News Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card?

[Admin]

Just because a card was mining 24/7 doesn't mean it's about to die, but you should still approach with caution.

Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card? : Read more

 

[jkflipflop98]

You'd have to be either extremely desperate or just flat-out ignorant to buy a 2nd hand GPU these days.

It's like buying a used rental car or marrying a prostitute. You're getting it after it's been used and abused to the max for years. Not what you want for your daily driver.

 

[VforV]

You'd have to be either extremely desperate or just flat-out ignorant to buy a 2nd hand GPU these days.

It's like buying a used rental car or marrying a prostitute. You're getting it after it's been used and abused to the max for years. Not what you want for your daily driver.

In general I agree with your sentiment, but talking exclusively about Ampere and RDNA2, your worst case it almost 1 year for the 3080 (which incidentally is also the worst to buy 2nd had since it's the most used card in mining), but all the others cannot have been abused for years since they are less than a year old...

So depending on when those cards launched and when they were bought, you can buy a card that is only a few months old.

Also about the abused part, it depends how trustworthy and transparent the seller is. If you manage to find a GPU used for mining that is undervolted (power limited) and was run cool, it could be in better shape than a similar one used only in gaming with OC.

I can only give you my example. Because I could not buy a new GPU at MSRP since 7 months ago, I also started mining with my GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 cards to make up for the deficit (a little) of these insane prices. These cards are not top earners so I made only $400 in 4 months because I also did not start early.

But both my GPUs are running only 16/24 hours / day and only at 50% (GTX 1060) and 55% (GTX 1080) power - limited. I did this because I'm a casual miner (forced by circumstances, I still would prefer if the cryto would crash to 0) and because I don't want to abuse my GPUs so much that they would fail and I would be left with none...

So you see my GPUs used for mining are actually at 50% (or less) compared to gaming where I used them with OC (so over 100% power).

So do you think they are abused more or less than those used for gaming only?

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

"Outside of those aspects, we don't have any major concerns with buying an AMD or Nvidia card. Again, it goes back to performance and price as the main considerations. If you find a card that delivers the performance you want at an acceptable price, the GPU brand isn't usually a critical factor."

What about the fact that All AMD cards before Navi (RX 500 series and earlier) are in legacy support status? You (TomsHardware) has still yet to make a point of this, a fact some to many people may not be aware of, and these cards are still selling for up to and in excess of $300. A hefty investment for a card which may have issues playing some games due to driver bugs which may never be fixed, or security holes which may also never be fixed.

 

[redkachina]

Why not? 1.5 years ago I bought used mining RX580 for $90 and it is still working fine until today, It has been replaced by RTX3060ti for my gaming usage, after that I installed the RX580 in my HTPC, and set it to mine on NH 24/7 ever since.

 

[damric]

Most miners tune for efficiency. The problem a lot of 2nd hand buys have are dealing with garbage BIOS flashes, not so much wear and tear.

Cards running 24/7 365 Folding at Home and other such compute workloads are the ones that really get ragged out.

The absolute worst killer of cards is a gamer who smokes cigarettes at their desk though.

For least tortured, look for medical grade workstation cards such as FirePro MXRT then tune them for gaming.

 

[octavecode]

Miners ruined the gpu market for the rest of us, so miners should take their mining cards to the grave.
Even if "some" of those cards are still good

 

[avg9956]

Agreed with the above ^
Also if you're thinking of buying a graphics card, even if it is "Brand new" - be careful. You may want to check if the firmware has been flashed to a mining firmware. These mining firmware were flashed specifically so that the card can output a higher hash rate. You can check this via using the GPU_Z program from Techpower up. If it is indeed flashed into a mining firmware and you were deceived to buy it in the condition that it was "new", just return it to the vendor and ask for full refund.


Flashing GPU firmware, if unsuccessful, can brick your card.
Personally I'd only buy GPUs right now below MSRP or heck, maybe just wait for the next RTX series GPUs.

