Desktop GPU Sales Hit 20-Year Low

[erek]

Relatively unfortunate. Doesn’t make sense that all the 4090s sold out

“Jon Peddie Research recalls that declines of GPU sales in the third quarter experienced the most significant drop since the 2009 recession. Yet, for those of us who have been following the discrete desktop GPU marketfor long enough, the situation seems even more dire.”

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sales-of-desktop-graphics-cards-hit-20-year-low

 

[GoldenTiger]

Doesn’t make sense that all the 4090s sold out

Sure it does. It was only $100 more than the 3090 launch price and delivered incredible performance boosts for that!

 

[erek]

Sure it does. It was only $100 more than the 3090 launch price and delivered incredible performance boosts for that!

How can the sales numbers be down? Isn’t it all relative? They sold out so isn’t that great sales figures

 

[GoldenTiger]

They sold out so isn’t that great sales figures

It was the largest top end card launch in terms of stock, ever, per Kyle. Selling out means they still have further demand they unfortunately can't fill right now.

 

[GoldenTiger]

I think that the real reasons the overall quantities were low of gpu's was the economy and lack of new midrange options yet.

 

[Haste266]

I haven't bought a new GPU in 10 years, so HAH.

 

[Absalom]

Maybe not the best year for Intel to launch ARC?

 

[GoldenTiger]

I haven't bought a new GPU in 10 years, so HAH.

Cool story?

 

[sfsuphysics]

How can the sales numbers be down? Isn’t it all relative? They sold out so isn’t that great sales figures

last year people were buying everything and anything out there including older 20 series cards so yeah it's not surprising sales are down

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Top end GPU launches are a minuscule percentage of the GPU pie. The total lack of mid and low end GPUs that can function on top of absurd pricing have really hurt the market. AMD and nVidia need to understand that they can be replaced, having the king of performance means nothing when that's WAY under 1% of the GPU market.

I'd love to see AMD and nVidia go the way of Christmas tree farms around here or at least get close. They had pretend shortages and gouged so hard every year for a decade that everyone bought plastic, now five out of seven of them are gone and one of the two survivors is winding down the tree farm at the end of this year. Watching them dispose of all those trees that they were pretending didn't exist filled my heart with malicious glee.

 

[idiomatic]

There are people, like us, for whom computer hardware gets bought before food or shelter. There are enough of us to buy out all the 4090's.

The rest of the cards are a much larger market, a market for whom having a discrete gpu upgrade is definitely a luxury and definitely gets cut before everything else.

There is a massive recession about to hit, smart people are hoarding cash.

 

[Accursed]

I'm surprised the overall trend is down. How can that be with the various crypto booms and last year's stimulus payment spending?

 

[bigdogchris]

Thanks, Nvidia.

 

[chameleoneel]

I'm surprised the overall trend is down. How can that be with the various crypto booms and last year's stimulus payment spending?
View attachment 538366

Its probably becasue Intel's iGPU is pretty damn great for everyday computing, photoshop, and video editing. And also, dedicated GPUs have been pretty long lasting in useful performance, since about 2012.

 

[gvx64]

How much of an effect did the crypto-mining crash have on this? Is crypto only high end GPUs? It just looks a lot like market saturation from the crypto crash.

 

[DukenukemX]

Relatively unfortunate. Doesn’t make sense that all the 4090s sold out

It makes sense because.

1. There are people who buy the fastest GPU no matter the price.
2. Scalpers are also buying these to sell to people who buy the fastest GPU.
3. Probably limited production.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

How can the sales numbers be down? Isn’t it all relative? They sold out so isn’t that great sales figures

Depends on exactly how many units were produced and sold compared to past years. Selling out a few thousand cards isn't exactly something to brag about.

 

[DukenukemX]

Maybe not the best year for Intel to launch ARC?

Actually it maybe the best time, depending on how Intel markets their GPUs. Doesn't help there's no DX9/11 driver, and their drivers are truly buggy. Intel made the right decision to price them at $300 or less, where as AMD and Nvidia have went to the moon with $900+ GPU's. If AMD and Nvidia are hoping to push out older generation GPU's by pricing their newer GPU's to insanity then they have a lesson they'll soon learn. People have to understand that the value of buying a new fast GPU is not really there, and that no games require something that powerful. Nearly all new games released today could run on a PS4 at 30fps with low quality settings. All new games released will run on a GTX 970 or a R9 390 at 1080p low settings.

