Gaming Performance Tested On 'Worn Out' RTX 2080 Ti Mining Card

[P4-630]

Will former mining cards have reduced gaming performance?

The potential to have reduced gaming performance from a used mining card has been a long-debated question.
YouTube channel Testing Games posted a new video to look into the matter.
Testing Games benchmarked a used RTX 2080 Ti that's been mining hard for 1.5 years, compared to a fresh new RTX 2080 Ti.

When graphics cards are subjected to long durations of mining time, this can cause accelerated wear and tear on the card's components and cooling system.
All these changes can cause some deterioration to the card's performance in the long run.

In the video, Testing Games ran an assortment of gaming benchmarks, including Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield V, and Forza Horizon 4.
On average, the used mining 2080 Ti was about 10% slower than the brand new 2080 Ti.
One outlier was Forza Horizon 4, which showed the mining card as 20% slower than the new card.

The main culprits for the reduced performance are GPU clock speed and temperatures.
On average, the heavily used RTX 2080 Ti mining card was 16C hotter than the brand new RTX 2080 Ti.
This caused over a 100MHz drop in boost frequency for the mining card, creating the performance losses.
This is totally normal as Nvidia's GPU Boost 4.0 algorithm (equipped on Turing and Ampere-based cards) is tuned to be very sensitive to GPU temperature.

Unfortunately, Testing Games didn't benchmark the used mining card with replacement thermal pads and a fresh new application of thermal paste.
Oh, and cleaning — dust buildup in the heat sink fins can also greatly hinder cooling performance.
Theoretically, this should be all that it takes to bring GPU temperatures back down to normal and gain all that performance back.

Even if you aren't a miner, this test shows why it's a great idea to dust out your computer every now and then,
and even apply a fresh coat of thermal paste to your CPU and GPU after several years.
Thermal paste is known to get dry (especially on laptops) after years of use, which will reduce its thermal performance.
Typically the hotter the CPU or GPU is, the faster the TIM will dry out. Besides, after three years, the warranty period on the card has likely expired so you've got nothing to lose.

This also applies to gamers buying used mining cards on eBay or from some other retailer.
If you find the used graphics card underperforms, all it might need is a bit of maintenance to bring the card back up to full speed.
Just be sure to factor in the costs (time and thermal pads) when bidding.

Gaming Performance Tested On 'Worn Out' RTX 2080 Ti Mining Card

Will former mining cards have reduced gaming performance?

www.tomshardware.com

Personally I never buy used electronics.

 

[X71200]

Personally I never buy used electronics.

..and you're usually doing it right, IMHO. You buy a used guitar worth some $2500, it all plays well, till you go about re-stringing it and find out how badly the tremolo arm touches the wood and the stuff gets the dirt and dust by consistently hitting on the wooden sides.

Now this obviously isn't going to apply to computer electronics, but it is what it is.

 

[Caring1]

Yes but are they still better than a 1060 6GB or an RX580 8GB?

 

[kayjay010101]

Now, if they could test a card that's been through normal wear and tear (4 hours of gaming every day?), that would be interesting.
Thermal expansion should actually degrade performance more than running 24/7 as the die expands and shrinks, IMO.

Brand new card VS. mining card after new TIM and thermal pads VS. gaming card equally as old as the mining card, with new TIM and thermal pads, and see if there's any noticeable degradation.

 

[_JP_]

Unfortunately, Testing Games didn't benchmark the used mining card with replacement thermal pads and a fresh new application of thermal paste.
Oh, and cleaning — dust buildup in the heat sink fins can also greatly hinder cooling performance.
Theoretically, this should be all that it takes to bring GPU temperatures back down to normal and gain all that performance back.

So do the testing on equal terms if you're trying to look for performance drops because of actual wear on the dies, chips and SMDs, and only then do a proper report it!! They didn't even proceed to confirm if it actually made a difference afterwards! That's how I know none of them went to College or actually graduated.
FFS, Tom's has long stopped being a place I go to becuase of BS and this amounts to not only that, but pure click-bait!
Seriously, running down to "fumus caveat emptor" is just bollocks!

