Overall GPU Market Declines In 2017 But Cryptocurrency Miners Bought 3 Million AMD And NVIDIA Cards

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has released its shipment numbers for GPUs during the fourth quarter of 2017, and there's some mixed news to report. Looking at quarterly performance, AMD was the big winner with an 8 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in GPU shipments during Q4. AMD was able to nab market share from both NVIDIA and Intel, which saw their GPU shipments decrease 2 percent and 6 percent respectively during Q4.

However, looking at the bigger picture, GPU shipments were actually down for all of 2017 compared to 2016. The overall GPU market dipped 4.8 percent (2 percent decline for desktops, 7 percent decline for notebooks).

The JPR report goes on to indicate that while Q4 and full year GPU shipments were down year-over-year, the Gaming PC segment was a bright spot for the industry due to the strong sales of high-end GPUs. The research report also suggests that over 3 million GPU add-in boards were sold during all of 2017, contributing roughly $776 million in revenue to AMD and NVIDIA's coffers.

“Gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales, augmented by the demand from cryptocurrency miners,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie research. "We expect demand to slacken from the miners as margins drop in response increasingly utilities costs and supply and demand forces that drive up AIB prices.”

It's also stated that we should not expect GPU prices to settle down to normal levels in the near-term, which is unfortunate for gamers that just want to purchase a card at an affordable price to get right into the action. NVIDIA pretty much confirmed this reality to Massdrop, stating that prices wouldn't stabilize until Q3 (or whenever we see consumer-based Ampere or Volta GPUs hit the market).

Interestingly, JPR suggests that gamers mine for cryptocurrency in their downtime to offset the higher costs of today’s graphics cards.

Gamers are eager to see "what's next" when it comes to the gaming GPUs. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 10-Series (Pascal) graphics cards have has a roughly two-year reign in the market, and it's time for some fresh blood. If the rumored reports are accurate, we might see the first rumblings of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 2080 and GTX 2070 graphics cards next month at GTC.