Elden Ring is very playable on hardware built several years ago. Because there's no true successor to the RX 580's and the GTX 1060's then games will be built around that level of performance. All you're getting with newer GPU's is a higher frame rate assuming your monitor supports it, and a higher resolution again assuming your monitor supports it. Most people don't have monitors that support those features. And the PS5 is basically a GTX 1070 or even 1060 levels of performance. Unfortunately the Intel ARC GPU's are about the same if not worse then a GTX 1060. If Intel can target that price range of $300 or less then they have the market cornered. When and how much are the RTX 4060's as well as the RX 7600's? Intel has a window of opportunity.

 

[Krenum]

Crash and burn baby!

 

[hititnquitit]

From what I've seen and heard, most people are more than happy rolling along with their 2 or 3 year old cards (many much older). The fire sale of last gen cards has filled in the gaps that were left after the covid buying spree and crypto meltdown. Pretty much everyone that wanted a solid card, found one. Not to mention, all of the nice ass used cards that continue dropping daily for sweet prices.
Of course we can't forget that the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So that nice shiney GPU is most likely going on the dreaded cc. Now I'm going out on a limb here... but I don't think folks have been too keen on rackin up a grand or two in debt for a GPU lately.
Seems AMD, Nvidia and the AIBs may have priced themselves out of their own market with the massive money grab they've perpetuated these last few years. How ironic.
So no, It doesn't come as much of a surprise that sales are dropping. The correction was loooong overdue.

 

[wandplus]

Yet the RX 6400 and GTX 1630 are somewhat overpriced.

 

[sphinx99]

If salss are down that much and yet shelves remain comparatively empty, then we can conclude that supply is down—dramatically.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

There are people, like us, for whom computer hardware gets bought before food or shelter. There are enough of us to buy out all the 4090's.

Who needs shelter? At 600W, a 4090 would keep me nice and warm in the winter

 

[DooKey]

Massive inflation across the board. Crypto bust. Nothing but high-end supply. Recession underway. Yep, everything matches up.

 

[Accursed]

If salss are down that much and yet shelves remain comparatively empty, then we can conclude that supply is down—dramatically.

Do they? Other than a 4090, what other card is hard to get? A quick check on Newegg has pretty much everything in stock.

 

[LukeTbk]

Doesn’t make sense that all the 4090s sold out

I am not sure if fully serious here (7 millions less card have been sold, even if popular for what it is a $1600-2200 usd halo product cannot turn that around).

Has for the news, that would have been the same headline for most year since the 2008 recession. Outside a crypto bubble we would expect gpu sales to hit 20 years low pretty much all the time. IGPU, Laptop, longevity of hardware.

A couple or maybe 4 will be a more drastic drop like that last mining craze.

If salss are down that much and yet shelves remain comparatively empty, then we can conclude that supply is down—dramatically.

I feel those numbers are the supply numbers (shipment) not the sales numbers.

 

[LukeTbk]

And the PS5 is basically a GTX 1070 or even 1060 levels of performance.

I would have thought more between a 2060 super and a bit above a 2080 depending on the title:



That the feeling of the digital foundry review, I really do not remember a 5700 between a PS5

 

[70 Polara]

Actually it maybe the best time, depending on how Intel markets their GPUs. Doesn't help there's no DX9/11 driver, and their drivers are truly buggy. Intel made the right decision to price them at $300 or less, where as AMD and Nvidia have went to the moon with $900+ GPU's. If AMD and Nvidia are hoping to push out older generation GPU's by pricing their newer GPU's to insanity then they have a lesson they'll soon learn. People have to understand that the value of buying a new fast GPU is not really there, and that no games require something that powerful. Nearly all new games released today could run on a PS4 at 30fps with low quality settings. All new games released will run on a GTX 970 or a R9 390 at 1080p low settings.

