GPU shipments saw biggest nosedive since noughties recession All those shiny, expensive graphics cards you've seen sitting on retail shelves the past few months really have been a sign of tough times for the computer industry. The latest indication: GPU shipments in the third quarter saw their biggest drop since the Great Recession (until the next one) in 2009, according to a new report …
Pretty sure alot of us are holding off until our current expense cards are totally outclassed and then we'll upgrade (begrudgingly).
I mean they've gone from something you were OK with getting a new one every few years and maybe was half the cost of your machine but now when the top of the range card requires about £2,000 investment in this economy feels like being gauged. Especially when that's only for the graphics card and a new power supply (because unless you've already got a 1000w one it's time to get your wallet out).
Also the card makers crying because the market collapsed is something of their own making when they profiteered so much from desperate gamers (who won't easily forget) and crypto miners (also profiteers trying to get money for burning electricity...)
My card, a factory overclocked RX 480, is currently a little over 5 years old and it does have some mild issues (I suspect I have to reapply thermal paste to it) but otherwise runs most of what I play without issues at 1080p. I would consider upgrading only if there's decent midrange options that don't cost an arm and a leg and—most importantly—don't suck down power with reckless abandon. It seems that anything that's not a refresh of an older product has at least double my current card's TDP!
If GPU manufacturers don't come to their senses I suspect you'll be right that a lot of us will continue to hold off on upgrading.
If "GPU shipments" include Intel iGPUs they will also include Apple Silicon iGPUs, so only changes in sales of Macs with AMD GPUs would affect the numbers.
The number of Macs that shipped with discrete AMD GPUs was probably pretty small, maybe a few million a year. The highest selling Macs like Macbook Air, lower end Macbook Pros, and Mini used Intel iGPUs.
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It's not narrow minded to have a price point in mind and stick to it, even when it comes to things you're passionate about.
Comparing gaming to more expensive hobbies is all well and good, but the core issue is not the cost per se. It's that we're being asked to fork out 2k for the equivalents of goods which were selling for under 1k a few years ago. I know inflation is on the rise but the GPU makers (mostly nVidia) are taking the piss with pricing in this latest generation. If sales in the GPU market have cooled down in response that's just the free market doing what it does - in this case the invisible hand is giving them a bitchslap for being too cocky.
Mostly all this is doing is pushing gamers towards more cost effective ways of having their fun i.e. consoles or less expensive PC hardware (e.g. steam deck). It's going to slow wider adoption of 4K, but for now I figure a lot of us are seeing that as a nice to have rather than an essential. It's not going to threaten the popularity of gaming overall, so your (and my) hobby is safe for now.
It reminds me of the race to the top with the CPUs of old where faster is better and to hell with the power consumption, hopefully, the GPU will also plateau and they can start lowering the TDP for the same graphical output, looking forward to them doing to GPU what they are aiming for in the CPU market, imagine the mobile gaming rigs and standalone VR headsets we could have if our 4080ti sipped power like an Arm/Apple Silicon M1/M2.
OR, Maybe they already have but need to justify the huge prices by still building in a heat dump and huge shiny flashing board just for show ;-)
OR maybe it is time to get Geforce Now and let Nvidia pay my electricity bills, may be cheaper in the long run. I can spend the savings on better connectivity instead.
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The top end discrete GPUs are basically the equivalent of hypercars in their market - very shiny shiny so everyone can daydream about how nice it would be to have one, but they're not exactly designed with operating budgets as a deciding factor. A high end card like a 4080 (in ti or any other flavour) is now constrained only by the upper limits of what a PC's power supply can output, and to hell with the power bill.
Console GPUs are where the manufacturers get really serious about power constraints, though that's historically been more about thermal management than the electricity cost. Portable platforms like the switch and the steam deck are even more constrained as they have battery life to factor in as well. Laptop CPU/GPU hardware is designed for the same factors, at least if you discount "PrO gAm3r" laptops which end up basically wedded to a power outlet. In these product categories the GPU makers (well, actually just AMD for the gaming devices, and mostly intel in the laptops) have been delivering everything you've asked for, just for it not being on the halo products that gather all the publicity.
So is this what is happening to prices?
There is less demand, so we are selling less.. so we have to put the prices up to compensate.
Or is it more likely that inflation, leading to price rises, is causing the slump in sales.
Either way, this feels more like stagflation than inflation... A lose-lose situation for consumer AND maker.
Not good. Not good at all.
Maybe.Or maybe market manipulation. Or just plain refusal to reduce margins. The latter is not uncommon. In the early days of the PC ( I think late 70s or thereabouts) American companies gave UK resellers massive discounts to kick start sales with customer price reductions.. According to the computer press of the time the UK sellers kept the extra cash and continued with the same prices.
Anecdotally, around the same time my dad and various family members were working for a range of factories and retailers. And they each told the same story; that the owners would rather sell (say) 100 units at a £5 markup than 300 at £4 markup even though that was still a significant profit margin per unit.
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