TR Forums

So, I'm a little confused. I was just pricing out a new computer build for a friend when I noticed that video card prices for the Geforce 10 series has just blown through the roof since the last time I bought a couple a few months ago. Did some sort of natural disaster happen again in southeast Asia?

The current video card situation is the result of people buying up AMD GPUs to mine the latest fad cryptocurrency (Ethereum). This in turn has increased demand for NVIDIA cards since the AMD ones became stupidly expensive (or were out of stock). Until the Ethereum craze passes and/or supplies catch up, GPU prices will remain elevated.

You can also expect to see a lot of abused secondhand AMD GPUs dumped onto the used market once the Ethereum craze peaks.

In a nutshell, miners are currently willing to pay stupid amounts for AMD GPUs because they expect to turn a profit on the Ethereum mining. This has skewed the entire GPU market.

Damn Miners, they should be shot!!!

whm1974 wrote:

Damn Miners, they should be shot!!!

They're just capitalists, as you would be with your mushroom ketchup and artificial meat start-up concepts.

Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!

Captain Ned wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Damn Miners, they should be shot!!!

They're just capitalists, as you would be with your mushroom ketchup and artificial meat start-up concepts.

At least I would be providing real products people can use. Miners are not even doing anything remotely useful.

whm1974 wrote:

Miners are not even doing anything remotely useful.

They're bolstering the bottom line of electricity providers.

Captain Ned wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Miners are not even doing anything remotely useful.

They're bolstering the bottom line of electricity providers.

And raising the cost of electricity of everyone else.

Captain Ned wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Miners are not even doing anything remotely useful.

They're bolstering the bottom line of electricity providers.

Every miner i meet i ask about the electricity cost to profit ratio and i get a deer in headlights look. They seem to usually think it's just free easy money, but it's not free... there's cost there.

If you've got someone else paying for your electricity, it may not occur to you that it's evil to waste it.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

If you've got someone else paying for your electricity, it may not occur to you that it's evil to waste it.

While I get free electricity(HUD), I will most likely get kicked out of my apartment if I started a mining operation 24/7.

Don't worry the current mania is already crashing at this moment. In the next few weeks, I expect the used market to be flooded with "mildy" used GPUs.

just brew it! wrote:

The current video card situation is the result of people buying up AMD GPUs to mine the latest fad cryptocurrency (Ethereum).

... you can also expect to see a lot of abused secondhand AMD GPUs dumped onto the used market once the Ethereum craze peaks.

Serious question: Just how 'abused' are these cards? Sure they're running flat-out and, are likely getting toasty. But is the average miner also a manic overclocker? Assuming they haven't been grossly overvolted, or overheated, what's the worry?
I've always understood (and experienced first hand) thermal cycling to be the vidcard big killer. Assuming the minding scheduler can keep the cards fed, they shouldn't have too many thermal stress cycles on the pads, board, etc.

It would be hilarious when Vega finally hits the streets and that the main competitor won't be NV but instead it will be those <$100 used Polaris cards from Ebay after the bubble bursts.

Geonerd wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

The current video card situation is the result of people buying up AMD GPUs to mine the latest fad cryptocurrency (Ethereum).

... you can also expect to see a lot of abused secondhand AMD GPUs dumped onto the used market once the Ethereum craze peaks.

Serious question: Just how 'abused' are these cards? Sure they're running flat-out and, are likely getting toasty. But is the average miner also a manic overclocker? Assuming they haven't been grossly overvolted, or overheated, what's the worry?
I've always understood (and experienced first hand) thermal cycling to be the vidcard big killer. Assuming the minding scheduler can keep the cards fed, they shouldn't have too many thermal stress cycles on the pads, board, etc.

The silicon and VRMs should be okay provided that isn't overclocked/overvolted (not an optimal thing to do with mining). The potential issue is that stock HSF will likely encounter life expectancy issues since it was never engineered for 24/7, 100% utilization.

Yup, fan wear-out is the main concern.

Heat stress is also a potential issue, if there were a bunch of them crammed together in the same chassis. While thermal cycling is indeed the worst thing you can do to electronics, 24x7 operation at the edge of the thermal envelope on something that wasn't designed for 24x7 full-load operation isn't particularly good either.

just brew it! wrote:

Yup, fan wear-out is the main concern.

I can't see that being an issue after only a couple months though, unless heat from the GPU makes cooling fans overly prone to failure (or the fans are being over-volted at full throttle). I've installed countless 80/92/120mm fans running straight to the PSU and nearly all outlived the useful life of a videocard.

Yeah, given that Ethereum has only been popular since late May, I don't think I'd be too hesitant about buying up a used card if the price was right. It seems Ethereum doesn't care much about clock rates, so smart miners probably underclocked & undervolted their GPUs to save power.

Of course there will be no way to tell how much said card has been abused since (IMO) most people are fairly dishonest when posting on Ebay/etc. I presume most of the listings that will pop up after this is over will say "never used for mining" or "always kept cool" or something of that nature.

How cheap did 290s get on the used market after the Bitcoin fueled surge died down?

The math is pretty bad. Six months of mining is likely equal to 3-5 years of active gaming.
24x30 is 720
5x30 is 150, or very close to 1/5. Which likely only a miniscule number could even maintain over 6 months versus a month or two.

I would not touch a used card this coming holiday season. Just a numbers game. Especially as all recent stuff has had like previous months manufacture date on them. Seems like a valid reason to deny warranty on a consumer card should something happen.

blahsaysblah wrote:

The math is pretty bad. Six months of mining is likely equal to 3-5 years of active gaming.
24x30 is 720
5x30 is 150, or very close to 1/5. Which likely only a miniscule number could even maintain over 6 months versus a month or two.

