- Stop! No matter the price, you should never buy a secondhand GPU that was used for mining. It could be as much as
10% slower for each year it's spent mining cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or Dogecoin. At least, that's what the rumor that has been spreading ever
since Palit Microsystems, a large manufacturer of GPUs, allegedly warned benchmark.pl about the supposed dangers
of buying used GPUs. But hold on a minute. A GPU manufacturer only makes
money when you buy a new GPU. Of course, they would wanna warn you off buying a cheaper secondhand one. So is there any truth to this? To find out, we contacted
an acquaintance of mine, a local, full time crypto miner.
(fire crackles) (crowd chatters angrily) Yeah, I know. I know. But he's otherwise a totally cool guy. So we got in touch with him,
and we borrowed three GPUs that have been mining 24/7, 365 for one, two, and three years. And I'll be comparing their performance to our closest available equivalent GPUs that have done pretty much nothing but sit on the shelf in our store room. This is an important video, because when the inevitable
GPU price crash does happen, it'll determine whether it's
worth it to pull the trigger on a used GPU to finally turn the tables on those filthy, filthy miners. Oh, no offense, but by the way, thanks for lending me these cards. And thanks to World of Tanks
for sponsoring this video. World of Tanks is the free to play epic online combat multiplayer
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at the link below to get some great bonuses. (upbeat electronic music) We've talked about
performance degradation before in this video, where I compared
a ten-year-old GTX 480, that had been quite heavily
used, to a brand new in-box one. And that time around,
our conclusion was that if it's still running,
at the same clock speed, its performance will be
identical to the day it was new. However, if the silicon has degraded to the point where it can't
run at those clock speeds, it's gonna artifact or black screen, rather than somehow lose performance. So why are we revisiting this topic? I'm so glad you asked. Modern graphics cards,
ever since the GTX 680, no longer run at a fixed clock speed. And it's common practice for manufacturers to advertise both a base clock speed, as well as a boost clock speed
for what they would expect the GPU to reach under typical conditions. And this is where things
get really interesting. All other things being equal, the performance of a
processor, like a GPU, is directly determined by how many cycles it performs per second. And with nearly a 20% difference between the base and boost clocks of say, NVIDIA's RTX 3080, it's conceivable to imagine
a card that still works, but with dramatically worse performance. So let's meet our cards, shall we? Starting with the ASUS
TUF RTX 3080 10G Gaming. Now we were really lucky here,
in that we happened to have (hand slaps) in the box, to give you some
idea how little it's been used, a TUF 3080 Gaming card that is identical to the one that has been
running for 10 months of continuous use mining cryptocurrency. Now that is less than a year, but if the rumored claims
from Palit are to be believed, it should already have dropped a measurable amount of performance compared to this otherwise identical card. Let's get it on the test bench. Because we're comparing like for like, that is to say that both graphics cards in each round of our testing
are using the same GPU, our setup can be very straightforward. All we're gonna do is run FurMark until we reach a plateau in temperatures. Then, we're going to
log the GPU clock speed for a period of one minute
and take the average. That'll tell us about what
the card is boosting to. (clock ticking)
One down, and while our results seem fine, we won't know for sure
until we compare to a card that doesn't have a layer
dust all over the fan. Here comes GPU number two. Divided by 1950 equals. Oh. Well, our mining 3080 did end up slower, but it turns out it was only by 0.8%. So that is well within
the margin of difference that you might expect just
picking up two brand new 3080s off the shelf and running
them against each other, but that doesn't prove
degradation isn't real. Let's move on to something that's been running
for quite a bit longer. Representing our, approximately two years is this RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8 gig from MSI. It's actually only been
mining for about 18 months, but in theory, if it's
supposed to lose 10% performance per year, this one should be quite a bit slower than an unused card. Okay, I had planned to show you guys the results for the 2070s
after I had run both cards, but this first one is so
interesting that I couldn't wait. In spite of it being rated only for a boost clock of 1830 megahertz, this MSI card is still running
at well over 1900 in FurMark Definitely interesting,
even if I'm not sure how valid this data point will be. Because while we did manage to get perfectly matching
cards for our 3080 test, for our 2070s, we were not quite as lucky. I mean, we'd have loved to just buy a perfect match for the one that was given to us by the miner. But, the problem with that
is that most used GPUs on the market are so-called, because, well, they've been used. (audience gasps)
And the whole point of our test is that we want
to compare to something that is in like new condition. So even if we found a
GPU that someone said hadn't been touched, we'd be
just relying on their word, as opposed to any kind of empirical data. So what we decided to do was
go with a non-matching GPU that we know has spent most
of its life on a shelf, even though it is rated
for a lower boost clock. If anything then, this
should make it even easier for our mining card to
maintain its performance edge. And this card also ran well
above its rated boost clock. So, I guess what that means is
that our test doesn't tell us really anything about performance
degradation due to mining, but rather that Nvidia's
sophisticated GPU boost technology has never really cared much about what the rated clock
speed from the board partner is. So both cards are behaving as they should, and even their relative performance, given that they're both rated for about 100 megahertz
difference in boost, is exactly what we would expect if they were brand new. Of course, that doesn't mean that it's BS. Because we still have one more test, a GTX 1060 that has been
mining for four years. Okay, I was way off in the intro. For this generation, both of our cards are rated for the same clock speeds, but with different cooler designs. Though, both of them
should help them reach pretty much the full
potential of the silicon. This AnonTech review from 2016 shows a Founders card like this one performing within about
5% of an ASUS Strix card that has a beefier cooler. So, if mining for four years did anything to our
Zotac card's performance, it should be pretty
