25% of GPUs sold in Q1 will be bought for mining?

A GPU is a processor that was originally specialized for processing PC images. However, recently, as the demand for cryptocurrency mining has rapidly increased, there is a shortage of high-end GPUs for gamers and prices are rising. JPR (Jon Peddie Research), a market research firm, announced that 25% of the graphics cards released in the first quarter of 2021 were purchased for cryptocurrency mining.

The rise in graphics card prices is attributed to increased demand due to telecommuting and the rise in the price of non-GPU components such as voltage regulator capacitors and GDDR memory. However, it is pointed out that the recent abnormal surge in graphics card prices, such as prices jumping from 2.5 to 4 times the list price on eBay, an Internet auction site, is attributed to investors and crypto asset miners.

Although desktop PC shipments from January to March of this year have been on a downward trend in the long run, the graphics card installation rate is increasing by more than 5% from 2017 to 2018, the peak of which is for mining purposes. Although the graphics card installation rate is increasing again from 2020, there is no change in the installation rate other than for mining purposes. For this reason, JPR points out that most of the recently released graphics cards are used for crypto asset mining.

According to JPR, 700,000 high-end and mid-range graphics cards were shipped in the first quarter of 2021, with a market value of $500 million, of which 25% are expected to be purchased by mining businesses and investors.

Nvidia is trying to differentiate between crypto asset mining and gaming by launching the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP), a mining-only processor without video output, and by placing a hash limit on the RTX30 series, a high-end GPU for gaming. AMD, which introduces the Radeon series, etc., does not restrict mining with the attitude that users for mining are also customers. JPR explains that gamers support Nvidia’s view more than AMD’s laissez-faire. Related information can be found here.