Is the GTX 690 becoming relevant again?

[rjv101201]

As new gpu prices soar, will older Gpus that consume too much power for mining but still offer decent performance (600 series) become relevant again?

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, not really. GPU prices are only high due to mining creating a supply issue. New card architectures are slated for release sometime during the next few months so realistically we are likely to see prices dropping back to somewhat normal before long, hopefully.

Regardless, those older cards are just that, older. They are neither likely to become more relevant because of the issues with supply and demand nor are they capable enough to be worth much for gaming. For mining, who knows, or cares.

 

[jaslion]

As new gpu prices soar, will older Gpus that consume too much power for mining but still offer seven performance (600 series) become relevant again?

They are still old and weaker than the newer cards. They will just be a nice placeholder until the mining craze dies of and you can get an actuall good card again for a decent price. A 690 are 2 680's in sli so thats immediatly a turnoff since there are almost no games anymore that actually correctly work with sli (among those that support it and not have a lower than 30% performance boost). 90+% of the time the second 680 is going to just sit there consuming power so you are basically just running a gtx 680 instead of a 690 that is potentially slower due to the lesser cooler on the 690.

 

[Karadjgne]

A 690 is just fine for 1080p gaming, if you still have one or can get one at a fantastic price, but other than that it's not really worth hunting one down for a possible future purchase.

 

[Crossvxm]

I think this question isn't best suited for these forums as it leans more towards being a discussion of cryptocurrency and for the most part will generate opinions.

To answer your question, I do not believe so, at least not in the case of the GTX 690. I've read in many places that cards with 2GB of VRAM causes problems for mining. While the 690 is 4GB, it is actually 2GB of VRAM per GPU, and I remember reading somewhere that the 690 was causing issues because of this. Another thing to note is that the 690 has a pretty high faliure rate most likely due to the excessive heat generated inside of the card. I had one and even after replacing the thermal paste and pads with high quality replacements the card's temps were not much improved when using both GPUs. There are other cards that would be better options to target such as the 970 and 980 which hasn't had it's used price affected much by the cryptocurrency problem yet. There are some variants of the 680 and 780 that come in 4GB, but they're a bit rare and some sell it for ridiculous prices.