Graphics card shipments fall as mining demand weakens further
Graphics cards manufacturers see their shipments and sales drop ever since the second half of 2018, mostly due to a drop in demand from the cryptocurrency mining market.
Sources from DigiTimes said that the cryptocurrency mining heyday seen between April 2017 and March 2018 suffered an abrupt downturn in April due partly to the Bitcoin value plunging to under US$7,000 from a peak of nearly US$20,000 recorded in December 2017 and partly to governments of China, South Korea, the US and many European countries rushing to clamp down on digital-coin exchanges following exposures of scams, frauds and market manipulations.
Taiwan graphic cards makers including Asustek Computer, Gigabyte Technology, Micro-Star International (MSI) and TUL have seen their inventories pick up significantly amid the drastic shrinkage in demand from cryptocurrency mining sector. But they have only slightly cut sales prices, maintaining gross margins at around 20%, which, though lower than the previous high of 40-50%, is still twice the level of 8-10% seen in early 2017.
Industry sources said that the prospects for cryptocurrency mining will be increasingly dim due to the enhanced crackdowns by governments in many countries, declining mining investment reward, and the possible move by governments to hike the electricity rates for cryptocurrency-mining uses. In fact, many individual miners and small mining farms have quit the market, and some medium and large-size mining farms have also scaled back their procurements of mining devices.
Accordingly, the sources expected the graphic cards supply chain to return in the second half of 2018 to the previous state of serving mainly the gaming sector seen before the rise of the cryptocurrency mining craze. And those makers with weaker deployments in the gaming sector may see their overall shipments of graphic cards fall significantly in the future.
Meanwhile, TUL is stepping up sales of industrial PC and datacenter acceleration cards as part of its efforts to offset the sales decline in mining graphic cards, the sources indicated.
AMD Will Release a Raven Ridge APU Graphics driver once each Three Months - 06/18/2018 09:03 AM
Those who have bought a Raven Ridge Based APU have been seeing a big of a hard time drivers wise. When the APUs first released, the driver set was separated from the Radeon Software branch. Later on,...
Gigabyte outs a threefold of GeForce GTX 1050 3GB graphics cards - 06/14/2018 05:03 PM
Last month we already mentioned the product page of the 3GB OC edition of the GeForce GTX 1050. Two new models have made an entry though, these all are the 3GB models of the GTX 1050 (or should we s...
Matrox G200: Celebrating 20 Years of Graphics Excellence - 05/30/2018 08:40 AM
Matrox is pleased to announce the 20-year anniversary of its Matrox G200 graphics chip. Developed for 2D, 3D, and video acceleration, the G200 powered a number of industry-first, graphics and multi-mo...
PowerColor Graphics card Sales Cave in - sells 80% fewer video cards than previous month - 05/24/2018 03:28 PM
Back in April, there was word that a large shift is happening in the cryptocurrency market, and that the demand for graphics cards to mine, would be going on the decline. DigiTimes now reports that ...
Download: Intel HD graphics Driver Download Version: 24.20.100.6094 - 05/23/2018 01:18 PM
Intel released a new HD graphics Driver with build 24.20.100.6094, the new driver supports Intel Apollo Lake, Gemini Lake, 6th and 7th, and 8th generation integrated graphics processors. The new up...
Senior Member
Posts: 1317
Joined: 2009-08-19
Noticeably the GTX 1080 and 1080Ti founders edition cards are also classed as 'End of Line' on most websites and are no longer being re-stocked. This would signify Nvidia are getting ready to release their next GPU generation.
Senior Member
Posts: 328
Joined: 2013-03-06
or a rebrand for maximum profit

Senior Member
Posts: 2887
Joined: 2013-03-10
Are there still enough miners buying Vega cards because their prices remain ridiculously high. I don't see gamers buying a Vega 56 if it costs more than a GTX 1080. Or is this just a European thing?
Senior Member
Posts: 7822
Joined: 2010-08-28
And Nvidia not coming with a new card any time soon.
I'd say let them suffer for their disgusting price bump.
Posts: 6073
Joined: 2011-01-02
Hopefully lower RAM prices, bring new GPUs at lower prices (without Crypro demand) and Zen2 + Ice Lake.
2019 should be a good year for upgrade.