JPR: crypto-miners bought 3 million graphics cards last year

by Mark Tyson on 28 February 2018, 12:11

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

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Business intelligence agency Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has published a new report on GPU market trends, encompassing the latest available quarter and the whole of 2017. Key findings are that GPU shipments have declined quarterly and are actually down about 5 per cent year on year. JPR says gaming is the primary driver for GPU sales but crypto-miners bought 3 million graphics cards last year having a big impact on pricing.

The quarterly downturn (Q3 - Q4 2017) in GPU shipments of 1.5 per cent was not notable but rather followed "normal seasonal shipments," wrote JPR in its report. Considering FY 2017; total GPU shipments decreased 4.8 per cent, desktop graphics decreased 2 per cent, and notebooks decreased 7 per cent. Graphics chip making partners released 363 new GPU products in 2017.

Of course the demand for GPU power from crypto-miners had an impact on the market, especially the AIB market which traditionally serves PC gamers. JPR's research showed that "over three million add-in boards (AIBs) were sold to cryptocurrency miners worth $776 million in 2017". Despite this the head of JPR, Dr. Jon Peddie, asserts that "gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales, augmented by the demand from cryptocurrency miners".

Over an unspecified period JPR expects the demand from crypto-miners to slacken as it becomes less economical to use GPUs to mine currencies. Hopefully advanced ASIC manufacturing projects at the likes of Samsung and TSMC will dampen the appeal of GPUs too.

It appears that AMD has done the best out of the cryptocurrency trend so far. JPR says that AMD's overall unit shipments increased 8.08 per cent quarter-to-quarter, Intel’s total shipments decreased 1.98 per cent from last quarter, and Nvidia's decreased 6.00 per cent.

Other GPU market observations highlighted by JPR were as follows:

  • The attach rate of GPUs (includes integrated and discrete GPUs) to PCs for the quarter was 134% which was down -10.06% from last quarter.
  • Discrete GPUs were in 36.88% of PCs, which is down -2.67%.
  • The overall PC market increased 5.93% quarter-to-quarter, and decreased -0.15% year-to-year.
  • Desktop graphics add-in boards (AIBs) that use discrete GPUs decreased -4.62% from last quarter.


HEXUS Forums :: 26 Comments

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For the most people on board graphics are good enough. And for those that game the high prices put many off!
3dcandy
For the most people on board graphics are good enough. And for those that game the high prices put many off!

Very true, I think the last time I bought an external graphics card was about 12 years ago - and that was only about £35.
If you bought a Ryzen CPU you needed a dGPU.

In fact, the JPR figures show that integrated graphics sales - particularly on desktop - have fallen year-on-year, while dGPU sales have leaped almost 10%. Indeed, year on year it's only the desktop dGPU sales that have increased.
More of us might upgrade graphics, memory and such if the price stopped skyrocketing. I want a higher end card, but refuse to pay the prices being asked. Because of the Cdn dollar being weak, it makes the problem even nastier.
From what I have been reading, 2018 looks to be much the same with Nvidia saying hopefully better by year end … I will make due for now

AMD new apu is not going to help add in board sales. That little inxpensive chip is going to be ‘good enough’ for a large market especially laptops / ultrathins

AMD/Nvidia can hopefully find some cost reductions with the coming die shrinks, and hopefully the massive memory shortage can do the same
So $776M spent on 3M graphics cards, that's an average of $259.

If that was RRP then it would make sense as that is an average of an RX580, but it has been a long time since I saw graphics cards at RRP. How out of date is this data???