Elden Ring is very playable on hardware built several years ago. Because there's no true successor to the RX 580's and the GTX 1060's then games will be built around that level of performance. All you're getting with newer GPU's is a higher frame rate assuming your monitor supports it, and a higher resolution again assuming your monitor supports it. Most people don't have monitors that support those features. And the PS5 is basically a GTX 1070 or even 1060 levels of performance. Unfortunately the Intel ARC GPU's are about the same if not worse then a GTX 1060. If Intel can target that price range of $300 or less then they have the market cornered. When and how much are the RTX 4060's as well as the RX 7600's? Intel has a window of opportunity.

I've posted this elsewhere most likely, but I'll say it again.....if you have reasonable expectations, it's impressive what you can get out of old [H]ardware. I'm the definition of cheap these days, and I game on a FirePro W7000 4GB that I BIOS overclocked/undervolted. This is a 10 year old GCN 1.0 GPU based on Pitcairn. I recently upgraded from a 1st gen i7 to a 4th gen i7 for less then 50 dollars for the motherboard, CPU, and memory. The amount of newer games I can play on this system on my 32" TVs 1360x768 resolution is great! I've played Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, Serious Sam 4/Siberian Mayhem, Far Cry 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Need for Speed Unbound so far on this relic of a card that I paid less then 30 dollars for.

With that said, if you have reasonable expectations and are playing at lower resolutions, you can get away with a huge amount of older cards. Higher end Maxwell and newer for Nvidia, and higher end GCN 1.0 and newer for AMD. I use the Amernime drivers as well, and they are a major improvement over the last official GCN 1.0 drivers from AMD.

I can very much see why GPU sales appear to have cratered, as my local craigslist and ebay are now loaded with ex-mining cards that are selling for less and less every day - I'm seeing RX570 (even some 8GB VRAM versions) level cards now for 60-80 dollars so for people that don't need the latest and greatest you can build a fine budget gaming PC quite cheaply now.

 

[LukeTbk]

I can very much see why GPU sales appear to have cratered, as my local craigslist and ebay are now loaded with ex-mining cards that are selling for less and less every day - I'm seeing RX570 level cards now for 60-80 dollars so for people that don't need the latest and greatest you can build a fine budget gaming PC quite cheaply now.

In some part of Asia where mining was popular apparently you can buy them directly on the streets, by the pounds:

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...old-per-kilo-on-the-street-in-vietnam.300445/

 

[scajjr29]

My brother needed to replace his 1070 6gb as the fans stopped working. He thought $280-$300 for a 6650xt was too much, found a new XFX RX 580 8Gb at Best Buy for $150. He only games at 1080p, runs an i5-3570k, 16Gb DDR3 and the 580 works great for what he needs.

sam

 

[sfsuphysics]

In some part of Asia where mining was popular apparently you can buy them directly on the streets, by the pounds:

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...old-per-kilo-on-the-street-in-vietnam.300445/

View attachment 538469

I wonder what the price per kilo was (old story I know, but I am curious). Also curious who was bankrolling these guys, I mean sure there's the "I can't get it" aspect that cards had and yeah they did eventually pay for themselves (assuming you got into the game early) but guy selling stuff on the street doesn't exactly strike me as someone who in a position to get tens potentially hundreds of thousands in loans for the initial purchase

 

[Marees]

If salss are down that much and yet shelves remain comparatively empty, then we can conclude that supply is down—dramatically.

Yes, the stock of unsold old GPUs has been depleted. Hence the prices are unlikely to drop any further for Ampere / RDNA2 cards

https://news-mydrivers-com.translate.goog/1/882/882871.htm?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB

 

[DukenukemX]

With that said, if you have reasonable expectations and are playing at lower resolutions, you can get away with a huge amount of older cards. Higher end Maxwell and newer for Nvidia, and higher end GCN 1.0 and newer for AMD. I use the Amernime drivers as well, and they are a major improvement over the last official GCN 1.0 drivers from AMD.

If you play on a console then you already have low standards. For a PC to run games at 1360x768 resolution with around 30fps is a win to me, because that's also a win for console owners. The PS5 and Xbox Series consoles nowadays get 60fps in games, but most games today aren't built for those consoles. Most games were either made for the PS4/Xbox One consoles and then ported over to PS5/Xbox Series, or are made specifically for PS4/Xbox One and just so happen to run better on newer consoles. One of the benefits of keeping everything X86 and based on GCN architecture in that you can just crank up the performance without worrying too much about compatibility.

