Tech Radar says that cryptocurrency miners continue to change the landscape of the GPU market, and are pushing AMD’s GPU sales to record highs. 

AMD’s GPU market share rose from 27 percent to 33 percent in the tail end of 2017, and Nvidia, which was named after a Roman vengence demon, saw its market share fall from 72 percent to 66 percent.

Part of the reason for the shift in AMD’s favour could be simply because of the GPU manufacturers' already low prices. AMD is putting out some rather good cards much cheaper than Nvidia and tend to offer more or less the same quality.  Those lower prices meant AMD graphics cards could bear a higher price increase while still remaining viable to cryptocurrency miners looking to buy graphics cards in bulk.

Jon Peddie Research said that graphics cards manufacturers sold around three million GPUs to cryptocurrency miners in 2017, or roughly $776 million in total sales. That’s nearly a billion dollars pumped into the GPU market by cryptocurrency miners alone. It’s a growing segment of Nvidia and AMD’s markets so it will be interesting to see how each company deals with shortage issues without alienating this growing industry.

The boost to AMD’s sales could have been the result of Nvidia’s open support of PC gamers who have criticised cryptocurrency miners for causing a GPU shortage and pushing prices to unacceptable highs. AMD on the other hand made an effort to get more cards out there.

Nvidia has reportedly floated the idea of developing graphics cards designed solely for GPU mining in order to offer an alternative for crypto miners, so gamers aren’t priced out of the GPU market entirely. But it is not clear if such "Turing" cards will cause prices to fall or if PC gamers will have to pay more for midrange cards until the crypto-currency bubble bursts.