If you were hoping that the effect of cryptocurrency mining on Graphics Card prices will taper out due to the recent crash in cryptocurrency prices, here’s some bad news for you. As per Nvidia, graphics card prices are set to continue rising for the most of 2018.
According to a report published on Forbes, it’s no longer true that cryptocurrency miners are only opting for AMD graphics cards. In fact Nvidia expects the GPU prices to continue rising up till the end of the year, at least.
According to the buying manager B Hutch of community-driven commerce platform Massdrop, who spoke to Nvidia:
“First the shortage. All new cell phones coming out by Apple and Samsung (and others) last year started using the same memory as graphics cards. Apple and Samsung are willing to pay more for this memory to make sure they get it first and all of it that they need. This has created a shortage of memory for the much smaller companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, and EVGA to make graphics cards.”
“Next the demand: This is obvious as the mining craze that’s been going on has created a huge demand in the market as miners are gobbling up just about every card available on earth.”
From the statement, it’s clear that apart from cryptocurrency miners who are hogging up all the GPUs they can get their hands on, the shortage of memory has resulted in the falling production of GPUs in general.
When the loss in production is combined with the high demand for graphics card due to cryptocurrency mining, it only shows that the price of GPUs will keep on increasing at least for the foreseeable future.