NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) have both reported a surge in graphics card sales in the second quarter, particularly the demand for add-in cards.
The surge in demand for the add-in cards is said to have been caused by cryptocurrency miners seeking to boost their computing capacity. The recent report also pointed out this is the second time that the demand for add-in cards has surged in almost ten years. Add-in cards are mostly used by gamers and rendering organization to achieve high-performance graphics. According to data provided by Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the graphics cards registered a 30.9 percent rise in sales in the second quarter compared to the first quarter.
The add-in cards sales also rose by 34.9 percent compared to their sales in 2016. The two firms sold add-in hardware worth more than $3.6 billion in the second quarter which represents an increase of roughly 850 million from the first quarter. NVidia and AMD were the only card providers in the category.
“Up to now, the GPU and PC market had been showing a return to what has been normal seasonality,” stated the research report.
According to the report, a lot of people jumped on board cryptocurrency mining this year, especially for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Most of the people mining Ethereum focused on AMD graphics cards because they are considered more efficient compared to their NVidia counterparts when it comes to etherium mining. The value of the digital currencies also helped significantly because it has surged high enough this year to bring positive returns.
The increased demand has obviously been great news for both companies because it has led to more demand for their products including the demand for gaming purposes. The overall GPU shipments registered a 7.2 percent rise in Q2 from Q1. NVidia was up by 10 percent while AMD shipments went up by 8 percent. Though AMD products seem to be better for cryptocurrency mining, NVidia cards are still considered better for gaming.
NVidia stock closed the latest trading session on Thursday at $165.19 after tanking by 0.37 percent compared to the value of the stock during the previous close.