What everyone here needs to understand is that not everyone thinks 4k 120fps is a gold standard. 1080p 60fps is still the gold standard, and it isn't the lowest one can go to game on. This is why new GPU's aren't selling like pancakes because people don't need them.

I can very much see why GPU sales appear to have cratered, as my local craigslist and ebay are now loaded with ex-mining cards that are selling for less and less every day - I'm seeing RX570 (even some 8GB VRAM versions) level cards now for 60-80 dollars so for people that don't need the latest and greatest you can build a fine budget gaming PC quite cheaply now.

If 1080P 60fps is your goal for gaming then the overwhelming vast majority of GPU's can do it. I mean overwhelming.

• R9 290/390
• GTX 970
• RX 480/580
• GTX 1060 3GB/6GB
• RX 470/570
• GTX 1050
• GTX 1650 1660
• RX 5500 XT
• RTX 2060
• RX 5600 XT

Pretty much anything made after Nvidia's Turing and AMD's RDNA can do 1080p 60fps. If you're clever you can enable features like FSR to help boost performance, and you can also install modded drivers for AMD cards that can magically make GCN1.0 cards play Halo Infinite, or install Linux as the open source drivers are still updated and will play games that legacy Windows drivers won't. There's a reason why the GTX 1060 was king of Steam for so many years, and that's because it was adequate. In those years AMD and Nvidia haven't released a true successor to their GTX 1060's and RX 580's and that has contributed to stagnation to game development making use of newer hardware and their features like Ray-Tracing. There is no game that requires Ray-Tracing, and that's because Ray-Tracing will still ruin the performance of all games to the point where it may not be playable. Consoles would help push PC gaming to use new hardware but they are running into a similar situation in that the majority of console gamers are still using older generation hardware like the PS4 and Xbox One, so of course a lot of new games are still released on them. If Elden Ring was dog slow on my Vega 56 then I'd upgrade, no questions asked. If Sonic Frontiers needed a more powerful GPU then I wouldn't upgrade. You gotta have a killer game that pushes hardware so people need to upgrade, and the problem is that we have a chicken or egg situation. Which comes first, games that need better hardware but also alienate the audience and lose sales, or games that make use of existing hardware to maximize sales? It's not hard to see why GPU sales are low.

Also yes a R9 290 can play Cyberpunk 2077 nearly at 60fps 1080p with the help of FSR and not at low settings, for anyone that's wondering. I can't think of any game more demanding then Cyberpunk 2077 to emphasize my point. I bet I could achieve better results on Linux as I did get Elden Ring running on my old FX 8350 machine with a Radeon HD 7850 at 30fps using FSR on Linux Mint. It's truly rediculus what one can do with older PC hardware if you tried. Crypto mining is dead and that cash cow is gone, so now's a good time for AMD and Nvidia to correct GPU prices, and they need a massive correction.

 

[buttons]

Frankly, i am shocked new cards are still priced so high when there should be a HUGE amount of used cards on the market. I sold both of my 3070s and my 3060ti. Keeping my 6600xts for my kids gaming rigs. I also have two space heater gpus that game fine AMD Furys, been to lazy to swap it out and my daughters bedroom in the basement can use the fury to counter the winter chill. Will put a 6600 in this summer though.

 

[Lakados]

Frankly, i am shocked new cards are still priced so high when there should be a HUGE amount of used cards on the market. I sold both of my 3070s and my 3060ti. Keeping my 6600xts for my kids gaming rigs. I also have two space heater gpus that game fine AMD Furys, been to lazy to swap it out and my daughters bedroom in the basement can use the fury to counter the winter chill. Will put a 6600 in this summer though.

Neither AMD nor NVidia want to sell a lot of cards right now to consumers. There’s too much demand in Enterprise, between impending Tariffs, an AI development war, and a bunch of other things, Datacenter’s are buying them as fast as TSMC can roll them out.

And as you say there’s a lot of older or second hand cards on the market they would need to compete with. They are both in a position where they are having to compete with their own product stacks so instead they priced themselves out of the consumer market. They then don’t need to compete, the market corrects itself and they focus on their Enterprise contracts where there is demand and no second hand market to contend with.

