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I think this is an anomaly that will sort itself out one way or another. The major reason for this anomaly is that everyone is trying to hedge themselves agains

I think this is an anomaly that will sort itself out one way or another. The major reason for this anomaly is that everyone is trying to hedge themselves against cryptocurrencies 'going to zero'. From the perspective of the card manufacturers, they don't want to chase the mining market and ramp up card production to match it as they view the end of mining demand as a potential risk. From the perspective of the card buyer, they don't want to buy a 'mining only' card for much the same reason, with one addition. Mining profitability for the individual drops over time, due to rising difficulty. Which means any card you buy has a finite profitable shelf-life. This makes both ASICs and special-purpose mining GPU cards (basically cards with regular GPUs but no video outputs) unattractive -- they aren't worth much on the second-hand market. At least with a gaming card, once you're done mining with it you have a card you can game with that has essentially paid itself off. I personally think it would be silly and dangerous for graphics card manufacturers to gimp their own hardware in an attempt to appease the gaming market. GPUs are useful for a whole range of things now, which could be impacted negatively by such a move (including things that might be important for gaming performance in the future). To be clear, I say this as an avid gamer myself. The near future is going to be very interesting, especially if the sentiment that 'cryptocurrencies might go away' disappears. There is always the ever-looming 'Proof-of-Stake' also. If that gets popular, the dynamic will shift again and you might see a flood of cheap graphics cards hitting the second-hand market. That would be nice. I think that PoS is fairly risky though; I keep hearing people saying that Ethereum won't be able to deliver on it.

Fnoord 9y ago
> There is always the ever-looming 'Proof-of-Stake' also. If that gets popular, the dynamic will shift again and you might see a flood of cheap graphics cards hitting the second-hand market. Cards which have been very much used. Not sure if that's a problem, seen conflicting info for each side on that one.
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- Fr0styMatt88 9y ago
  That's indeed interesting and something I've thought about a lot. Here's a data point. I run a very small, 3-card (all XFX Vega 64) mining rig, which I was lucky to have started buying around early November before the price of graphics cards really started to explode. As a miner, you want to use as little power and generate as little heat as possible. This means in my case that my cards are run underclocked and undervolted. Two cards in my rig run at 1250MHz core clock and 1085MHz memory clock, at a voltage setting of 0.810V. I haven't been quite as lucky with the remaining third card in my rig - I can only run that at a core clock of 1220MHz and a memory clock of 950MHz, at a voltage setting of 0.850V. I have what some might consider rather aggressively low temperature targets for the cards - 54 degrees C. My two good cards can achieve this temperature with fan speeds around 3650 RPM. The fan on the not-so-lucky card needs to spin around 4500-4650 RPM to achieve this. This is on a hot day and these fan speeds are lower if I'm running my air-conditioner. I haven't seen what the rig is like in winter yet. These numbers are likely the worst-case, since it's summer right now. In my mind, these cards are subjected to much less stress than cards that have been used for gaming, which will run hotter, at higher voltages, with much more thermal cycling, often overclocked. The lifetime of the fans is probably my only concern when it comes to a card that's been used for mining and is what I'd watch out for if buying used. Otherwise, I feel far more confident buying an ex-mining card than an ex-gaming card. Mining done properly seems like it should be far less stressful on a card than gaming, to me. It would be interesting to see if any kind of concrete data has been collected on this actually - anyone know if any of the big mining farms have published any reliability data (akin to those data centre hard drive reliability reports that get released occasionally)?
CryptoPunk 9y ago
>>I keep hearing people saying that Ethereum won't be able to deliver on it. Those people are not credible. Most of them are 1-MB-limited-Bitcoin maximalists who are desperate to harm the reputation and adoption of platforms that threaten Bitcoin's place as the top cryptocurrency in the public mind, like Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.
tlrobinson 9y ago
> At least with a gaming card, once you're done mining with it you have a card you can game with that has essentially paid itself off. Isn’t this similar to the “useful work”/“Mining Heater” situation discussed in the article?

Fnoord 9y ago

> There is always the ever-looming 'Proof-of-Stake' also. If that gets popular, the dynamic will shift again and you might see a flood of cheap graphics cards hitting the second-hand market. Cards which have been very much used. Not sure if that's a problem, seen conflicting info for each side on that one.

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Fr0styMatt88 9y ago
That's indeed interesting and something I've thought about a lot. Here's a data point. I run a very small, 3-card (all XFX Vega 64) mining rig, which I was lucky to have started buying around early November before the price of graphics cards really started to explode. As a miner, you want to use as little power and generate as little heat as possible. This means in my case that my cards are run underclocked and undervolted. Two cards in my rig run at 1250MHz core clock and 1085MHz memory clock, at a voltage setting of 0.810V. I haven't been quite as lucky with the remaining third card in my rig - I can only run that at a core clock of 1220MHz and a memory clock of 950MHz, at a voltage setting of 0.850V. I have what some might consider rather aggressively low temperature targets for the cards - 54 degrees C. My two good cards can achieve this temperature with fan speeds around 3650 RPM. The fan on the not-so-lucky card needs to spin around 4500-4650 RPM to achieve this. This is on a hot day and these fan speeds are lower if I'm running my air-conditioner. I haven't seen what the rig is like in winter yet. These numbers are likely the worst-case, since it's summer right now. In my mind, these cards are subjected to much less stress than cards that have been used for gaming, which will run hotter, at higher voltages, with much more thermal cycling, often overclocked. The lifetime of the fans is probably my only concern when it comes to a card that's been used for mining and is what I'd watch out for if buying used. Otherwise, I feel far more confident buying an ex-mining card than an ex-gaming card. Mining done properly seems like it should be far less stressful on a card than gaming, to me. It would be interesting to see if any kind of concrete data has been collected on this actually - anyone know if any of the big mining farms have published any reliability data (akin to those data centre hard drive reliability reports that get released occasionally)?

CryptoPunk 9y ago

>>I keep hearing people saying that Ethereum won't be able to deliver on it. Those people are not credible. Most of them are 1-MB-limited-Bitcoin maximalists who are desperate to harm the reputation and adoption of platforms that threaten Bitcoin's place as the top cryptocurrency in the public mind, like Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.

tlrobinson 9y ago

> At least with a gaming card, once you're done mining with it you have a card you can game with that has essentially paid itself off. Isn’t this similar to the “useful work”/“Mining Heater” situation discussed in the article?