Crypto Market Downturn Puts Drag on High-End GPU Prices

New research suggests that prices for high-end graphics cards - coveted by both cryptocurrency miners and gamers alike - are falling.

According to Jon Peddie Research, the price of an OEM 4GB RX 580 six-pack - a top-notch GPU from Advanced Micro Devices - was $3,600, having completely sold out as of April.

"The cost to run the mining rigs is not insignificant, so when the price for the currencies drop..., people will run rigs and choose to dump AIBs on the secondary market hoping to recover some cost."

The research's data also show that the number of AIB shipments directly to cryptocurrency miners dropped about 55.5% compared to the same quarter of last year.

Additional data provided by a website called PCPartPicker, which tracks the prices of computer components, also indicates that there is a general downtrend occurring for GPUs.

The chart below shows price developments for the Radeon RX Vega 64 - a product hailed by some tech bloggers last year as a premier tool for mining cryptocurrencies.

In spite of several short upticks, the price of that product seems to have peaked in early March.

Similar accolades were published for the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti - but it, too, has seen a gradual price decline since around the same time.

Whether this means anything in the long-term remains to be seen - cryptocurrency mining is effectively an electricity arbitrage, where gains are made when the cost of mining is less than the return on the coins once sold.

More answers could come in the form of future financial results from Nvidia and AMD, both of which have made a point to discuss the impact of crypto mining on their bottom lines.