Nvidia, AMD GPUs see higher prices, lower volumes in August: UBS
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Investment firm UBS said on Tuesday that the secondary market for graphics processing units, or GPUs, showed a rise in prices, albeit with lower volumes.
Analyst Timothy Arcuri said that AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) GPUs saw an average price increase of 1% on the secondary market while Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) saw an average price increase of 3%. Prices were varied across each company's respective GPU portfolios, as AMD (AMD) saw pressure on its highest-end chips, but "relative stability" for its mid and lower-tier offerings. Conversely, Nvidia (NVDA) was a "mixed bag" at the high-end and saw "broadly lower pricing" at the low-end. 
"Notably, following a 34% [month-over-month] improvement in July, transaction volume declined to its lowest level of the year, though the data suggests that this decline was less a function of demand and more a function of far fewer GPUs being made available for sale - secondary market inventory in August was the lowest we have seen since we began tracking this data ~1yr ago," Arcuri wrote in an investor note. 
Delving deeper, Arcuri said there was also a decline in inventory, reasons for which are not clear just yet. He speculated that it could be a sign of a slowdown in the GPU upgrade cycle since Nvidia (NVDA) launched its Ada Lovelace chips, though it could also be consumers holding off on purchases ahead of Black Friday sales.
"While these data points relate specifically to secondary market transaction activity, our Oct Q estimates for NVDA's Gaming segment do call for sub-seasonal growth of +3% Q/Q vs. 3yr/5yr seasonal of +7%/+9%," Arcuri added.
Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) shares were both fractionally higher in pre-market trading on Tuesday.

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