With an eye on a better sim/video-editing/CAD desktop, I wonder whether this whole "crypto winter" thing has improved markets for new and/or used video cards?
Anybody have any guidance or insight?
With an eye on a better sim/video-editing/CAD desktop, I wonder whether this whole "crypto winter" thing has improved markets for new and/or used video cards?
Anybody have any guidance or insight?
A friend who worked at Nvidia until just recently has concerns about buying used GPUs that have been used for mining due to the heat effects of running them WOT for extended periods. Crypto mining will void the warranty for this reason.
Another in the industry says that GeForce is spec'd for 8h/day, if you want 24h/day engineering you need the professional or datacenter range.
The #1 best seller on newegg for desktop graphics card seems to be the ASUS RTX 3070 Ti 8 GB for 700 clams.
The reduced demand "should" reduce the new price at some point if you don't want to mess with potentially well used, used ones. I hear used ones are already dropping in price, but it's going to be very hard to tell what they were used for.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I have owned a few former mining cards. Any miner who knows what they are doing is undervolting the GPU and running the fans at max in an open air setup. Fan failure is more of a risk than anything on the board failing, and you can replace the fans.
Both of the ones I owned (1070Ti and 1080Ti) are now with friends and still going strong years later.
With the crypto crash there are some really good deals out there, I would not be afraid of a card that was mined on for the right price.
Another in the industry says that GeForce is spec'd for 8h/day, if you want 24h/day engineering you need the professional or datacenter range.
Not sure what exactly you mean by this but lots of people buy RTX 3090s over the Quadro cards because they are 1/3 the price and still crush most workloads.
What I mean is that's the design duty cycle of the GeForce vs the professional/datacenter Nvidia cards.
I don't pretend to know anything about crypto mining, just passing along what my industry friends said when this exact conversation came up. Sounded like they wouldn't buy ex-mining cards.
I do not pretend to know anything about Crypto mining.. but why is it so video intensive?
In reply to mad_machine :
It's not video intensive per se, it's that video cards are good at doing the sort of math involved in mining crypto. I'm blanking but feel like they're good for a lot of sort of heavy number-crunching, like physics modeling, CFD...
In reply to Jesse Ransom :
That's basically it, mining requires a number of complex mathematical workloads to be run in parallel, which happens to be very similar to 3D graphics workloads. So powerful GPUs with a lot of VRAM are well-suited to mining.
There are actually GPUs out there with no video output and some features like CUDA trimmed specifically for mining workloads that don't use the other stuff, but you don't often see them on the secondhand market (most people buy the retail gaming GPUs because they can be used for more than just mining and thus hold value better).
FWIW, when buying and selling used computer parts, I've had mixed experiences with eBay, but only good experiences with the r/hardwareswap subreddit (on Reddit).
I have a GTX1060 6gb sitting on a shelf I'd part with if anyone is interested
Card prices are at or just below MSRP currently. It's a bit of a trap though, because the next generation of GPUs will be out in roughly 3 months. Unless the crypto market swings wildly back up in that time period, the current gen cards will be even cheaper.
In reply to calteg :
I'm so torn:
I've started thinking about a serious PC update as my current desktop is about seven years old. For a video card I'm looking pretty hard at the AMD RX 6600 XT. Right now they're starting out around $350 USD; $400 opens up more options / brands. They seem pretty comparable to the 3060 cards from Nvidia if not slightly faster in most gaming benchmarks. I start getting heartburn at the idea of spending much more for a video card. I'm probably going to watch what prices do for a while and purchase at the end of summer due to other things going on which are higher priority. If I can save a few bucks in the process, so much the better.
Thinking it's also time for a new CPU which drives me to a new motherboard and RAM as well.
For the CPU, assuming that you're going to use the desktop for about as long as you've used the current one, I think I'd wait for Ryzen 7000 to come to market and build around that - seeing how long AMD stuck to the AM4 platform gives me a good feeling about future longevity there. On the graphics card...I might also wait for new launches - that way you can make the decision between new hotness or getting an even better deal on the current stuff.
I keep getting excited about the return to normal-ish priced cards. But then I remember that there is nothing I play/want to play that my 1070 doesn't do great already.
I haven't bought a AAA game since early 2020 :(
I mined crypto for a while and I don't think any of my cards ever got above 60 degrees C. As pointofdeparture said, I undervolted the GPU and turned the fans up, which is the norm for mining. Since quitting mining a few months back, I've been using my RTX 2070 in my desktop computer and it works flawlessly. I'm using an older one, an R9 290, in a work computer so I can run 3 monitors. I think the only risk would be if someone mined on the card not knowing what they were doing, especially with a 30-series card. They run notoriously hot.
