The whole market is so weird because of miners. The miners would have actually bought much more units if they had been available, but the manufacturers weren't willing to sell because the miners are such thankless customers. Still, as a person who does not mine, that "Gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales" feels like an insult with the current prices. Video cards are right now priced like expensive professional tools, so they obviously are meant for the professionals, whether it's the miners or companies and institutions using them for computing work. The current prices aren't aimed at gamers, not even as a joke.

Gaming is no longer driving GPU sales... that's all just PR talking, don't buy into it. But I have to say, I'm not sure what makes a gamer a less "thankless" customer than a miner...

nVidia took half of that sum which is $400 million or about 6% increase from their 6.91 billion revenue in 2016, but they decided to double prices and increased their revenue by 129% in 2018 by comparison with 2016, like China factories can't handle 6% increase in demand. Looks like shared monopoly market.

There is some information floating that Next Nvidia's release will include 2 GPU series - Ampere for Consumer / Turing for Miners. Personally, from my point of view, it will make the most sense. As I wrote earlier about it that will potentially stabilize the market and get it back on track. However, it will Only work if Turing cards will have Significantly higher crypto performance, and vice-versa with Ampere. Hopefully, we will also see hardware level limitation for mining on Ampere. Otherwise greedy cyber Dwarfs will continue buying out everything that moves.

Maybe I did misinterpret the stats above, but to me it looks like actually AMD is picking up big in market share. I don't really see any monopoly there... Just be mindful, as Intel's iGPUs are integrated in this statistics, so are AMD's, so those shares given are not about dedicated GPUs. Also, this is a little questionable:

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. Gamers can offset those costs by mining when not gaming, but prices will not drop in the near future.

So first they profit from higher demands than supplies, upping the revenue of the vendors and the margin of the sellers, then the demand drops and the costs increase because of utility costs driving up AIB prices? GTFO. Also, many gamers don't use their cards for mining because they don't want to degrade them with 20h per day mining use and 4h of gaming...

fantaskarsef:

Also, many gamers don't use their cards for mining because they don't want to degrade them with 20h per day mining use and 4h of gaming...

Precisely This.

fantaskarsef:

But I have to say, I'm not sure what makes a gamer a less "thankless" customer than a miner...

Gamer doesn't buy a bunch of cards from any manufacturer and then run them 24/7, which probably wasn't what the components were optimised for. I don't actually know if it caused an increase in warranty returns, as I have only read about third party claims it did, but nothing verified. On the other hand, if the crypto values happened to drop critically, the miners would simply try to sell their cards to minimise their losses, which would create a flood of even the latest gen cards on the second-hand market, hurting the sales of new cards. You'd hardly see that from gamers, after all, unless a gamer decides to stop gaming entirely, they'll need their card until it gets too slow for them.

Kaarme:

Gamer doesn't buy a bunch of cards from any manufacturer and then run them 24/7, which probably wasn't what the components were optimised for. I don't actually know if it caused an increase in warranty returns, as I have only read about third party claims it did, but nothing verified. On the other hand, if the crypto values happened to drop critically, the miners would simply try to sell their cards to minimise their losses, which would create a flood of even the latest gen cards on the second-hand market, hurting the sales of new cards. You'd hardly see that from gamers, after all, unless a gamer decides to stop gaming entirely, they'll need their card until it gets too slow for them.

Yes I can understand your points, and they are very reasonable. Like you said, I too am waiting to see that RMAs have indeed increased since most professional miners don't care... they just buy another card. Only gamers RMA their cards because they had to save up some budget and want it to work, as it's their only card and they need it to run. And yet we haven't seen a flooded market of second hand GPUs, so right now, to the companies miners are probably the better customers, or equally good ones like gamers.

There are always ex-miner cards on the market and when bubble pops we will have even more of them. Golden rule is to Never Ever Buy an Ex-Miner card. Wear and tear on it is above anything remotely imaginable. There was an article on one russian tech site, analyzing a batch of new gtx 1060's gpu's vs a batch of same models but ex-miner cards. Overall the result was that ex-miner cards had degradation from anything between 5% down to 30%.

fantaskarsef:

Gaming is no longer driving GPU sales... that's all just PR talking, don't buy into it. But I have to say, I'm not sure what makes a gamer a less "thankless" customer than a miner...