I would not touch a used card this coming holiday season. Just a numbers game. Especially as all recent stuff has had like previous months manufacture date on them. Seems like a valid reason to deny warranty on a consumer card should something happen.

On legitreviews, they found that the best mining performance came when they set the GPU power target on a 1070 at ~75%, and the best performance/watt ratio came around a power target of ~60%.

A used mining card might be even better than a used gaming card from a heat, VRM loading perspective.

Voldenuit wrote:

blahsaysblah wrote:

The math is pretty bad. Six months of mining is likely equal to 3-5 years of active gaming.
24x30 is 720
5x30 is 150, or very close to 1/5. Which likely only a miniscule number could even maintain over 6 months versus a month or two.

I would not touch a used card this coming holiday season. Just a numbers game. Especially as all recent stuff has had like previous months manufacture date on them. Seems like a valid reason to deny warranty on a consumer card should something happen.

On legitreviews, they found that the best mining performance came when they set the GPU power target on a 1070 at ~75%, and the best performance/watt ratio came around a power target of ~60%.

A used mining card might be even better than a used gaming card from a heat, VRM loading perspective.

Interesting. But how many people pay attention to that, as opposed to just running it flat out to maximize production/day?

Also, tuning solely for performance/watt is only sensible if you would've bought the card for gaming anyway. If you bought the card specifically for mining you should also be looking at making back that investment sooner rather than later.

Heiwashin wrote:

Captain Ned wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Miners are not even doing anything remotely useful.

They're bolstering the bottom line of electricity providers.

Every miner i meet i ask about the electricity cost to profit ratio and i get a deer in headlights look. They seem to usually think it's just free easy money, but it's not free... there's cost there.

Yeah, it's like the kids with the lemonade stand. "Ok, you've taken the lemonade powder that your parents bought at Costco, you've mixed it with water from the utility your parents pay every month, poured it into a glass your parents bought, and now you're sitting on the lawn that exists because of the mortgage your parents pay every month, and you want me to pay you a dollar to drink it. And you think that's a dollar in your pocket?"

Considering that the only miner I've actually met in person was literally doing it in his parents' basement, this analogy sometimes isn't even an analogy.

whm1974 wrote:

Captain Ned wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

Miners are not even doing anything remotely useful.

They're bolstering the bottom line of electricity providers.

And raising the cost of electricity of everyone else.

Actually, Public Utilities in most states in the US are regulated. In PA, you are free to choose an electrical provider thereby REDUCING your electric bill in most situations.

I highly doubt there's enough concentration of mining going on in any given area to even cause the local utility company to notice.

Also, the majority "high volumne" miners out there had their mining farms churning since long before the end of May when Ethereum jumped. These people jump from coin to coin depending on what's hot.

just brew it! wrote:

Voldenuit wrote:

blahsaysblah wrote:

The math is pretty bad. Six months of mining is likely equal to 3-5 years of active gaming.
24x30 is 720
5x30 is 150, or very close to 1/5. Which likely only a miniscule number could even maintain over 6 months versus a month or two.

I would not touch a used card this coming holiday season. Just a numbers game. Especially as all recent stuff has had like previous months manufacture date on them. Seems like a valid reason to deny warranty on a consumer card should something happen.

On legitreviews, they found that the best mining performance came when they set the GPU power target on a 1070 at ~75%, and the best performance/watt ratio came around a power target of ~60%.

A used mining card might be even better than a used gaming card from a heat, VRM loading perspective.

Interesting. But how many people pay attention to that, as opposed to just running it flat out to maximize production/day?

Also, tuning solely for performance/watt is only sensible if you would've bought the card for gaming anyway. If you bought the card specifically for mining you should also be looking at making back that investment sooner rather than later.

To maximize production/day, you set power target below 100%.

Not every miner will be seeking the optimum perf/watt for their given card, but I'd guess that the majority will be running (nvidia cards, at least, not sure about AMD cards) their cards at under 100% power target, probably close to 75%.

Voldenuit wrote:

To maximize production/day, you set power target below 100%.

That's pretty counter-intuitive. How is that even possible? Does it prevent thermal throttling?

DPete27 wrote:

I highly doubt there's enough concentration of mining going on in any given area to even cause the local utility company to notice.

I found a 2015 article for a 2016 presentation (before the Fall 2016 Bitcoin complexity increase) that estimated worldwide Bitcoin mining power draw at a steady 250 megawatts or more.

southrncomfortjm wrote:

How cheap did 290s get on the used market after the Bitcoin fueled surge died down?

I bought a 2nd hand R9 290 for $215-$225 is my recollection back a few years ago (I was running 2 x crossfire), if you are lucky they can still be had for that on ebay, but most are selling for more. They are pretty good at Ethereum mining, but not as efficient... but the coin price is so high they are still really profitable, until the coin price plummets.

just brew it! wrote:

Voldenuit wrote:

To maximize production/day, you set power target below 100%.

That's pretty counter-intuitive. How is that even possible? Does it prevent thermal throttling?

OK, my bad, turns out I was slightly off about what I remembered from their tests.

Legitreviews found that the best performance came from overclocking the RAM and keeping power target at 100%. However, they also found that reducing the power target to 60-70% kept the hashrate marginally the same, but significantly improved power consumption, heat and noise.

http://www.legitreviews.com/geforce-gtx-1070-ethereum-mining-small-tweaks-great-hashrate-low-power_195451
http://www.legitreviews.com/silent-ethereum-mining-evga-geforce-gtx-1060-22-mhs_195529

I guess if I were mining, I'd set my power target around 70% (since I don't want to fry my card), but there's no guarantee that miners would have the same priorities.