Cryptocurrency miners spent $776 million on 3 million graphics cards throughout 2017

It’s no secret that cryptocurrency mining became a dominating trend of 2017, disrupting the gaming scene by causing a shortage of graphics cards that in turn resulted in gross inflation for the remaining few. A new report by Jon Peddie Research (JPR) sheds light on the numbers behind it all, revealing that it is not all doom and gloom as AMD has managed to clamber back market share to close the gap between it and its competitor, Nvidia.

Overall, 2017 saw 3 million add-in board (AIB) graphics cards, worth around $776 million sold and it seems that “AMD was the primary benefactor of those sales,” according to JPR. Despite these sizeable numbers, gaming still takes the biggest slice of the GPU market, and remains the focus of both AMD and Nvidia.

“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 [to] increasing utilities costs and supply and demand forces that drive up AIB prices.”

Unfortunately, the high prices aren’t going anywhere just yet, according to Dr. Peddie, who says that “gamers can offset those costs by mining when not gaming, but prices will not drop in the near future.”

While the shift in the GPU market hasn’t benefitted gamers in the slightest, AMD saw a huge gain in market share, jumping by 8.1 percent sequentially. Nvidia, however, saw a decline by around 6 percent. This might not mean too much to the average gamer at the moment, but with AMD on more equal footing with its competitor, this could spell good news moving forward.

JPR noted that GPU shipments did decrease by 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 in comparison to the third, although this could be due to general seasonal activity in the run up to the holidays. Overall, full year shipments declined by a total of 4.8 percent.

KitGuru Says: None of this spells good news for the short-term, but those willing to wait will certainly benefit according to JPR. Unfortunately, there’s no telling just how long potential consumers are expected to wait. Have you been waiting to upgrade? How much are you willing to pay?

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