AMD and NVIDIA cutting GPU supply as they expect lower cryptocurrency demand?

DigiTimes reports the boom of Ethereum mining resulted in a big spike of GPU sales. ASUS and MSI are each expected to ship a total of 5-5.2 million cards this year, while Gigabyte follows with an estimated 4.5 million units.

Another huge video card vendor is Colorful, they're on track to ship 4.1 million units this year. We don't hear a lot about Colorful but that's because the company sells about 90 percent of its products in China.

The site also notes that Palit remains the largest video card maker, they're expected to ship over 7.5 million units this year. This company sells cards under various brands, including Palit, Gainward, Galaxy, XpertVision, and more.

DigiTimes writes that the cryptocurrency mining market started to wane this month, and that this will result in a big drop in GPU sales this quarter. The site heard rumors that the current GPU shortages are not caused by strong demand, but by lower supply from AMD and NVIDIA:

However, with the fad starting to wane in October and graphics card prices also returning stable, the vendors' shipments are expected to experience sharp sequential declines in the fourth quarter. Although graphics cards are currently still in shortages, it is a result of Nvidia and AMD adjusting their supply instead of strong demand.

Industry sources believe the graphics card market will return to normality in 2018. Sales are expected to rise in Q1 2018 but may start seeing drops beginning in Q2 2018.