The market is definitely getting more friendly for buyers with crypto crashing. Kinda wish I had sold my cars earlier, I would have made more money!
You should be able to get an excellent card for $300.
In reply to infinitenexus :
What are you suggesting as a "excellent card" for ~$300 USD?
I'm also in the market for a complete system upgrade, but it seems that availability is still spotty at best unless you order a pre-built PC.
This might be helpful to some: List of video card benchmarks, value per dollar, etc.
szeis4cookie (Forum Supporter) said:For the CPU, assuming that you're going to use the desktop for about as long as you've used the current one, I think I'd wait for Ryzen 7000 to come to market and build around that - seeing how long AMD stuck to the AM4 platform gives me a good feeling about future longevity there. On the graphics card...I might also wait for new launches - that way you can make the decision between new hotness or getting an even better deal on the current stuff.
Personally I would hold off on Intel 12th gen or AMD Ryzen 7000. DDR5 memory is extremely hard to get and there are likely to be other teething issues with the major leaps both companies are making this generation. Basically, I would wait for Intel 13th gen or Ryzen 9000 if you want to be on the bleeding edge.
You can build a hell of a cheap PC right now with a Ryzen 5600x, B550 mobo and 32GB of reasonably fast DDR4. Step up to a 5800x or a 5900x if you know you do CPU-intensive tasks that benefit from more cores, but the 5600x is fine for most people.
I'm a big AMD CPU fan but it's hard to recommend their GPUs over Nvidia, Nvidia's DLSS feature is a game-changer and AMD just doesn't have anything that can really compete with it yet.
FWIW, my recommended progression through the Nvidia GPU stack is RTX 2060 (budget), RTX 3060Ti (mid-range), RTX 3080 (high end).
In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :
A RTX 2060 is $319.99 and outperforms the new RTX 3050 which is the same price.
pres589 (djronnebaum) said:In reply to infinitenexus :
What are you suggesting as a "excellent card" for ~$300 USD?
RTX 2060, RTX 2070, both fantastic cards. Even an RTX 3060 can be had below $400. Checking eBay, you can get an RX 580 for really cheap now as well.
I think people should always check and see how much horsepower they actually need before buying a card instead of just jumping to the latest and greatest. Personally, I run an RTX 2070 and it can run Cyberpunk 2077 on high/very high graphics settings with ray tracing all day long. It's coupled with a 3rd gen i5 processor that I bought for $50 from eBay and stuffed into an old Dell 3010. 16gb of RAM that I got from an old server we were throwing away here at work. It's already an old (many would say outdated) setup, but it'll last me for many more years.
Yeah, I'm wondering if just a step up to an RX 6600 XT or 3060 would be enough to keep me happy for a while. Right now I've got an AMD R8 280, mid-spec 3rd gen i5, 16gb of ram and it's not a bad machine but that video card especially isn't so impressive these days and will be worse after a monitor upgrade to something providing 4k resolution. Spending $400 on a video card would be a lot nicer than spending $800 on the same card + the other things that come with a CPU upgrade.
In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :
Do you mean an R9 280? That was a decent card for back in the day but as you said, it's not very impressive these days. Even an RTX 2060 would be a world of difference for you. Less power draw, too.
In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :
The one thing that you have to keep in mind is that once you get past 2-3 generations behind the current stuff, an old CPU can heavily bottleneck your graphics card performance.
Obviously it depends a little bit on the games you are playing or your production workloads, but for a heavy game like Cyberpunk 2077, and assuming a modern GPU like a RTX 3060, a Core i5 4th gen will have a 40% lower frame rate vs a Core i5 10th gen.
Intel spent a long time putzing with near-meaningless iterations of the same architecture and they were really dragged in the PC community for it, IIRC they started making real leaps again with the 8th gen and that is about the oldest generation you want to be on to get full performance out of a modern GPU.
I've been out of hobby-ist computers for a handful of years, used to build my own. Last 5-10 years I've just bought whatever Dell was on sale at Microcenter...
But they replaced my desktop at work with a newer i7 with an SSD drive and man it's so much faster. Makes me want to replace my 5 year old desktop at home with something faster/shinier that includes an SSD but I mostly do Photoshop and light video editing. Maybe more video with a more capable system.
Now I'm wondering about new systems and add-on video cards vs integrated. I'd budget ~$1k for the tower if I knew what to get. And I hadn't paid attention to video card craziness until now of course.
In reply to infinitenexus :
Yes, it's an R9 280, you're correct. And yes, I threw quite a bit of power supply at this thing when I put it together.
Either a 3060 or a 6600 XT seem like great upgrades and I can pocket almost $400 by not touching anything else. Probably the way I'll go and if I want to upgrade the other stuff, do it a year from now.
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