# ECONOMICS, VIDEO CARDS & MINING



## Hardcore Games (Jan 10, 2021)

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I built a spreadsheet that draws data from several workbooks I have stored in the cloud.  I studied economics at university so I have a good grip on capital assets and earning potential. The feature creature at university was a semiconductor company which is very capital intense and how much can it earn to justify the cost? TSMC is as good of a real example as any.

I live in Canada so I converted earnings from USD to CAD for calculating capital costs and amortization. I converted prices for assets to compare today vs 3 years ago before the downturn in asset prices.

I used nicehash which has several algorithms to estimate the earnings of a given card. I then discussed it with others who mine cards all the time and they appreciated by research which they did not consider. Nicehash uses different algorithms for different cards which was eye opening as well. I ignored this focusing on how much a card could earn for 24 hours of operation.

After reading my article, feel free to ask any questions.


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## hat (Jan 11, 2021)

A few points: the Power column is entirely flawed. Nobody is running these cards at stock TDP. Personally I have 2 GTX1070s, which are 150w cards. At 80% power target, this becomes 120w. Second, I'm not sure that miners are paying these jacked up prices for a card or two here and there. The serious miners are getting bulk shipments. A small hobbyist miner like me with 2 cards... probably isn't too excited about the idea of paying current prices for cards. I had a look and even the old RX480/580 cards are $400 and higher now...


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## xkm1948 (Jan 11, 2021)

hat said:


> A few points: the Power column is entirely flawed. Nobody is running these cards at stock TDP. Personally I have 2 GTX1070s, which are 150w cards. At 80% power target, this becomes 120w. Second, I'm not sure that miners are paying these jacked up prices for a card or two here and there. The serious miners are getting bulk shipments. A small hobbyist miner like me with 2 cards... probably isn't too excited about the idea of paying current prices for cards. I had a look and even the old RX480/580 cards are $400 and higher now...



Where are you seeing these prices? eBay seems to be all over the place.


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## Hardcore Games (Jan 11, 2021)

I paid CAD $99 for a Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 8GB and played games galore on the card, the previous owner was a miner. The card never even gets warm, testing it with Firmark and mining showed the card was very cool even with the fan at 15% power,


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## freeagent (Jan 11, 2021)

I guess a new GPU won’t be in the cards for 2021.. If my 980 dies at least I have a 580 uke:


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## Hardcore Games (Jan 11, 2021)

I was looking at eBay for various card prices to get a handle for where the market is now for hardware. 

Gamers are screwed for better cards as the feeding frenzy of mining has usurped gaming.

MSRP for RX 5000 cards being what they are, i was watching a new XFX RX 5700 being auctioned off starting at 99 cents, its now USD $455 which is more than price rot


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## hat (Jan 11, 2021)

xkm1948 said:


> Where are you seeing these prices? eBay seems to be all over the place.


Newegg, eBay prices for RX580 seem to be around $300ish


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## Hardcore Games (Jan 12, 2021)

so much for the MSRP

RTX 300 cards https://www.newegg.ca/p/pl?N=100007708 601357282&Order=1&PageSize=96

RX 6000 cards https://www.newegg.ca/p/pl?N=100007708 601359511&PageSize=96

RX 6000 cards seem to come up well below RTX cards for mining so it looks like games are going to be able to get Radeon cards in 2021 after all.


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