News Desktop Graphics Cards Sales Hit New Multi-Decade Low: Report

[Admin]

Intel continues to solidify positions on the desktop discrete GPU market as sales of graphics cards shrink.

Desktop Graphics Cards Sales Hit New Multi-Decade Low: Report : Read more

 

[kanewolf]

I wonder how much the improvement of integrated graphics has impacted this. Even the "grandparents" rig required some graphics card for many years. Now both AMD and Intel have integrated graphics that will handle mom/pop and office tasks with ease.

 

[spoidz]

I am still using a RTX 2070 Super with an otherwise very strong system (9900KS 5Ghz CPU). I try to buy the strongest GFX I can when I can afford to and making my next major platform leap. I just don't buy a new GFX Card every generation so I guess I'm part of the drop.

 

[Eximo]

I wonder how much the improvement of integrated graphics has impacted this. Even the "grandparents" rig required some graphics card for many years. Now both AMD and Intel have integrated graphics that will handle mom/pop and office tasks with ease.

Immensely so, we see it in the desktop product stack already. GT1030 or RX550 being the lowest relatively current GPUs you can still get new. With HD730 and Vega / RDNA based integrated graphics, not much call for anything more.

People complain that the entry level desktop gaming GPUs are too expensive, but that is because if they made cheaper ones, they would then be seen as too weak to justify the costs. That has always been the case. Just more so now.

$90 for a 2GB GT1030, or $90 for the 4GB RX550. People shouldn't be buying GT730 for $60 (Actually is an r7-240 for $35 right now, neat)
Or $95 for a 3200G.
$121 for a 5600G

 

[saunupe1911]

We are either broke or refuse to upgrade those prices!

 

[dennphill]

For one who was sorta ‘burned’ at my last build (during tough ‘mining heydays and ‘bots picking up any then-current cards), that being mid-2021, I am probably typical in being both hesitant to buy any recent GPU offerings or, moreover, hesitant in doing any desktop upgrades (much less new build)! Card I (finally!) got was a PowerColor Red Devil RX6700XT that cost me over a Grand at the time! I was only lucky after a month or two of searching to finally grab one off Amazon for that price to complete a then-new build. That card (and build AM4 Ryzen 7-5800X3D) is working just fine, and suits my only-occasional gaming needs. Good article, Anton…just one old codger’s reaction to its content: I can very easily understand the public’s lack of interest in the recent Nvidia and AMD GPU offerings!

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I bought the 1080 Ti for $699 as part of my 7700k build in 2017.

$1500 for the 3090 as part of my 10900k build in 2021. Sold the 1080 Ti for $250.

$1750 for the 4090 as part of my 7950x3D build in 2023. Sold the 3090 for $750.

We'll never see a flagship card for $699 again... and while I am not a Nvidia shareholder I do believe that the 4090 is worth the premium. It's a quantum leap in performance improvement over the 3090 as shown here.

Result

www.3dmark.com

.... and here.

Result

www.3dmark.com

You are getting what you pay for with the 4090.

Change my mind.

 

[Eximo]

We are either broke or refuse to upgrade those prices!

I don't disagree, lower prices would be better, but that isn't what I am getting at.

Minimum cost to make a graphics card, and you wouldn't want to buy the minimum anyway because its performance would be worse than what you have now in all likelihood.

Take a look at the 4060Ti, new generation, same performance as last gen. A bad purchase.

But you also wouldn't want to buy a 4050 with 4GB of memory because a 3050 with 8GB is going to be superior and cheaper for now. So if 8GB is the new entry level for gaming and there is a market for it, they will make it. There isn't much of a market for sub $200 gaming GPUs because of integrated graphics overwhelmingly filling that role. Everyone else looking for a card that cheap is basically satisfied with previous generation products.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Take a look at the 4060Ti, new generation, same performance as last gen. A bad purchase.

I'm not sure why Nvidia made the 4090 the only respectable card in the 4000 series... to drive sales I guess.

 

[Eximo]

I'm not sure why Nvidia made the 4090 the only respectable card in the 4000 series... to drive sales I guess.

Yes and no, they expect sales to be good for Halo products. High end products have a much smaller base and the mid-range cards have the bigger audience. I think the 4060Ti is a cost compromise.

They screwed up the 4080 by making it a bad deal. As others have mentioned before, the 4080 should have been a 20GB cutdown 4090. And the 4070/Ti should have been 4080.

When they tried to pull off the 4080 12GB, that was the sign things were going to go poorly.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

When they tried to pull off the 4080 12GB, that was the sign things were going to go poorly.

Yeah I understand the frustration people are having. Nvidia could have done lot better.

Am I surprised sales are low? Not really. When an entry level card today costs as much as a flagship from 6 years ago that says it all IMO.

