Discrete GPU market up 11.7 percent YoY due to rise in gaming and cryptocurrency

Integrated graphics solutions just aren't cutting it for more and more users these days. According to market tracking firm Jon Peddie Research (JPR), 39.55 percent of all laptops and desktops sold during Q3 2017 were equipped with dedicated graphics cards to represent a 4.18 percent QoQ rise.

The biggest winner is unsurprisingly Nvidia who managed to ship a massive 29.53 percent larger volume of GPUs than the previous quarter alone. Both AMD and Intel are up QoQ as well, albeit at smaller jumps of 7.63 percent and 5.01 percent, respectively. Intel is still the largest manufacturer of GPUs by far at approximately 67 percent of the GPU market compared to 19.3 percent and 13 percent from Nvidia and AMD, respectively. When looking at only the notebook market, overall shipments of dGPU-equipped notebooks were up 5.2 percent QoQ despite a 6 percent fall YoY.

JPR attributes the sudden rise in QoQ sales of discrete GPUs to gaming and especially cryptocurrency mining. Though good for business, high-performance GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD are almost always marketed for gaming purposes and not mining. This has resulted in an unintended consequence of higher retail prices for both gamers and miners alike even though their markets are generally considered to be mutually exclusive. A search of GPU price trends on Pcpartpicker.com, for example, shows bumps in average prices of most enthusiast gaming GPUs beginning as early as June of this year due to cryptocurrency hobbyists.

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