Nvidia Record Q2 Revenue: Gaming Division Is No Longer The Biggest Moneymaker

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Data centers exceed gaming revenue for the first time

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia's Q2 earnings reports are in, and it looks like the start of a new era: data center earnings for Q2 have surpassed gaming revenue, which is the first time in history this has happened for Nvidia.

Data center revenues came down to $1.75-billion USD, which is 54 percent growth over Q1, and a massive 167 percent growth year-over-year. Of course, it's important to note that this is largely due to Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox. Without this, GeForce would still comprise the bulk of Nvidia's earnings.

“Our new Ampere GPU architecture is sprinting out of the blocks, with the world’s top cloud service providers and server makers moving quickly to offer NVIDIA accelerated computing." reads the press release.  "Mellanox grew sharply, driven by the need for high-speed networking in cloud data centers to scale-out AI services. And Mercedes-Benz’s partnership with NVIDIA to power its next-generation fleet of luxury cars -- from the computer to the AI software, and from the cloud to the car -- is transformative."

Nevertheless, the gaming division didn't sit around either. It earned $1.65-billion in Q2, which is a 24 percent growth over Q1 and a 26 percent growth over the previous year, showing that despite the pandemic, Nvidia's business is as strong as ever.

In addition to these two segments, professional visualization and automotive followed, earning $203-million and $111-million, respectively. 

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
Topics
GPUs
10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • InvalidError
    I've been saying that Nvidia is moving its core business to HPC/datacenter for a few years, makes sense that it would prefer to sell its higher-end chips in those markets at $5000+ a pop than in the consumer space for ~$1000... or possibly ~$2000 in the near future if 3080Ti/3090 pricing rumors are true.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    They already knew.
    If they can milk that much money from the mainstream market, they can get even more from the enterprise one.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Phaaze88 said:
    They already knew.
    If they can milk that much money from the mainstream market, they can get even more from the enterprise one.
    Not untrue, but that's not really the reason for the big uptick in enterprise revenue in q2.

    Of course, it's important to note that this is largely due to Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox. Without this, GeForce would still comprise the bulk of Nvidia's earnings.

    Yes, that is important to note, but just not in the title of the article.
    Reply
  • Chung Leong
    InvalidError said:
    I've been saying that Nvidia is moving its core business to HPC/datacenter for a few years, makes sense that it would prefer to sell its higher-end chips in those markets at $5000+ a pop than in the consumer space for ~$1000... or possibly ~$2000 in the near future if 3080Ti/3090 pricing rumors are true.

    Nvidia could actually spin off its consumer business into a separate company as a part of its plan to acquire ARM. Makes a lot of sense to focus on high-end enterprise stuff and IP licensing.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    Phaaze88 said:
    They already knew.
    If they can milk that much money from the mainstream market, they can get even more from the enterprise one.

    But this is no different from anything in the HPC space. Intel has CPUs in the $10K range.

    However support is very different in the HPC space compared to consumer markets so there is additional costs in that that consumer markets do not see.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    jimmysmitty said:
    But this is no different from anything in the HPC space. Intel has CPUs in the $10K range.

    However support is very different in the HPC space compared to consumer markets so there is additional costs in that that consumer markets do not see.
    I tend to forget about that.
    Those markets deal with volumes of money I might never see in my lifetime...
    Reply
  • mac_angel
    The gaming market not bringing in as much at this time would be kind of obvious. Anyone that even remotely follows information on GPUs knows that both AMD and NVidia are releasing a new GPU later this year. Toms' even posted an article about it being a bad time to buy a new GPU. NVidia having growth at all, at this time in the gaming market is impressive itself.
    What I do wish is that NVidia would be more aggressive with their pricing. It's fine to jack up prices to the industrial market, but take note of what AMD has been doing for the consumer market. The bigwigs at NVidia seem to be suffering from hubris. And the idea of "customer service" has changed so much over the years by all the big companies.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    mac_angel said:
    What I do wish is that NVidia would be more aggressive with their pricing. It's fine to jack up prices to the industrial market, but take note of what AMD has been doing for the consumer market.
    Nvidia is aggressive on pricing alright, just not in the consumer-friendly direction. Not sure what positive things AMD has done for consumers here, all it did is frequent branding switcheroos to break model number continuity with previous generations so people wouldn't immediately realize that AMD jacked up prices across its product tiers until it mostly matched Nvidia's.

    Since both AMD and Nvidia can sell the same wafer to HPC/datacenter for 5-10X what they would earn in the consumer space, I'm guessing both of them are jacking up consumer prices to recover at least some of the opportunity cost of still bothering with the consumer segment. GPU prices won't be coming down unless AMD or Nvidia screws up by grossly over-booking fabs and gets stuck with crypto-bust levels of excess inventory again.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    InvalidError said:
    Nvidia is aggressive on pricing alright, just not in the consumer-friendly direction. Not sure what positive things AMD has done for consumers here, all it did is frequent branding switcheroos to break model number continuity with previous generations so people wouldn't immediately realize that AMD jacked up prices across its product tiers until it mostly matched Nvidia's.

    Since both AMD and Nvidia can sell the same wafer to HPC/datacenter for 5-10X what they would earn in the consumer space, I'm guessing both of them are jacking up consumer prices to recover at least some of the opportunity cost of still bothering with the consumer segment. GPU prices won't be coming down unless AMD or Nvidia screws up by grossly over-booking fabs and gets stuck with crypto-bust levels of excess inventory again.

    He is probably going more based on the CPU market as they are competitive and they did price better.

    but I will say what I always say about that, AMD will price competitively until they have the edge. Then they will price accordingly, which is whatever consumers will pay.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    mac_angel said:
    NVidia having growth at all, at this time in the gaming market is impressive itself.
    Growth in the gaming market during the last quarter makes sense, seeing as PC sales were unseasonably high, and sales of games were way up due to the quarantine. Nintendo announced their net sales for the quarter climbed by more than 100% compared to the same quarter last year, and combined console hardware sales for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft were up over 50% year-over-year, despite a new generation of hardware set to arrive in the coming months. Logically, gaming graphics cards would also have been selling well.

    Hardware sales probably won't be as good this quarter though. Both consoles and higher-end GPUs will be seeing a new generation of hardware launches around Q4, so people will be more likely to hold off purchasing existing hardware. Nvidia might slip some launches in before the end of this quarter, but those will likely be limited to a relatively small number of niche ultra-high-end cards, with the more mainstream models coming later. And of course, quarantine restrictions have been letting up, and people have likely been spending more time outside due to it being summer, and that's probably not going to change dramatically before the quarter is through.
    Reply