I would love to know Nvidia's profit margins... especially on the 4090. I honestly have no idea what their cost is.

 

[IamNotChatGpt]

Yeah I understand the frustration people are having. Nvidia could have done lot better.

Am I surprised sales are low? Not really. When an entry level card today costs as much as a flagship from 6 years ago that says it all IMO.

I would love to know Nvidia's profit margins... especially on the 4090. I honestly have no idea what their cost is.

When companies like AMD and NVIDIA can cut $100 right before launch to incentivice selling power, you bet they have a nice profit margin.

Especially after reducing bus width, VRAM and heatsinks to fisher price levels...

 

[newtechldtech]

well ask PS5 and MS Xbox you will get the right answer. the consoles hit good performance and nice graphics .. midrange GPU market is in danger ... the only reason to go for gaming PC is very high end graphics and thats like few% only of the total GPU market.

I expect the next GEN console to destroy the midrange gaming GPU totally

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Nvidia doesn’t care about consumer graphics cards that much. They have a $1 trillion market cap and that’s due AI

 

[TechieTwo]

High end CPUs and GPUs are an indulgence for most consumers. Fewer and fewer people have the means or will to pay $1000 for a GPU card or $700 for a CPU. In our current economic downturn we haven't even come close to bottoming so I would not expect a significant uptick in sales for a couple years.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

well ask PS5 and MS Xbox you will get the right answer. the consoles hit good performance and nice graphics .. midrange GPU market is in danger ... the only reason to go for gaming PC is very high end graphics and thats like few% only of the total GPU market.

I expect the next GEN console to destroy the midrange gaming GPU totally

I just sold my Series X because the one game I did play on it (MLB 23) I can stream to the PC so there was no point in having the console. I have the Switch for my retro NES/SNES gaming but prefer the PC for everything else and that will probably never change.

I had the original PS and the PS2... and have never touched a PS3, 4, or 5.

It's not so much about the high end PC gaming... it's just there's so much more you can do on a PC than on a console... and that now includes streaming console games to the PC.

 

[10tacle]

For one who was sorta ‘burned’ at my last build (during tough ‘mining heydays and ‘bots picking up any then-current cards), that being mid-2021, I am probably typical in being both hesitant to buy any recent GPU offerings or, moreover, hesitant in doing any desktop upgrades (much less new build)!

Yeah that be me! I overpaid in Aug. 2021 for my RTX 3080 Ti even though I got it at the $1399 MSRP price on a NewEgg shuffle lottery purchase win. But that was the market then and I had just upgraded to a 4K OLED gaming monitor for my PS5. My PC was very outdated (now backup gaming rig in my sig) and wouldn't come close to running what I wanted in MSFS and racing sim game settings. Now that 3080 Ti 12GB VRAM is bare minimum requirements for most 4K gaming at max sliders.

I would love to know Nvidia's profit margins... especially on the 4090. I honestly have no idea what their cost is.

I have no clue of the actual dollars of PM here either, but based on history reports at least with Nvidia, the high end GPUs are nowhere near the needle movers in Nvidia's overall profit margin reports just based on sales numbers and economies of scale alone. Here's an interesting trend tracker on Nvidia's three margins...note the overall decline of margins since the end of 2021:

NVIDIA Profit Margin 2010-2024 | NVDA

Current and historical gross margin, operating margin and net profit margin for NVIDIA (NVDA) over the last 10 years. Profit margin can be defined as the percentage of revenue that a company retains as income after the deduction of expenses. NVIDIA net profit margin as of July 31, 2024 is...

www.macrotrends.net

^^As of right now, Nvidia's margins are back to only where they were in June 2016 just to keep things in perspective for those who claim "Ngreedia" is just robbing us more and more.

 

[Eximo]

Yeah that be me! I overpaid in Aug. 2021 for my RTX 3080 Ti even though I got it at the $1399 MSRP price on a NewEgg shuffle lottery purchase win. But that was the market then and I had just upgraded to a 4K OLED gaming monitor for my PS5. My PC was very outdated (now backup gaming rig in my sig) and wouldn't come close to running what I wanted in MSFS and racing sim game settings. Now that 3080 Ti 12GB VRAM is bare minimum requirements for most 4K gaming at max sliders.

Yep, me too, I did have my GTX1080 since it was released though and I skipped 20 series, didn't feel too bad. Though I could have gotten a 4080 for that much had I waited, or gotten a 3080 12GB for about $600 less (which is what I should have done, hindsight sucks)

 

[Johnpombrio]

I think that desktop PCs are on their way out. Between decent consoles, better laptops, and mobile games, there really isn't a good reason for having the cost, complexity, and size of a full-blown desktop these days. A nice large TV with a console attached and Gamepass is pretty much all people need for games. Laptops are able to handle pretty much everything else besides heavy graphics applications. I love my desktop with its 4090 card and 4K monitor but the writing is on the wall even for me.

