The anti-crypto thread

[BFG10K]

Great news, crypto's collapsing across the board: https://www.techpowerup.com/282380/...ions-in-less-than-24-hours-did-the-bubble-pop

Also China's banned crypto, though individuals can still have it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-financial-payment-bodies-barred-122712260.html

The sooner this cancerous parasite is wiped out, the better.

 

[Rebel_L]

You think so? If that's really true, then gamers can't really blame miners for soaking up "all the GPUs", if gamers wouldn't even absorb nearly that many.

Thats not really a fair statement as games are not buying a larger quantity to try and make a profit. Things like warranties are generally important to many gamers and there is plenty who wouldn't go anywhere near a mining card if they knew that's what its history was. Not wanting a used mining card is not the same as not wanting a video card.

 

[VirtualLarry]

and there is plenty who wouldn't go anywhere near a mining card if they knew that's what its history was.

That's utter foolishness. I would buy GPUs from a Pro miner / outfit, as long as they were returned to stock BIOS and appropriately cleaned and refurbished / repasted, rather than an abused overclocked garbage card from a single user gamer.

It's prejudice like that, that stems from demonization and misunderstanding of other parties, that leads to problems like in other domains, where people are anti-science, because of "beliefs".

 

[Rebel_L]

That's utter foolishness. I would buy GPUs from a Pro miner / outfit, as long as they were returned to stock BIOS and appropriately cleaned and refurbished / repasted, rather than an abused overclocked garbage card from a single user gamer.

It's prejudice like that, that stems from demonization and misunderstanding of other parties, that leads to problems like in other domains, where people are anti-science, because of "beliefs".

I expect a miner card to have been running for 24/7 I would expect a gamers card to run far less than that. I wouldn't buy any used cards myself but I would suspect that mid range cards from a gamer would likely not have had any significant overclocks with far less hours of used time than a mining card.

The majority of people never go beyond whatever basic software overclocks can be done with what downloads with their driver package. For miners its whatever drives profit, and while this often lower power usage it can also mean other things which would mean having to keep up to date on things from the mining world. When it comes to things like using custom bios's or what unusual stresses whatever coin mining is putting on cards its too much research on my end to be informed about, its easier to just opt out. I am sure that with how popular mining is you are just as likely to buy a used card from a ridiculous overclocker as from a inexperienced miner who is abusing cards just as badly.

 

[VirtualLarry]

with far less hours of used time than a mining card.

Why would that matter? These are GPUs, which are a lot like CPUs. They're not mechanical with a finite lifespan like HDDs, or a usage lifespan like NAND. They basically last mostly forever, assuming that they haven't been exposed to obscene temps. Which is what every pro miner does first, underclock and undervolt to lower temps.

Amazon's 'New World' was (allegedly) killing 3090s, gaming. You didn't hear about mass card deaths from mining, did you? Those old Polaris cards are virtually unkillable.

 

[blckgrffn]

My issues have always been the fans. They just get lots of hours that “normal” cards don’t by virtue of sleep, powering off or fan stop features.

But… when you could get an RX 470 for like $80 or less shipped and they were almost certainly old miners, the utility outweighed my doubts.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My issues have always been the fans. They just get lots of hours that “normal” cards don’t by virtue of sleep, powering off or fan stop features.

But… when you could get an RX 470 for like $80 or less shipped and they were almost certainly old miners, the utility outweighed my doubts.

That's where "proper" refurbishment of older mining cards comes in. Miners almost always keep their boxes, gamers don't. If a fan is failing, the pro miner should replace it before selling it off. Especially if charging MSRP or more for the card.

I would agree, though, don't buy cards with a "mining BIOS", unless that's from the factory, like XFX's RX 570 line, with the second BIOS switch position. (Those were such awesome cards, I miss mine.)

 

[ozzy702]

I agree, and I'm excited to see what Polygon can do (PolyDEX notwithstanding; they gotta fix that contract). Seems like they beat OMG to plasmas? Though I must admit that I haven't been tracking OmiseGo's progress.

I have a fat stack of OMG from 2017 I'd love to unload. OMG is apparently working on rollups... maybe I'll get the chance to sell above $15 on day.

Yeah, I've used Polygon a bit and it seems to work well. They're working on rollups now and supposedly want to transition to ETH being the native currency of their L2. We'll see. They seem to be trying to be everything to everyone. I think they've done a good job as a quasi L2/Sidechain and they are very Ethereum friendly and positive.

 

[Leeea]

Why would that matter? These are GPUs, which are a lot like CPUs. They're not mechanical with a finite lifespan like HDDs, or a usage lifespan like NAND. They basically last mostly forever, assuming that they haven't been exposed to obscene temps. Which is what every pro miner does first, underclock and undervolt to lower temps.

Amazon's 'New World' was (allegedly) killing 3090s, gaming. You didn't hear about mass card deaths from mining, did you? Those old Polaris cards are virtually unkillable.

I would disagree. They do wear out. Specifically the Caps are the first to go, along with the mechanical parts like the fans. We start seeing failures pop up around the 5 year mark.

Next to fail are the VRMs, which tend to kick the bucket more spectacularly. Failures start showing up after 5 years or so, but are certainly more rare then Caps.

Lastly is the silicon, the memory and the GPU. Those parts do not last forever. It is not unheard of to see memory chips flake out after about 10 years or so. Memtest86 exists for a reason long before memory overclocking.


You are correct that a miner uses the card gently and they do last a lot longer with a miner vs a gamer.

