Beancounters at IDC have given the thumbs up to integrated GPU and CPU chips from Intel and AMD. In a report IDC analysts said that the average selling price of processors in the third quarter jumped more than five percent.

Processors with integrated graphics technology in the third quarter represented 73 percent of all processors shipped. Shane Rau, director of semiconductors and personal computing research at IDC, said in a statement that Intel's Sandy Bridge and AMD's Fusion microprocessors were rising in each company's product stack and driving the price increase. Meanwhile low-end processors, notably Intel's Atom processors, were declining.

Intel and AMD led a global PC processor market that IDC said grew in both revenues and shipments in the third quarter. Worldwide PC chip revenues increased to $10.7 billion which was a 12.2 percent jump over the second quarter and a 16.1 per cent rise over the same period last year. Unit sales grew 6.7 percent over the second quarter and 5.2 percent over the third quarter last year, IDC said.

Intel saw its worldwide market share grow 0.9 percentage points from the previous quarter, to 80.2 percent while AMD’s share fell 0.7 percentage points, to 19.7 percent. Via's market share was 0.1 percent, a loss of 0.2 percentage points. But in the mobile chip area. AMD saw its market share grow 2.4 percentage points, to 17.6 percent, while Intel’s share dropped 2.1 percentage points, to 82.3 percent.