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

I don't disagree, lower prices would be better, but that isn't what I am getting at.

Minimum cost to make a graphics card, and you wouldn't want to buy the minimum anyway because its performance would be worse than what you have now in all likelihood.

Take a look at the 4060Ti, new generation, same performance as last gen. A bad purchase.

But you also wouldn't want to buy a 4050 with 4GB of memory because a 3050 with 8GB is going to be superior and cheaper for now. So if 8GB is the new entry level for gaming and there is a market for it, they will make it. There isn't much of a market for sub $200 gaming GPUs because of integrated graphics overwhelmingly filling that role. Everyone else looking for a card that cheap is basically satisfied with previous generation products.

There will be different groups

Those who got burnt and paid way over the odds I would imagine will stick with what they have for some time to at least try and get some value back in use.

Then there will the group who can't really afford to upgrade but they do it anyway but at the lower tier or some even mid tier graphic card range they will get as much time and use out of their card as possible because they have no other choice and probs just can't afford it even more right now so will just make do.

Then there are the group who can afford to buy what ever they want and upgrade to the best every time something better is released if they wanted to and some of them do. Problem is not enough of those people to sustain a high demand.

Times are harder now than they where for a bigger percent of people than they where just a few years back.

 

[Eximo]

Consoles go in cycles. When they are early in their lifecycle they always make sense cost wise.

But entry level GPUs tend to start outperforming them within a few years, and towards the end of the lifecycle really out match them.

Though they have been upping the cadence of console releases/re-releases.

An enjoyable gaming experience doesn't require much in the way of graphics. This push towards photo realism has always been a bit silly in my mind. Interesting and neat, but there are tons of game styles that don't have to look that amazing. Cartoony graphics and a good art style can certainly be more fun. Can always look to Nintendo always doing well enough with much less hardware performance.

Some of my favorite gaming experiences can run on a sub 100Mhz 16MB computer with a 1MB video card...

 

[Eximo]

There will be different groups

Those who got burnt and paid way over the odds I would imagine will stick with what they have for some time to at least try and get some value back in use.

Then there will the group who can't really afford to upgrade but they do it anyway but at the lower tier or some even mid tier graphic card range they will get as much time and use out of their card because they have no other choice and probs just can't afford it even more right now so will just make do.

Then there are the group who can afford to buy what ever they want and upgrade to the best every time something better is released if they wanted to and some of them do. Problem is not enough of those people to sustain a high demand.

Times are harder now than they where for a bigger percent of people than they where just a few years back.

Absolutely.

I fall into that can buy whatever category, but just don't feel the need to upgrade every cycle. But there is always demand at that level, either people replacing the last generation hardware immediately or business owners on a refresh cycle.

Mid-tier is actually pretty much always the best choice in terms of performance per dollar. Nvidia seems to have forgotten that. 2070 I think was the best bang for the buck, then the 3080, and now the 4090. They are trending the wrong way. (Though I vaguely recall a near tie with the 3060Ti)

Inflation and general wage stagnation is certainly being felt everywhere. Most companies are still riding the pandemic bubble in pricing and it hasn't been trending down as rapidly as it should be, despite increased supply. Electronics industry seems to be mostly back on track, but TSMC is jacking their prices up because of their advantage. We are still waiting on all those under construction fabs to take pressure off that market.

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

The real problem is as these games become bigger better more advanced so does the cost to produce these games that has a knock on effect to the price of a game and then a knock on effect to those who are now priced out of the gaming market place,

yea yea some of the more big headed and pretentious posters might say neea neaa you shouldn't be buying those things neeaaa neaa if you cant aford it neeeaaa sort your life outt neeaaa

to those people I say stuff you we all deserve some kind of enjoyment in our lives get off ya high and mighty horse because the world is run on credit and debit.

Then the power of the hardware needed to run these new games has a knock on effect to those who are already being priced out of the cost of games and now the hardware good enough to play them.

 

[Eximo]

Certainly been a boon to the storage industry, and partially explains the prices plummeting there. Games are huge, so everyone that makes SSDs has little problem selling them. That and the standardization between laptop and desktop at the moment with M.2.

 

[bit_user]

I wonder how much the improvement of integrated graphics has impacted this. Even the "grandparents" rig required some graphics card for many years. Now both AMD and Intel have integrated graphics that will handle mom/pop and office tasks with ease.

That's been true since Sandybridge. I used the i7-2600K's iGPU on a 1440p monitor, for years.

Ever since Skylake, the development machines we buy at my job don't have dGPUs.