evident in the results. Let's take them down. We're looking at an average of 1835. (clock ticking) And, conclusion. 1847 versus 1830. Basically the same. So, okay then. Using a GPU still doesn't
appreciatively affect the day-to-day performance of said GPU. That is, unless Palit is admitting that their cards die really
quickly, or something. I don't know. Probably not. So it's purely binary, then. It still works, or it
doesn't work anymore. Go ahead and buy mining cards. End of story, right? Well, not quite. It's clear from their condition that while these GPUs might've
been heavily used for mining, they've also either been
very regularly cleaned, or kept in a basically
dust-free environment. And because modern GPS boost higher, in some cases much higher, when they're run at lower temperatures, the condition of the cooler is critical to the performance of the graphics card. So a broken, or clogged up,
or otherwise hobbled heat sink could easily cause a 10%
performance hit or more. That's why it is so to carefully inspect the condition of the
cooler of a graphics card before you make a purchase. They can be a real nightmare
to track down secondhand if you need to replace them. And depending on how much you're spending, the remaining lifespan of the GPU before it reaches that
binary doesn't work state could be a major concern as well. I mean, if you're paying half the price for the same performance brand new, I say YOLO it, and buy
another one if it dies. But if you're only
saving a few bucks, well, I'd recommend this video
about why electronics die, where Luke explains how even
components with no moving parts can be gradually worn
out by invisible forces like thermal expansion and contraction, and even the physical flow of electrons through the tiny copper
wires in a microprocessor. With that said, a quality GPU would have been built to last much longer
than its warranty period. And in my opinion, the flood of used GPUs that is undoubtedly coming
could be the tide change the PC gaming community
has been waiting for. So the bottom line, know the risks, but don't let anyone scare you off of a good deal with baseless FUD. And don't let me scare you off
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for 10 battles each. If you guys enjoyed this video, you might enjoy our turning a
mining GPU into a gaming GPU, where we had that headless card, we managed to get it running. That one was pretty cool.
My gaming rig has an RX 580 that is a former mining card. I got it for dirt cheap a couple years ago but now it's artifacting and crashing my PC unless I overclock it. You read that right. It's the weirdest thing. I am pretty sure it's a hardware problem and not a Windows or driver problem because it crashes in Linux and running pretty much any 3D accelerated app in macOS causes kernel panics almost immediately.
I don't know much about how silicon works but I would like to find out why this card crashes unless overclocked. I've never heard of such a thing.
You can buy good fans from onlyfans.com
I would say a big problem is the miner you buy from. If a miner is good at what the do and take care of their hardware, by this I mean they replace thermal pads, properly under volt, keep in air conditioning, regularly clean hardware, and so on, then personally I don’t think there is a ton to worry about.
However, a lot of those miners won’t be selling when the bubble pops. Most of them will be doing the opposite and buying up cheap hardware to expand the farm. And so a lot of the miners that will be selling are people that didn’t take care of the hardware and just wanted to make a quick buck. These are the cards that I would rather not buy.
Sadly there really isn’t a way to know how a miner has treated their cards. But I am with Linus on one thing. If I could buy two used cards for the price of a new I’d roll the dice on the 2 used.
To me it's more that I have no interest in being a part of some miner's exit strategy.
People aren't primarily worried about performance degradation on shit like benchmarks with used mining GPUs, they're worried if the thing without a warranty is going to be alive in a year after buying it. Which is a fair concern considering mining continuously stresses DDR6x to its absolute limit on heat, unless the miner goes out of their way to do stuff like repadding the card (correctly), which most probably aren't, and you have little way of knowing what the actual treatment of it was besides blindly trusting the word of the seller.
Even if benchmark performance degradation was what people were worried about, it's laughable taking a sample size of 3 cards that you specifically picked out and selectively tested, and try to pass it off as conclusive evidence. Also saying not to trust the word of card manufacturers on this subject, when his trust in their word on this subject was the entire basis of his video not long ago saying that mining isn't a major factor in the current GPU market, meanwhile as he sits here saying that a mining crash will mean cheap GPUs for everyone.
I was told the GPU wasn't used for mining. But it seems like it really was. I'm having non-stop glitches that pop up every session. And for some reason even Windows crashes using the card. The person says they didn't mine with it, so I can't prove it or return it. IDK what to do. I got it on eBay of course.
A lot of people seem to have the misconception that cards used for mining are being pushed to their limits, when the opposite is usually the case. GPU's are much less efficient when operating at their performance limits, and electricity use (and heat generated) is a major concern for miners that know what they're doing. Mining cards are best kept underpowered and cool.
A card that's mining 24/7 at a 50% power limit and a steady 50 degrees is going to experience less silicon degradation than a gpu that constantly shifts between 30 degree idle and 75 degree gaming, just by avoiding the thermal changes.
Of course running a card for long periods of time will wear out the fans quicker, so buying a used mining card with fans that can be easily user replaced is best.
Any usage degrades silicon. Be it gaming, or mining 24/7 for 3 years. I'd be wary of mined cards for said reason solely.
Watched the video: inconclusive testing. Mined GPUs were kept on good condition / dust free environment, were able to perform on par/within margin of error. Also, a synthetic benchmark was ran and only the top boost clock noted down (no in-game benchmarks or average FPS comparison?). Odd & limited testing methodology.
I buy 2nd hand tech only if I can buy it new. I have no idea how people treated it. Yet it has it pros and cons - cheaper card but I would have in mind to add extra 50-75 euro because of the fans that are probably at the end of their life.
Nvidia and AMD for sure will strugle again on the next crash when quarter reports are lower because the market is flooded again with mining rigs/cards.