Be very paranoid with the GPUs that you choose to buy (most of them probably came from China - as China is a big player in crypto, distributors might try to find a sneaky way in to sell to retailers under the guise of "brand new GPUs").

With China banning cryptocurrency, sellers there are even forced to sell below MSRP, which is good for us and perhaps retribution for the long periods of not being able to buy a GPU.
I wouldn't be surprised to those that straight up buy a GPU right but have their card break way now without knowing these risks. Its even harder to tell exactly how long has a GPU been powered on or how much it was abused unlike drives where you can see their power on time with software.

The opportunity to buy the new RTX 30 series GPUs has forever been tainted due to the crypto boom, it may be better as well to just wait it out until a new fresh line of GPUs comes out.

 

[deesider]

It's like buying a used rental car or marrying a prostitute. You're getting it after it's been used and abused to the max for years. Not what you want for your daily driver.

Woah, steady on buddy. Prostitutes are still people and have the same right to love and respect as anyone else.

Contrary to popular Incel dogma, sex doesn't actually wear out a vagina, just like thinking doesn't wear out your brain.

 

[namad7]

@TheAuthor's comment about cards that are only a year old still having a warranty. Unauthorized resale of a computer part usually voids the original manufacturer's warranty nowadays. A decade ago or more it didn't. However these unauthorized resale businesses have exploded to the point that most manufacturer's now care about the issue.

Even unopened products sold on amazon by 3rd party resellers can void original manufacturer's warranties, let alone ebay purchases of used products.

 

[peachpuff]

Just buy it!

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

"Outside of those aspects, we don't have any major concerns with buying an AMD or Nvidia card. Again, it goes back to performance and price as the main considerations. If you find a card that delivers the performance you want at an acceptable price, the GPU brand isn't usually a critical factor."

What about the fact that All AMD cards before Navi (RX 500 series and earlier) are in legacy support status? You (TomsHardware) has still yet to make a point of this, a fact some to many people may not be aware of, and these cards are still selling for up to and in excess of $300. A hefty investment for a card which may have issues playing some games due to driver bugs which may never be fixed, or security holes which may also never be fixed.

Under the section "Graphics Card Age Matters":

Also, if you're digging deep in the bargain bins, do note that AMD has now officially retired all R9 300-series and earlier GPUs, along with the R9 Fury / Nano cards. Only RX series cards still have active driver support. Nvidia has also retired driver support for GTX 500-series and earlier GPUs, and it announced that it will retire Kepler support (GTX 600- and 700-series GPUs) later this year. It probably won't matter too much, at least in the short term. But Windows 11 and future games may not run on older cards. If you want to play the latest releases, you'll want at least an RX 400-series AMD GPU or a GTX 900-series Nvidia GPU.

That even has links to the articles on Tom's Hardware where we mention the fact that AMD has discontinued R9 and earlier driver support, and Nvidia plans to do the same for Kepler and earlier. It helps to read and search, but... well, it's the internet, so I expect as much.

 

[techngro]

Whatever you decide, don't do what I did.

In early 2020, I bought a used GTX 1070 on Ebay. When it arrived, I took it apart, cleaned it up, applied new thermal paste, etc. Then I stress tested it three or four different ways. Everything seemed good. When school ended, I decided it was time to get back to gaming, so I fired up Assassin's Creed Origins. After about 10-15 minutes of playing, I started getting errors. I thought maybe it was the game. I tried Divinity Original Sin II. More errors. I searched online and everything pointed to either a driver issue or the card crapping out on me. I reinstalled the drivers, but no luck. I was pissed because it was past the return date and prices had jumped up considerably since I bought it. There was no way to get a new one.

