Graphics card sales to remain difficult throughout second half of 2018

The mining hype, at least on GPUs seems to be a thing for the past. And this is hurting GPU sales for a while now. GPU prices more or less have stabilized indicating that the demand has dropped significantly. It is bad news for AMD and NVIDIA, as the downward trend seems continue.

Despite Nvidia's effort of releasing its next-generation GPUs, sales of graphics cards are expected to face difficulties in the second half of 2018 due to uncertainties in the crypto mining sector, reports Digitimes today. While Nvidia reportedly is aiming to roll out their new GeForce GTX 1180 series graphics cards (end of August), followed by the launch of its GeForce GTX 1170 series at the end of September and GeForce GTX 1160 series a month later, (from what it looks like right now):

However, these graphics cards' mass production schedules and volumes will still be adjusted depending on the status of the GeForce GTX 1080 and 1070's inventory digestion. Most graphics card players currently still have high levels of GTX 1080/1070 graphics card inventory, but are not willing to lower prices to clear them, as they still hope cryptocurrency mining can regain its momentum. With the prices of the current-generation graphics cards to remain at high levels, the next-generation devices are likely to be priced even higher in order to create differentiation, but this will also deter demand for the new cards, the sources noted.Graphics card sales are expected to be significantly undermined in the second half as demand from cryptocurrency miners has been declining, while consumers in the gaming area will continue to wait for prices to drop. With some miners having already begun selling their second-hand graphics cards in the PC DIY channels, demand for new cards is expected to be weakened further.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1180 is manufactured via Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 12nm process and the GPU giant reportedly will release a GPU made using TSMC's 7nm process at the end of 2018. AMD is planning to release a new series of Radeon Instinct graphics cards based on its 7nm Vega architecture in the second half, targeting datacenter and professional image processing applications. AMD's GPUs will also be handled by TSMC.