The biggest problem with mining cards they typically do not re-flash the BIOS on resale. Which is a real pain for non-technical users who just want to game.


Lastly, I would agree the Polaris series specifically seems to have exceptional reliability from my limited experience. Those fine wined more then most graphic cards. One of the reasons they still sell well over MSRP in these dark days.

 

[Rebel_L]

Why would that matter? These are GPUs, which are a lot like CPUs. They're not mechanical with a finite lifespan like HDDs, or a usage lifespan like NAND. They basically last mostly forever, assuming that they haven't been exposed to obscene temps. Which is what every pro miner does first, underclock and undervolt to lower temps.

Amazon's 'New World' was (allegedly) killing 3090s, gaming. You didn't hear about mass card deaths from mining, did you? Those old Polaris cards are virtually unkillable.

I do actually recall hearing lots of stories about miners doing many bad things to video cards, from bricking cards with custom bios, to very high temp overclocking for max mining output since they were not paying for or had super cheap electric costs. You are trying to compare the best of the miner community to the worst of the gaming community when talking about the conditions you expect cards to be in and that is simply unrealistic.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You are correct that a miner uses the card gently and they do last a lot longer with a miner vs a gamer.

The biggest problem with mining cards they typically do not re-flash the BIOS on resale. Which is a real pain for non-technical users who just want to game.


Lastly, I would agree the Polaris series specifically seems to have exceptional reliability from my limited experience. Those fine wined more then most graphic cards. One of the reasons they still sell well over MSRP in these dark days.

I agree.

DON'T buy gaming cards with a mining BIOS still flashed. They won't game right, mining BIOS lower the core clock and power limit and de-tune the RAM such that it can run at higher clock rates.

Any miner that has been doing it for more than a couple of years, is going to undereclock and undervolt their cards to keep them at a cool, steady temp.

Only the noob miners crank UP the overclocks. Experienced miners tend to take care of their cards; after all, they are their money-makers.

 

[Shmee]

I think Hawaii is actually far more fine wine than Polaris. Hawaii had similar performance, way earlier. They had wider memory bus, too, and 8GB versions were available. I do think it is a pitty though the drivers are no longer updated for them and Fiji. Keep in mind though Fiji only had 4GB of memory, it was HBM, and overall the cards outperformed Polaris, and close to the GTX 1070! Shame.

Though NVIDIA is probably even worse IMO, what with their LHR shenanigans and "Kepler effect." Plus I remember back in the day, there was some issue with Nvidia greenlight I think it was called. I think it had to do with limiting OC / OV potential. Not sure though.

 

[Shmee]

Oh I forgot about the lack of SLI and crossfire support after some time. Though both companies did that. Maybe CF will come back with the chiplet type designs expected in RDNA3?

 

[DrMrLordX]

I think Hawaii is actually far more fine wine than Polaris.

I did well over 90% of my mining on Hawaii back in the day. 290s and 390s. They were power-hungry and weird but they got the job done. Not worth it to mine on them anymore.

 

[ozzy702]

I did well over 90% of my mining on Hawaii back in the day. 290s and 390s. They were power-hungry and weird but they got the job done. Not worth it to mine on them anymore.

I actually burnt up more 390s than 480s. I used low power settings on each and I had 480s that mined for four years straight without any issue. Pretty amazing.

 

[Mopetar]

If it's a card that's relatively new (like a 3080 Ti or a 6700XT) then a used mining card is probably less likely to fail than a new in box cards. Almost all electronics follow a bathtub curve when it comes to failure rate. Anything that's been mining for six months is well beyond that early initial point where the failure rate is highest.

Depending on what it was mining for can also tell a lot about any wear and tear. Etherium is the most popular coin to mine and the algorithm it uses is memory bound on all modern GPUs. What this means is that miners will underclock the core while trying to boost the memory speeds higher as long as it doesn't start resulting in errors since the error correction tanks performance.

I honestly wouldn't have too many qualms with buying a used card and honestly if there's a bust the cards might become so cheap for a while that you can easily pick up an extra as a spare.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.reddit.com/r/NiceHash/comments/pbunm3

 

[CP5670]

I've had used cards before and never had any problems. My experience is that if any PC part is faulty, it will fail in the first month or two of usage. The problem now is the used cards on ebay are often more expensive than new ones bought in other places. Actually it's kind of like what has happened with used cars in 2021.

 

[DrMrLordX]

@VirtualLarry

Is that a dwarven marriage ritual?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Maybe?
China declare botcoin as worthless and plans further crackdown on sites trading crypto

Bitcoin Has No Value: People Bank's Of China Official Announces Further Crackdown

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Maybe?
China declare botcoin as worthless and plans further crackdown on sites trading crypto

Bitcoin Has No Value: People Bank's Of China Official Announces Further Crackdown

- Something, something, if China is against it we should be for it

in 3...2...1...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Has this been posted yet?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Now we're just meme-ing.

 

[ozzy702]

.

Looks like Arbitrum will go live by the end of the month, should be interesting to see what happens.

I'm going to love bumping this thread in 2025 when crypto's total market cap is 5x what it is now.

 

[UsandThem]

I'm going to love bumping this thread in 2025 when crypto's total market cap is 5x what it is now.

Can't wait to for the chance to buy a future card like a RTX 5090 for $10k.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Can't wait to for the chance to buy a future card like a RTX 5090 for $10k.

Prices will go up with or without crypto, and I doubt there will be much GPU mining by then anyway. If there still is then the PoS crowd will have to answer for their failures.