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One thing I find kind of interesting about this -- the folks dumping cards on the market had farms. Those running mining farms are playing a numbers game This

One thing I find kind of interesting about this -- the folks dumping cards on the market had farms. Those running mining farms are playing a numbers game This involves under-clocking and under-volting the cards, while also ensuring they're cooled well. I think an argument could be made that mined-on cards are more well cared for than those owned by your average gamer. There's not some 'destroy the ASIC' instruction. Work is work. Mined on cards undergo fewer duty cycles, I wonder how the calculus works out between one long mild duty cycle compared to many more that are also more extreme.

latchkey 4y ago
Most large farms don't have the ability to properly tune cards for best ROI. At scale, it is too hard because each card is a snowflake in terms of performance. In order to tune, you're basically pushing the card to the limits of underclock/undervolt... which means the card crashes. Therefore, most large farms actually undertuned, for stability, which is the least abusive on the cards. If the card crashes due to tuning, the machine crashes, and the rest of the cards are taken offline until the machine reboots. In order to change settings, you have to reboot the entire machine too. It is a pain in the ass to find optimal tuning at scale. There is no publicly available software to 'autotune' cards at scale. It took me a long time to first learn how to tune cards (by hand tuning thousands of cards and getting a feeling for things) and then once I figured that out, I built software to do this. It required changes in the AMD driver to get it to output in the kernel messages, which card was crashing. It required updating the mining software itself. It was a nutty insane project, but it worked well. We hit our target hashrate / power usage.
- hailwren 4y ago
  What are you doing now? Did you shut the project down entirely?
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Some is shut down, some is mining other coins. Kind of a wait and see time right now.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      The planet thanks you for shutting down. Don't worry, I'd say the same for any tobacco executive.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        Our power is unused hydro, in a geographic location full of other data centers for all the large tech companies. This comment is just your continued trolling with your anti-crypto trope. Please try another tactic. Update: I got downvoted to -4 on this one after getting several upvotes. Makes me think that articbull has multiple accounts and is just gaming the system.
        mattwilsonn888 4y ago
        Not only have I debated this person multiple times, but on a search about settlement a HN thread came up and he had the top comment citing the infamous Mora et al study which makes the naive assumption that required hash for a proof of work network scales linearly with transaction volume, rather than block volume (which come at a constant rate no matter what the total hash is). This person is a successful troll, and a pathetic thinker.
        arcticbull 4y ago
        There's no such thing. That power should be connected to the grid instead of wasted or put to productive use, not to mention all those GPUs that are about to head for the landfill after a long life of guessing random numbers and warming up the outside. Wasting the power for money disincentivizes storage and grid connection.
        latchkey 4y ago
        You are hilarious, your crypto hatred has clouded your judgement. Since you have so much karma here, you don't mind saying silly things and losing points left and right. Transmission of power is expensive and lossy. These data centers are in a very remote location that isn't heavily populated. That's why they are there to begin with! The power would absolutely go to waste otherwise. That's also why we picked that area... power was cheap because it wasn't being used. Our GPUs are 'new old stock'. They were already produced, sitting in warehouses not doing anything, and would have gone to waste anyway. Update: Similar with the downvotes...
- Melatonic 4y ago
  You should really pivot and start selling that software. Package it up with a nice pretty bow and wrapper and it could be a very lucrative product.
captainbland 4y ago
Yeah if I had to guess, the main concern with very long periods of load is going to involve moving parts rather than anything else. So pretty much the fan is likely to go but not much else.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 4y ago
They usually undervolt/clock the GPU, but not the memory. VRAM temps can be an issue and only some miners will try to address that properly with copper shims, etc. The 3090 is notoriously bad for mining because it has memory chips on both sides of the board, leading to more heating in one spot and poor cooling for the 'back side' chip. Other cards tolerate it much better, but it can be an issue. So while overall mining cards should be good, there are some specific issues to watch out for. A failed memory chip is not an easy fix, requiring a reball/replacement of that chip.
- latchkey 4y ago
  100% accurate. ethash is memory bound. I've definitely seen 'memory go bad'... but at our scale, the percentage failure rate on that is in the single low digits. Additionally, we have cards that run just fine for years on end. Maybe, as you suggest, it is just something that is more card specific.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
>>I think an argument could be made that mined-on cards are more well cared for than those owned by your average gamer. What strikes me though is people are rarely discussing mileage, only nature of work. The video card in my gaming computer works, on average, maybe 1hr/week (some weeks more, most weeks 0). So right out of the gate, my video card has been working basically 168 times less long than any mining card running 24x7. We are talking more than two orders of magnitude difference in "mileage", before we discuss how well or poorly it has been taken care of.
- belval 4y ago
  My understanding is that it's similar to a car, changing state (starting/stopping) is much more damaging that running the same thing, at the same temperature/voltage for extended period of time.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    I've rebooted GPUs hundreds of times to find the optimal tuning parameters. Failures after a reboot were very few and long term over the entire collection of GPUs, we've seen very few failures. Definitely within operating parameters.
- LoveMortuus 4y ago
  Most of the "damage" that happens to a GPU is due to thermal expansion, which happens at to a more extreme degree if you're cold booting a game and then from a hot gaming state back down to cold. Where are with mining it's usually running constantly at a more or less stable temperature, thus it experiences much less of stress from the thermal expansion side of things.
synapse26 4y ago
I fully agree with your point. However, this only applies when miners are buying new cards. I live in Vietnam, crypto mining/usage is pretty big, during the last crypto craze a few months (a year?) ago, all miners are willing to buy old cards, used cards, even broken cards at high price, I sold my 570 for $300. Furthermore, flashing custom mining BIOS, what I’m told is that every miner here has to do or it wouldn’t be profitable, voids warranty.

