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Comment by km3k | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. I'm sticking with my GTX 960 that I got for under $200 new three years ago. I haven't seen anything with a better performance per dollar ratio than I got at that time. Anything I buy would be a downgrade by that metric.

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What? You can get GTX 1070's for $200-$250 right now off ebay. Admittedly used, but crypto mining doesn't harm a card that much. If you want new, GTX 1060s are going for under $200$.

Then again, AMD's making pretty bold claims about their pricing for next year, so you could hang on.

Is that really a good idea? A miner's incentive is to overclock the cards and run them as hard as they can before dumping the nearly fried hardware on some unsuspecting sucker. No way to check whether they've been run in reasonable temperature and voltage ranges, and no warranty either. That seems like a gamble, but I suppose that's why they're cheaper.

Definitely planning to see what AMD has coming. I'd like to have the Mac + eGPU option open when my Wintendo kicks the bucket, and AMD are the only ones supporting that right now.

Actually most miners have tried to get the best possible hash per kilowatt ratio out of their cards, which makes sense given that electricity cost is basically the main cost of their business. And the best ratio isn't achieved by overclocking and -volting, but by undervolting and underclocking.

Very constant workload, way below peak capacity - I bet that crypto usage does put much less wear and tear on the chips than heavy gaming use.

Even so, it may be a good idea to take the heatsink off a former GPU mining card, and clean and replace the thermal paste.

Good point, I'm not used to thinking about GPU purchases in terms of electricity cost

Where are you finding new 1060s for under 200?

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#c=373&sort=pri...

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=+GTX+1060&_sa...

Those look to all be used 3gb cards

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