasticity” in advance of the newer products’ debut. And based on his work, there is indeed lots of price elasticity for these older AMD cards.

Bachman notes that his data is only for North America. He has tried using the same receipt-level data for Europe, but found it "wasn’t useful enough” to pursue, as much of it was only from distributors in the region. The firm expects to data for China within a couple months’ time. Until that happens, the MScience work on North America doesn’t really clarify anything with respect to trends that are happening in Asia-Pacific, which, Bachman admits, is also a large, significant gaming enthusiast market.

AMD shares today are up 36 cents, or 3%, at $12.67; shares of Nvidia are up $2.68, or 2.8%, at $98.17.