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Over three million GPUs were sold to cryptocurrency miners in 2017 but PC gaming remains the primary driver for GPU sales


According to a new report by Jon Peddie Research, over three million add-in boards were sold to cryptocurrency miners in 2017 worth $776 million, and most of these GPUs were coming from AMD. Still, it appears that the primary driver for GPU sales, was, is and will remain PC gaming.

As Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie research, said:

“Gaming has been and will continue to be the primary driver for GPU sales, augmented by the demand from cryptocurrency miners.”

Dr. Jon Peddie also confirmed NVIDIA’s claims that prices will not drop anytime soon.

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

Going into slightly more details, AMD’s overall unit shipments increased 8.08% quarter-to-quarter, Intel’s total shipments decreased -1.98% from last quarter, and Nvidia’s decreased -6.00%. Discrete GPUs were in 36.88% of PCs, which is down -2.67% and desktop graphics add-in boards (AIBs) that use discrete GPUs decreased -4.62% from last quarter.

Last but not least, the overall PC market increased 5.93% quarter-to-quarter, and decreased -0.15% year-to-year.