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Comment by ramshanker | Hacker News Reader

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ramshanker

My favourite side effect is the Graphics Card prices coming back to realities.

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Prices are gonna be dirt cheap after Ethereum switches to proof of stake in September

Hasn't that been promised and delayed dozens of times already? Do you think it will ever really happen?

it will happen by september, testnets already merged and merging

In recent years I have not seen it scheduled then delayed, only there was a long roadmap where progress was slow but ongoing, development is very transparent. And now that it’s ready and that the merge already happened in testnets it really looks like FUD to repeat that like we were in 2018.

Yea they've already completed it on 1 of the 3 testnets and it went well. Other two in the next two months then mainnet deployment probably September.

I’d still wait if I were you.

That’s a red hot used market that Lovelace still needs to sell into. The drops aren’t done yet.

Are used graphics cards worth buying or does bitcoin mining cause significant wear and damage to them?

Bitcoin mining is done with ASICs, not GPUs afaik. It's other currencies like Ethereum that use GPUs. I don't know what the extent of damage is though.

Ethereum is down about 80% from their all-time-high and 74% from the start of 2022. It's a massacre for the whole scene.

Some of us are waiting for the FPGA rigs to start to flood the market so we can do other stuff with them ..... the lower BTC goes the better

I did like the comment someone made on twitter the Elon's raving causing crypto to crash had done more for the planet than all the teslas ....

A few different people have done tests to verify whether GPUs used for eth mining took any damage from doing so, and haven't managed to find any evidence that it damages the card more than regular use. Running cards under severe load nonstop for years could potentially shorten their lifespan by a tiny bit due to electromigration or wear out the fans, but that's about it.

Of course, any used GPU could be defective, so you need to be careful buying one no matter what.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKqVvXTanzI

https://youtu.be/3WWfj7RF_z8?t=381

No. Properly maintained card in a mining rig is usually in a better condition than the same card that has been used for gaming, simply because it was less often thermally stressed.

Are there still people using graphics card for crypto? I thought specialized chips had made them noncompetitive years ago.

You’re right about Bitcoin mining, but high-end gaming cards are still favored for Ethereum mining, which is why any card capable of handling it (more than 4-6 GB RAM) has been ridiculously expensive, even old cards.

Gaming — which fuels the sedentary and obesity epidemic. Maybe crypto is useful after all?

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