 

[ZodaEX]

Other than a 4090, what other card is hard to get?

Palit GTX 1650 KalmX

 

[DukenukemX]

Neither AMD nor NVidia want to sell a lot of cards right now to consumers. There’s too much demand in Enterprise, between impending Tariffs, an AI development war, and a bunch of other things, Datacenter’s are buying them as fast as TSMC can roll them out.

I really doubt that AMD and Nvidia want less demand for their products. Especially when you consider they just slashed orders from TSMC.

And as you say there’s a lot of older or second hand cards on the market they would need to compete with. They are both in a position where they are having to compete with their own product stacks so instead they priced themselves out of the consumer market. They then don’t need to compete, the market corrects itself and they focus on their Enterprise contracts where there is demand and no second hand market to contend with.

That would be a stupid move. AMD and Nvidia don't make money waiting for their older or second hand cards to fulfill the market. You could say AMD and Nvidia are trying to condition the market to pay more for GPU's, like how a GTX 1060 was $250 and now a RTX 3060 is $330, based on MSRP which btw even during this low demand for GPU's a 3060 is still higher than MSRP. What I think is happening is that AMD's and Nvidia's marketing departments are still high on the past several years of GPU demand from crypto booms to pandemic demand that they believe people will pay those prices. The problem with being a publicly traded company is that you need infinite growth and there's no such thing as infinite growth, so these companies try to find wild ideas that can give them that growth which is why I think AMD and Nvidia still priced their GPU's to the moon.

 

[LukeTbk]

I can't think of any game more demanding then Cyberpunk 2077 to emphasize my point.

Maybe game not made to run on an older gen play station 4.

Plague tales requiem seem to have an hard time to stay above 25 fps on a 1060 6gb playing at 1080 medium. When on low details with 1080p upscaled 40 fps.

Neither AMD nor NVidia want to sell a lot of cards right now to consumers. There’s too much demand in Enterprise, between impending Tariffs, an AI development war, and a bunch of other things, Datacenter’s are buying them as fast as TSMC can roll them out.

Nvidia Q3 F23 was down 17%, operating income down 77%:
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-for-third-quarter-fiscal-2023

Data center is indeed up by a lot despite that, but like pointed above they could take the leaved space by the others to boost volume and sales even more consumer cards if it was possible and would love to do it.

 

[DukenukemX]

Maybe game not made to run on an older gen play station 4.

Most games are, and that's the point.

Plague tales requiem seem to have an hard time to stay above 25 fps on a 1060 6gb playing at 1080 medium. When on low details with 1080p upscaled 40 fps.

I never heard of Plague tales requiem. Metacritic does suggest it's a decent game, but there have been games that were very hardware demanding and nobody cared. It has to be a good game, like game of the year good. I should try this game on Linux and see what my optimizations on a Vega 56 can achieve. Here's a video of someone using FSR on a GTX 1060 getting over 70 fps at 1080p in Plague tales requiem.

Nvidia Q3 F23 was down 17%, operating income down 77%:
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-for-third-quarter-fiscal-2023

Data center is indeed up by a lot despite that, but like pointed above they could take the leaved space by the others to boost volume and sales even more consumer cards if it was possible and would love to do it.

This is useful information if I was a shareholder, which I am thankfully not. Facts are Nvidia GPU sales are down. Nvidia as well as AMD and Intel canceled their TSMC orders. Nvidia's share was worth $300 of itself at the beginning of 2022 and is now worth $146 of itself, and will likely continue to drop some more. What you're seeing is a market correction and it hasn't been fully corrected yet. Nvidia was worth $50 a share before 2020, and will likely go back to that value soon enough. This isn't just Nvidia as every company will end up back to to their pre-pandemic values. You'll know when to go puts when Jensen Huang sells a bunch of shares like Elon Musk did with Tesla. CEO's will get their winnings before the house crashes.

 

[MacLeod]

I can't believe all the POS miners that Nvidia and AMD was catering to sending out pallets of GPU's while neglecting their "loyal for decades" PC gaming customer base have left them high and dry. Who would've thought that chasing the fast buck at the expense of the customers that made you what you are doesn't have consequences.