Rising cryptocurrency mining costs have reduced demand for GPUs

The largest developers of graphic architectures note a serious drop in sales of video cards due to weakening interest in mining in the second quarter of 2018.

Computer graphics and gaming research firm Jon Peddie Research has released its latest GPU sales report for the second quarter. This study analyzed data from three leading manufacturers on the market - AMD, Nvidia and Intel. 

Market analysis clearly shows a significant decline in interest in graphics cards. Moreover, the most noticeable decline in sales was observed in AMD, whose shipment volume fell by 12 percent compared to the previous quarter.

AMD’s main competitor, Nvidia reduced its total sales volume a little less, but also quite noticeably for the company, by 7%. The most attractive figures look from Intel, which is more focused on gaming video cards and has not lost its position when demand for mining has fallen. Intel also managed to increase its market share to 70 percent. While Nvidia's market share fell by 1 percent to 17%, and AMD lost two percent, retaining only 13% of the market.

According to JPR, 33% of all PCs sold had discrete graphics chips, and this is 7% less than in the last quarter.

Manufacturers explain this quarterly decline by a decrease in income from the so-called “blockchain market”, directly from miners, who are mainly create demand for graphics chips for cryptocurrency mining. The use of GPUs for mining altcoins has caused a decrease in demand for them. The sharp drop in prices in the first half of the year made altcoin mining not as profitable as last year.

The excitement around mining died down and, accordingly, sales of the entire GPU market decreased by 1.5%; overall, for the year the decline in GPU sales is almost 5%. According to experts, this trend will continue in the third quarter and sales volumes in the first quarter will remain the highest for the entire 2018.