- 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.
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(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.
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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.