Because a Gamer at least is using the card for its intended-for built purpose. If you want a computational device, buy a Quadro, that's what they're there for. Thankless customers are those that use it for a cause or reason that is contrary to the in-built purpose designed by the manufacturer, in my opinion.

Well, in your opinion, which I share, I'm not trying to defend mining here. It's just that if you take a step back, seeing it from a production company's point of view, the "better" customer is the one just paying more, and that's basically the miners. Yes they do degrade, the question is, because a card has degraded 5% it doesn't make it useless. Do I understand correctly if I say those cards lifetime is shortened, or did they reach 5-30% lower clocks because of power delivery wear down or something like that?

Actually, if you look at it from a purely technical point of view, mining is better than gaming. Gaming is just wasting energy to amuse you. On the other hand, how many of us have actually used a GPU until it stopped working due to degradation? All my old GPU's still work and the most of us buy a new one even before it's necessary. And before somebody says something like "I NEED to play in 4k @60 fps": no you don't. That, imo, is a luxury. f you want it, you have to pay for it. On the other side, Nvidia and AMD are public companies with their shareholders. All that matters is market share and profit. The mining craze is making them a lot of profit and they would be really dumb to not take advantage of it. "Gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales" was probably said by their PR. Try saying that to the shareholders and convince them to make less money because "you care about the gamer". You'll have to clear your desk in a heartbeat.

aless83:

Actually, if you look at it from a purely technical point of view, mining is better than gaming. Gaming is just wasting energy to amuse you. On the other hand, how many of us have actually used a GPU until it stopped working due to degradation? All my old GPU's still work and the most of us buy a new one even before it's necessary. And before somebody says something like "I NEED to play in 4k @60 fps": no you don't. That, imo, is a luxury. f you want it, you have to pay for it. On the other side, Nvidia and AMD are public companies with their shareholders. All that matters is market share and profit. The mining craze is making them a lot of profit and they would be really dumb to not take advantage of it. "Gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales" was probably said by their PR. Try saying that to the shareholders and convince them to make less money because "you care about the gamer". You'll have to clear your desk in a heartbeat.

Crypto is most likely a short-term gold rush, gaming isn't. That's the whole difference, and they understand it. Hence all the hints pointing towards next release of Consumer GPU's / Mining GPU's. If they focus only on profit and alienate consumers, this May result in a massive loss for them down the road. Yes, they care about shares, but they also care about sustainability which, IMO, Crypto doesn't offer.

aless83:

Actually, if you look at it from a purely technical point of view, mining is better than gaming. Gaming is just wasting energy to amuse you. On the other hand, how many of us have actually used a GPU until it stopped working due to degradation? All my old GPU's still work and the most of us buy a new one even before it's necessary. And before somebody says something like "I NEED to play in 4k @60 fps": no you don't. That, imo, is a luxury. f you want it, you have to pay for it. On the other side, Nvidia and AMD are public companies with their shareholders. All that matters is market share and profit. The mining craze is making them a lot of profit and they would be really dumb to not take advantage of it. "Gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales" was probably said by their PR. Try saying that to the shareholders and convince them to make less money because "you care about the gamer". You'll have to clear your desk in a heartbeat.

Oh look, a miner... Mining is wasting enormous amounts of energy to do what exactly? Farming some virtual currency... it doesn't contribute to ANYTHING, except gaining certain greedy individuals more wealth. But as with all currencies, it only has the value people believe it to have, and as it's just some niche, it will soon lose favor, and lose all value. I look forward to that day.

aless83:

Actually, if you look at it from a purely technical point of view, mining is better than gaming. Gaming is just wasting energy to amuse you. On the other hand, how many of us have actually used a GPU until it stopped working due to degradation? All my old GPU's still work and the most of us buy a new one even before it's necessary.