I still had my old R9 280x, so I bit the bullet and switched to that and used that until last month, when I decided to do a clean install of Windows for my PC. It was then that I started thinking about the 1070 again and realized that perhaps the issue was that, when I first got the card, I simply uninstalled the AMD drivers and then swapped the cards and then installed the NVIDIA drivers. Perhaps that had caused some internal conflict. Well, during the clean install, I put the 1070 back in and didn't even bother installing any specific drivers. And it has been running like a champ ever since. I've played games without any issues.

tl;dr: Don't swap from AMD to NVIDIA as if you're swapping hard drives.

 

[VforV]

Woah, steady on buddy. Prostitutes are still people and have the same right to love and respect as anyone else.

Contrary to popular Incel dogma, sex doesn't actually wear out a vagina, just like thinking doesn't wear out your brain.

Love yes, respect, not so much... They lost that the moment they started their line of "work".

Also, they are not what most common sense people call "wife material".

Actually both too much thinking and sex (to the extreme) can wear out a person. You can go mad from too much thinking (see a lot of the so called "big/great thinkers that went insane), as for sex, how clueless can you be and not know all the negative side effects of doing it too much, too often, with countless strangers and all the other stuff they do, in their profession? Really? 🙄

The wear is there and can be major, just not the way you would expect. Do some research, you might learn something.

 

[escksu]

The only reason for buying 2nd hard hardware is because you cant afford a new one. Thats all.... Its a matter of $$$.

 

[escksu]

You'd have to be either extremely desperate or just flat-out ignorant to buy a 2nd hand GPU these days.

It's like buying a used rental car or marrying a prostitute. You're getting it after it's been used and abused to the max for years. Not what you want for your daily driver.

Your comments on prostitutes are really uncalled for. In case you don't know, prostitutes are still humans. They are not toys or items.

 

[DSzymborski]

Let's redirect this conversation to exclusively the merits or lack thereof of things related to technology rather than sociological debates about the sex industry.

 

[lumineZ]

There is no way in hell I will give my money to either a scalper or a miner.
So I will sitt here on the fence until the prices for a new card comes down. Heck I will even pay more for a new one than to buy one for less from a scalper that tryes to get some money back or a miner that wants the same. They both can sit and burn a hole in the wallet with the cards.

 

[herrwizo]

Their greed made almost impossible for average gamer to get a new card. Payback time. Will wait for next gen, new.

 

[DRagor]

It's like buying a used rental car

More like buying used rental car that had an highway crash.

Their greed made almost impossible for average gamer to get a new card. Payback time. Will wait for next gen, new.

Easier said then done when you sit on 8 ys old gtx 660

 

[ezst036]

I bought an AMD card (a polaris) used on Ebay and never had a problem with it because I use Steam on Linux. It turned out a long time later that the BIOS on the card had been flashed by the previous owner who used it for mining. Linux isn't going to complain about a crypto mining BIOS the way windows does - not what I have seen. Card still working great even now.

YMMV, one person's experience.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Miners ruined the gpu market for the rest of us, so miners should take their mining cards to the grave.
Even if "some" of those cards are still good

I agree. Don't buy their used crap. Make them eat the cost of 40+ RTX cards.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

I'm letting those used cards rot, and not buying new ones until prices stabilize, even if it means that I won't be gaming on PC anymore.

I'm sure that the industry losing sales of software as well as hardware would make them care about supply issues and abuse of purchases.

 

[Pollopesca]

I’ve got a large enough backlog of older games to catchup on. I’m in no rush. New GPU prices will come down in time. That and I’ve had enough GPUs fail over the years to value having MFG warranty coverage.

 

[avg9956]

Right now proof of work GPU miners are scrambling looking for other "potentially profitable" cryptocurrencies to mine other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. Possible candidates are Ethereum classic, ravencoin, etc. I don't think any other coin is suddenly going to jack up in price too quickly and It'll take a significant amount of time for all these coins to get to the level of success of ETH and BTC. Mining ETH is looking measly $1-2 only. If they decide to keep mining, they may possibly operate at a tight margin or a loss. Definitely miners are pushed against the wall right now.