In the 2018 Taipei Computer Show, the processor market was very exciting. AMD, Intel competes and fights, has announced 28-core, 32-core processor, CPU market, nuclear war will promote the multi-core processor in the desktop market to further popularization.
Among other accessories, motherboards, memory, SSDs, and even chassis power supplies, game peripherals have no shortage of highlights, but the graphics card market is even more lifeless. Who is the 'killing' card this year?
As a vane of global PC hardware, Taipei Computer Show has always been an important new product release and showcasing stage. But at the computer show in 2018, the graphics cards disappointed the players.
AMD only made a RX Vega 56 Nano Graphics card, but it is not new. The NVIDIA camp is nothing new. The GeForce 10 series is still the main force. The GeForce 10 series graphics card was first released in May 2016. It has been a full two years now. This is probably the most recent game player. The longest interval between upgrades encountered in several years, the most painful graphics cycle.
For gamers, these two years are not only long, but also very painful experience. Several things experienced during the period have profoundly changed the graphics card market, mine cards, memory prices, AMD/NVIDIA strategic adjustments, etc. have affected this process. .
The mine card is extremely prosperous, and the graphics card market has been deformed for two years
To say that the biggest crisis in the graphics card market is the non-digital currency, the prices of Bitcoin, Ether, and other digital currencies have skyrocketed in early 2017. Graphics mining has ushered in a new peak. Many foremen are a batch The purchase of graphics cards directly led to the unbalanced supply of graphics cards in the spot market. The graphics cards entered a strange cycle. Not only did the cards not have a price reduction, they actually increased their prices, and they had a lot of supply, and they were out of stock.
In mining graphics, AMD's RX 500 series - including the RX 580, RX 570/570D and RX 560 series - are popular, although they are mostly improved versions of the RX 400 series vests, and the price/performance ratio is still low, normally speaking Graphics users will not be too enthusiastic, but because of the mining, these cards are out of stock, RX 580 once rose to 4,000 yuan, very crazy.
NVIDIA's popular mining cards are mainly GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1080, etc. These graphics cards were originally sold at prices that were not cheap, and were once again affected by mining, and the GTX 1060 graphics card almost rose to 4000 RMB. GTX 1080 has more than 5,000, so it is often not available.
According to JPR's forecast, global shipments of mining graphics cards will reach 3 million in 2017, and 1.7 million in Q1 this year. Although the total shipments of about 15 million units per quarter are not as high, mine cards Most of them are high-end graphics cards. There wouldn't be much sales, so the mine card has a great impact on game graphics.
In the Q2 quarter of this year, the mining market was extremely frustrating. The sales of mine cards began to plummet in April. Some AMD camp vendors’ revenue fell by 80% month-on-month in April. This shows how big the impact of mine cards is. To the graphics card market are all mine cards, manufacturers are not selling, naturally no power to upgrade a new generation of graphics cards.
AMD/NVIDIA's attitude is ambiguous.
The hot selling of mine cards leads to the price increase of game cards. Out of stock, PC players are the biggest victims. Who is the biggest beneficiary? Of course, companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and so on.
Last year, although the two companies faced strict restrictions on the use of mine cards, they claimed to prioritize the needs of gamers. However, these slogans did not change the market structure. In-depth study of the two companies will find the attitude of the two mine cards. Quite awkward.
First of all, the hot sales of mine cards have greatly driven the sales of AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.
At the beginning of 2017, the graphics card manufacturers were still worried that the year-end sales could not achieve their goal. However, the hot selling of mining cards changed the market situation. The manufacturers’ graphics cards not only failed to sell, but they had to be out of stock. The rich and channelized foremen All of them are waiting for the cash to go to the manufacturer's factory. The cards produced will be pulled straight away, and they will not be sold at all.
