The popularity of cryptocurrency mining graphics cards may have surprised even Nvidia

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Nvidia expects its CMP lineup will net $150m in its first three months, three times more than initially expected.

Nvidia CMP cryptocurrency mining GPU

Nvidia created an entire line-up of cards dedicated to cryptocurrency mining in 2021.

 (Image credit: Nvidia)

In the same breath as announcing a bleak outlook for GPU shortages this year, Nvidia has revealed that its CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processors) lineup is set to make more money than it had first expected. 

Launched last month, Nvidia had initially expected a return of $50 million from its CMP lineup. In a short period of time, however, it has scaled that up three times, to $150 million for these cards' first three months.

Nvidia's CMP lineup is made up of four cards that share some similarities with existing and past GeForce generations from Nvidia. However, they are not one and the same. While they may share some silicon, the CMP cards are said to be built with GPUs unable to deliver what's required for Nvidia's GeForce lineup. They also do not feature any outputs and probably cost a lot more. 

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Investment I I would expect Nvidia to be hesitant to commit to, due to previous inventory oversupply issues with former cryptocurrency booms and busts. Nvidia lost a huge amount of share value in 2018, in large part due to oversupply, and I suspect it's cautious to fall into the same trap again.

There was some debate as to whether these mining-specific SKUs would sell quite so well, anyways, considering a lack of resale value. Yet it appears that an appeal to major mining firm's pleas for quantity, and large sums of cash to drop on GPU shipments, has all but negated that concern. Nvidia's going after "industrial-scale" mining operations, as it mentions in the recent announcement, not the smaller outfits looking to shift second-hand cards for profit, if and when there's a crypto-crash.

Jacob Ridley
Jacob Ridley
Managing Editor, Hardware

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.