Does mining really reduce the performance of the graphics card?

[anahone123]

When yes how can i know if my used graphics card was used for mining if i don't have contact to the seller? And when it was used for mining how can i know if the performance got decreased and by how much?

[TonyTosol]

dont know exactly about performance, but when it was used expensively long time you can find that cooling pads are wet. so there efficiency is degraded  and changing them will help a lot. It not very hard to change them, you just need to find good pads with high Heat transfer rate.

[Middcore]

If the GPU was used by a "professional" miner in a mining rig, those people usually knew how to take care of the cards to get the most out of their investment. Little Timmy who was trying to mine from the one GPU in his gaming PC in between rounds of Fortnite... eh, that's a little sketchier.

 

But really mining isn't any more harmful to the GPU than gaming for the same length of time. Biggest thing I might be concerned about is the fan(s) being worn out from spinning 24/7 compared to the fans on a card for gaming realistically only operating for a few hours at a time. 

 

While I think mining and crypocurrency sucks in a lot of ways, the whole "Don't buy ex-mining cards, they'll blow up" thing was largely fear-mongering and a way of irrationally demonizing miners.

[mariushm]

I don't know what you say about pads being wet.  The thermal pads are a bit "wet" by design, they have some oil inside them. Really old pads, overheated, will generally be more dry.

 

Mining usually means  - if they're used by a professional miner - reduced gpu chip frequencies, but overclocked or tweaked VRAM ...mining is often ram heavy, so having very low latency helps mine faster, but you risk memory errors from time to time (which you don't care, because it's really unlikely that you'll have a memory error exactly when calculating a winning hash that would give you some coin)

If the miner restores the firmware to original, you're unlikely to determine a card was mined or or not ... but there can be a tiny bit more "wear" on the ram chips if they were tweaked or got higher voltage to achieve better timings.

[Mick Naughty]

It will have as much of a performance effect as using it to game. 
A million what if scenarios. In most cases people are gonna be told that it wasn’t used for mining.

[starsmine]

No.

 

Using hardware does not decrease its performance. 

excessive Overvolting can decrease peak clock speed after half a dozon or more years, but that peak clock speed isnt something you can hit at stock boost voltages anyways. 
And no miners are overvolting their GPUS. 

[Mischka]

Mining cards were usually used undervolted, which actually increases their lifespan, and when it was a big mining farm, in much better conditions, than the most gaming PC cards, often with very good cooling soultions.

Also if the GPU just runs on max load for 24/7, it is "less damaging" or less chance for failures for the card, than going on/off and different loads/power spikes while gaming.

 

The only downsides are thermal paste and thermal pads. After months or years of being hot, they will dry out and won't work anymore at some point. 
Replacing the pads and paste costs ~ 30-40 USD, depending on the quality of the pads, and how many you'll need.

But after replacing, it is probalby better than new.

[anahone123]

Is it true that it just degrades the performance of the graphics card through higher temperatures? If this is the case and the temperatures are too high you can just put the fan speed higher and the problem is solved, right?

[deadlou666]

Google it, ltt did a video and I think GN. The miners often even undervolt the cards as its more profitable. It's the same performance but you'll prob want to change the thermal paste just to be safe. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

There shouldn't be any noticeable degradation by mining or using a cpu/gpu under high loads. Typically the device will be way out of date before this becomes a concern.

[Middcore]

It doesn't. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Performance degradation doesnt exist

Hardware degradation will be next to none especially with most miners undervolting their cards

 

If you wanna buy a miner gpu i highly encourage it since you get dirt cheap gpus due to all the baseless fearmongering

[WereCat]

There is no performance degradation.

 

There is physical degradation... but it heavily depends on the conditions the card was in. Same applies for cards used for gaming as well so it's not like mining will do extra "damage" to the card just because it was used for that purpose.

 

More often than not a mining card was heavily undervolted to save on power as power is a big cost for miners, that means the card was likely running a lot cooler But if there were many cards next to each other in a mining farm then the temps were likely not that much lower but still way within spec.

Usually mining puts heavy load on VRAM and not the GPU core itself so something like mining RTX 3090 is about the only card I can think of which may actually be a risky purchase simply from the fact that half of it's VRAM chips are on the backside with barely any cooling and these chips may have heavily degraded life span. By how much? Difficult to say, the card still may last you for years or it may break within a week.

 

edit:

 

I think it's also worth mentioning a thermal expansion and compression of materials and it's wear down effect. A mining card that constantly runs at 80 C for a year will likely be better off than a gaming card that keeps jumping between 30 C and 80 C many times a day for a year.

 

Only thing that is definitely degraded and affected are fan bearings so if you get a mining card the fans may be very loud or barely functioning and may need replacing.

 

 

A mining card that was used in bad conditions will likely be a risky purchase too, but usually miners take a good care of their cards... same goes for a gaming card in bad conditions though.

[OhYou_]

there is no difference between buying a mining card and buying a used gaming console.
both run flat out the entire time they are on
both get cleaned never their whole life
both are stuffed in less ideal thermal conditions their whole life
both have the potential to be knocked around a bit and mishandled

if you are comfortable buying a used console, you should feel fine buying a mining card and now know the usual of going in it.

The only issue with cards used for mining though is often they have a custom bios flashed on it, so you will want to update the vbios if it performs different in direct comparable benchmarks.

[WereCat]

5 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

The only issue with cards used for mining though is often they have a custom bios flashed on it, so you will want to update the vbios if it performs different in direct comparable benchmarks.

That is a good point. It's good to ask beforehand if the card has default or mining BIOS and if the seller can flash the original BIOS back before selling.

[jaslion]

Not.

 

What does often happen is the thermal paste is quite dried up and needs replacement or it's a bit dusty.

 

Its quite easy to tell if a gpu was used in a crappy envirome t for a good while as moisture and air polutants leave marks

[Kilrah]

Threads merged, please don't repost topics.

[anahone123]

Thank you for the answers

[SorryBella]

On 8/17/2023 at 3:24 AM, Middcore said:

While I think mining and crypocurrency sucks in a lot of ways, the whole "Don't buy ex-mining cards, they'll blow up" thing was largely fear-mongering and a way of irrationally demonizing miners.

The only true case I've seen of this is in the case of 5700XT die cracking due to various abuse. But again, these are amateur grifter miners that doesn't do their due diligence, most miner cards out there are fine to buy and performance degradation doesn't really exists on them.