Secondly, although AMD and NVIDIA felt the dissatisfaction of the players, last year they asked cooperative vendors to give priority to providing graphics cards to gamers. However, this requirement is only a word of mouth. AMD and NVIDIA do not sell their own graphics cards. It is impossible to limit the flow of graphics cards. They can The means to change the market should be to increase the supply of graphics cards, but in fact it does not.
Previously rumored that AMD, NVIDIA increased the GPU orders, but last year to see the graphics card supply situation has not improved, the stock is still out of stock, which means the two did not increase supply, and behind this is the attitude of the two mine cards Alas, because the hot selling of mine cards is extremely beneficial to manufacturers, there will be multiple risks when increasing supply.
In the Q1 quarter this year, AMD revenue was 1.65 billion U.S. dollars, of which revenue from minecards accounted for 10% of the total. NVIDIA's revenue for the quarter was 3.2 billion U.S. dollars, including 290 million U.S. dollars, which means 9% of the revenue came from mine cards. , It can be said that the mine card contributed a lot of revenue to these two companies.
However, they are not unaware of the risks in the mining card market. AMD and NVIDIA all expressed their concerns about the instability of the digital currency market. This is also the reason why they are reluctant to increase production. Because the mining card fluctuates too much, it takes several months for the GPU to increase production. , Also consider the issue of follow-up sales, AMD, NVIDIA is afraid of GPU production, the mining card market is gone, which will lead to their inventory problems.
Therefore, AMD and NVIDIA have always maintained an intriguing attitude towards the minecard - on the surface, the minecard has affected the game market, but both sides have made a lot of money from the mining card market, and the graphics card vendors have also cleared their inventory and made huge profits. In terms of interest they are winners.
The volatility of the mining card market made AMD and NVIDIA think of it as a 'prize'. It did not increase production to cope with the demand, and looked at the supply and demand imbalance in the graphics card market. Clearly, as a vested interest, AMD and NVIDIA have no incentive to attack. Mine card market.
The broken house was even rained overnight, and the memory price went up again.
For the graphics card market, the impact of mine cards is the largest, but this is only the first wave of attacks. In the past two years, there is still one thing that has changed the graphics card market, that is, memory chip prices, specifically DRAM particles rose The price has caused GDDR memory prices to follow prices, even to the point where the cost of graphics cards has changed.
AMD Radeon RX VEGA Nano Reference Price
Today's high-end graphics cards are equipped with 8-11GB GDDR5 (X) video memory, and mainstream video cards are 4-6GB GDDR5 video memory. The cost of 4GB GDDR5 video memory is about 32 US dollars before dramatic price increases. , The increase is more than 100%, GDDR5 particle price is more expensive than ordinary DDR memory, so the current cost of 4GB GDDR5 is at least doubled, the cost of 50-60 dollars is even higher than the cost of some graphics cards GPU.
This is the reason why NVIDIA introduced the 5GB GTX 1060, 3GB version of the GTX 1050 graphics cards in the recent period. In order to reduce the cost of video memory, the cutting edge of NVIDIA's castration kernel has matured.
Because of the price increase and supply issues, video card manufacturers are also facing tremendous pressure. When the cards are in the cards, the manufacturers can afford it because of the price increase of the graphics cards. However, since May, AMD and NVIDIA have announced that the Radeon and GeForce graphics cards have fallen back to MSRP. Suggested price level.
This decision is a good thing for the players, but it is bad for the graphics card manufacturers, because the current graphics card cost is completely different from two years ago, just the memory prices have already kept them unsustainable.
to sum up:
At this year's Taipei Computer Show, AMD, NVIDIA, and graphics card makers did not release a new generation of graphics cards. The products displayed are still available. The only change is probably that the price is not as high as it used to be, but for video gamers, this is only recovery. The normal level, not to mention the player's preferential treatment.
There are many reasons for the lack of new cards in the first half of this year. The three things mentioned above, mine cards, AMD/NIVIDA strategy and memory price increase are the biggest influences. As a result, video card manufacturers need some time to deal with these adjustments. The timing of pushing new products can only be delayed..