EDIT: The only thing they found out is that hindering the cooling performance of a nVidia card with Boost Algorithm 4.0 actually drops the gaming performance...which is something one could have deduced from nVidia's slides when announcing the feature to begin with. *facepalm*

 

[nguyen]

Looks to me like the used mining card use TU102-300 non-A chip (non-OC edition) with lower boost clock, these non-OC edition can be bought at launch for around 1100usd. My Asus Turbo 2080 Ti also has the non-A chip and Asus did me dirty because the previous batch use TU102-300A chip
Used mining card won't exibit any performance degradation at stock clock, it will just crash if the VRM is worn out that it can't provide clean power to the GPU, forcing user to run at lower clocks.

 

[X71200]

The cards will likely still perform well, but I'd expect a lower lifespan. Then again, it all comes down on how long the GPUs have been used under mining conditions. Clearly a more abused card might not be able to overclock as much. We all know this, this is not news. Computer parts degrade depending on usage.

 

[windwhirl]

Now, if they could test a card that's been through normal wear and tear (

I think Linus Tech Tips once tested an old used GPU against another that was still in its box brand new. I think it was the Geforce 580?

 

[silentbogo]

That's a bit biased testing.
"Mining" card probably had no maintenance done, hence temps are peaking at 80C and card can't boost as high as "non-mining" one.
As an example, just yesterday I've received a EVGA GTX1070, so have some spare GPUs in a workshop.
The card itself was in a gaming rig, but with years those stupid black thermal pads started to leak and attract tons of dust-gunk. Something as simple as TIM replacement and a little IPA bath made it from loud 80+C hotbox into a chill gaming/mining card which barely breaks a sweat at 60C in full load. It also became possible to boost past 2GHz even with puny 75% power limit.
Another culprit of this story is the YT channel itself. This Andrey guy posts "benchmarks" by hundreds, and you never know whether these numbers came from an actual hardware test, or just got pulled out of his ass. You don't see anything except Afterburner overlay and a pinkie-swear that this is what it says it is. I can do the same "test" by crimping my RTX 2060S airflow, or playing around with fan profiles.
Smells like a case of bullshit for the sake of clicks/views, nothing more.

 

[X71200]

Testing Games is full of BS anyway. Literally all the videos are clickbait stuff, like 1060 VS 1080 SPOT DIFFERENCES ON THUMBNAIL.

Goes along with a bunch of other YT cringe channels like wolfgang and a few others I can't name on top of my head.

You also have COVID going around, which clearly kind of makes buying second hand things harder.

 

[Sithaer]

I have an ex miner/second hand '~6 months mining' RX 570 in my system since 2018 September, still gets the same benchmark results as any other RX 570 within mine's clock speeds.

Other than 1 fan making some noise when I start up the PC it has no issues, and thats not even cause of the mining past but more like a generic issue. 'also happened with my previous card that did not touch mining ever'

I do take care of my cards tho and my PC, nothing overheats and its fairly clean most of the time. 'Card was re pasted+thermal pads changed ~2 month ago just to be sure its all good'

 

[BSim500]

I don't see why it would perform worse unless the silicon degraded to where it couldn't reach the same overclock / boost, the question is will it last as long / have other issues, eg, undervolting the GPU core doesn't undervolt VRAM which is often heavily taxed and could show artifacts after a while. "Well I undervolt my mining GPU's and kiss each one and read them a bedtime story before tucking them in each night", etc, goes the former mining card sale pitch, and I'm sure some miners do that but many others don't. Those who don't pay for their own electricity (eg, at work or living with parents) often overclock. Most "casuals" don't know to undervolt. The 2nd hand buyer ultimately has zero way of telling if a card is mining vs non-mining or has been looked after vs thrashed to hell. Main reason I don't buy 2nd hand GPU's anymore.

 

[X71200]

The fans might go dud, though if there are fans available on Ebay for the GPU, that shouldn't be your biggest concern anyway.