latchkey 4y ago

Most large farms don't have the ability to properly tune cards for best ROI. At scale, it is too hard because each card is a snowflake in terms of performance. In order to tune, you're basically pushing the card to the limits of underclock/undervolt... which means the card crashes. Therefore, most large farms actually undertuned, for stability, which is the least abusive on the cards. If the card crashes due to tuning, the machine crashes, and the rest of the cards are taken offline until the machine reboots. In order to change settings, you have to reboot the entire machine too. It is a pain in the ass to find optimal tuning at scale. There is no publicly available software to 'autotune' cards at scale. It took me a long time to first learn how to tune cards (by hand tuning thousands of cards and getting a feeling for things) and then once I figured that out, I built software to do this. It required changes in the AMD driver to get it to output in the kernel messages, which card was crashing. It required updating the mining software itself. It was a nutty insane project, but it worked well. We hit our target hashrate / power usage.

hailwren 4y ago
What are you doing now? Did you shut the project down entirely?
- latchkey 4y ago
  Some is shut down, some is mining other coins. Kind of a wait and see time right now.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    The planet thanks you for shutting down. Don't worry, I'd say the same for any tobacco executive.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      Our power is unused hydro, in a geographic location full of other data centers for all the large tech companies. This comment is just your continued trolling with your anti-crypto trope. Please try another tactic. Update: I got downvoted to -4 on this one after getting several upvotes. Makes me think that articbull has multiple accounts and is just gaming the system.
      - mattwilsonn888 4y ago
        Not only have I debated this person multiple times, but on a search about settlement a HN thread came up and he had the top comment citing the infamous Mora et al study which makes the naive assumption that required hash for a proof of work network scales linearly with transaction volume, rather than block volume (which come at a constant rate no matter what the total hash is). This person is a successful troll, and a pathetic thinker.
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        There's no such thing. That power should be connected to the grid instead of wasted or put to productive use, not to mention all those GPUs that are about to head for the landfill after a long life of guessing random numbers and warming up the outside. Wasting the power for money disincentivizes storage and grid connection.
        latchkey 4y ago
        You are hilarious, your crypto hatred has clouded your judgement. Since you have so much karma here, you don't mind saying silly things and losing points left and right. Transmission of power is expensive and lossy. These data centers are in a very remote location that isn't heavily populated. That's why they are there to begin with! The power would absolutely go to waste otherwise. That's also why we picked that area... power was cheap because it wasn't being used. Our GPUs are 'new old stock'. They were already produced, sitting in warehouses not doing anything, and would have gone to waste anyway. Update: Similar with the downvotes...
Melatonic 4y ago
You should really pivot and start selling that software. Package it up with a nice pretty bow and wrapper and it could be a very lucrative product.

captainbland 4y ago

Yeah if I had to guess, the main concern with very long periods of load is going to involve moving parts rather than anything else. So pretty much the fan is likely to go but not much else.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 4y ago

They usually undervolt/clock the GPU, but not the memory. VRAM temps can be an issue and only some miners will try to address that properly with copper shims, etc. The 3090 is notoriously bad for mining because it has memory chips on both sides of the board, leading to more heating in one spot and poor cooling for the 'back side' chip. Other cards tolerate it much better, but it can be an issue. So while overall mining cards should be good, there are some specific issues to watch out for. A failed memory chip is not an easy fix, requiring a reball/replacement of that chip.

latchkey 4y ago
100% accurate. ethash is memory bound. I've definitely seen 'memory go bad'... but at our scale, the percentage failure rate on that is in the single low digits. Additionally, we have cards that run just fine for years on end. Maybe, as you suggest, it is just something that is more card specific.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

>>I think an argument could be made that mined-on cards are more well cared for than those owned by your average gamer. What strikes me though is people are rarely discussing mileage, only nature of work. The video card in my gaming computer works, on average, maybe 1hr/week (some weeks more, most weeks 0). So right out of the gate, my video card has been working basically 168 times less long than any mining card running 24x7. We are talking more than two orders of magnitude difference in "mileage", before we discuss how well or poorly it has been taken care of.

belval 4y ago
My understanding is that it's similar to a car, changing state (starting/stopping) is much more damaging that running the same thing, at the same temperature/voltage for extended period of time.
- latchkey 4y ago
  I've rebooted GPUs hundreds of times to find the optimal tuning parameters. Failures after a reboot were very few and long term over the entire collection of GPUs, we've seen very few failures. Definitely within operating parameters.
LoveMortuus 4y ago
Most of the "damage" that happens to a GPU is due to thermal expansion, which happens at to a more extreme degree if you're cold booting a game and then from a hot gaming state back down to cold. Where are with mining it's usually running constantly at a more or less stable temperature, thus it experiences much less of stress from the thermal expansion side of things.

synapse26 4y ago

I fully agree with your point. However, this only applies when miners are buying new cards. I live in Vietnam, crypto mining/usage is pretty big, during the last crypto craze a few months (a year?) ago, all miners are willing to buy old cards, used cards, even broken cards at high price, I sold my 570 for $300. Furthermore, flashing custom mining BIOS, what I’m told is that every miner here has to do or it wouldn’t be profitable, voids warranty.