I might have not used them all until they were done for on a physical level, but I have 6 GPUs at home out of the 9 or 10 I ever had: -Radeon 4850, basically has a hard time with youtube 1080p playback. Uses a lot of power and generates heat like no other card I ever had. No use for it for anybody -2x 5770 that's of little use, it would be okay, but with AMD drivers I had trouble enough to get HDMI sound working so I bought a new GPU (like 5 years after release) -580, yes that one was used until it was necessary to replace it because of graphical artifacts at stock usage -960, runs in my HTPC (because of reused CPU without an iGPU I do need one there hehe) -1080Ti, gaming card -not to mention the 2x 980 I gave away to friends for free after less than two years of use, where they still do their work for GAMING 😀 None of my cards ever was used for mining... Did you use any GPUs until they were really done for, and found uses for your's after they no longer were really doing their gaming job? Not trying to bash you, just curious.

Has revenue from miners over taken sales to gamers for some products? Be interesting to see the numbers.

Embra:

Has revenue from miners over taken sales to gamers for some products? Be interesting to see the numbers.

I'd be willing to bet some REAL MONEY ( 😀 ) that more cards were sold to miners than to gamers.

fantaskarsef:

I'd be willing to bet some REAL MONEY ( 😀 ) that more cards were sold to miners than to gamers.

Sadly that kind of revenue can not be ignored. Be interesting to see some numbers over the last few years.

Dragam1337:

Oh look, a miner... Mining is wasting enormous amounts of energy to do what exactly? Farming some virtual currency... it doesn't contribute to ANYTHING, except gaining certain greedy individuals more wealth. But as with all currencies, it only has the value people believe it to have, and as it's just some niche, it will soon lose favor, and lose all value. I look forward to that day.

Crypto-rush has all indications of a Bubble/ Pyramid scheme. Any pyramidal scheme grows and generates profit for its "users" as long as there is a constant influx of new "users". Exactly the same thing we see here, it's a gold rush, maybe even a trend to some degree. Another indication of a bubble/ pyramid is how it fluctuates. 2k, then 3k, 10k, 20k, then 10k again. I predict eventually it will rise all the way to 100k (or even more), however when eventually the Speculative Bubble pop's the main problem as with any other Bubble will be Overvalued coins at hand. Yes, it will cost $100k, however, nobody wants to buy it from you for that price, and that's the hook. Same as during the days of actual Gold Rush, people that made the most profit were not the one's mining for Gold, but selling the Tools to do so. So far we can see the same thing here.

cryohellinc:

Crypto is most likely a short-term gold rush, gaming isn't. That's the whole difference, and they understand it. Hence all the hints pointing towards next release of Consumer GPU's / Mining GPU's. If they focus only on profit and alienate consumers, this May result in a massive loss for them down the road. Yes, they care about shares, but they also care about sustainability which, IMO, Crypto doesn't offer.

Well yeah, a company has to have a future-proof plan, but they will grab any chance to make a good quarter in revenue. They also know that the gaming industry is pretty much like a football (european) league, there are A LOT of fanboys which wouldn't switch team even with a gun pointing at their head. Without mentioning that with a bit of good PR, people tend to forget all about the bad decisions of a company.

Dragam1337:

Oh look, a miner... Mining is wasting enormous amounts of energy to do what exactly? Farming some virtual currency... it doesn't contribute to ANYTHING, except gaining certain greedy individuals more wealth. But as with all currencies, it only has the value people believe it to have, and as it's just some niche, it will soon lose favor, and lose all value. I look forward to that day.

Yeah, I've been a miner for a couple of months. Problem? Suck it up. I am also a gamer, and what is gaming exactly? Interacting with a machine to have fun. Big deal. You wrote this why exactly? The cryptocurrency is actually a very interesting concept, even if it's overly saturated and everybody-and-their-dog is trying to make money. This will eventually fade like the WWW bubble in 2000 and only the useful part of crypto will remain.

fantaskarsef:

I might have not used them all until they were done for on a physical level, but I have 6 GPUs at home out of the 9 or 10 I ever had: ... Did you use any GPUs until they were really done for, and found uses for your's after they no longer were really doing their gaming job? Not trying to bash you, just curious.

Yeah, I did have a R9 280x which started to act weird after 2.5 years, the waranty had expired and it's laying on a shelf somewhere as a paperweight... Got a 275 laying somewhere which is way too old to do anything with it, but I like it on my desk 🙂 I do have a gt710 (I think? passive cooled piece of crap) which works as my GPU for a music recording pc I have. But again, I use my pc like a console. I am okay with 1080p on high settings and 45-50 frames and only change the components when I see they don't cut it anymore.