Has any actual controlled, empirical testing been conducted on former mining cards to verify that they've undergone permanent and perceivable degradation in performance? Such an experiment would be tremendously valuable to the PC DIY community. I'm personally looking to upgrade my 5700xt, probably to a 6800XT or even a 6900XT if there's a really good bargain to be had. I believe RDNA2 GPUs were not as popular as the RTX 3000 series for mining, and I'm willing to buy 2nd hand to get a good deal, but I'd like to avoid any potential issues...as anyone here ever actually used/purchased a former mining card? What was the experience?
I successfully sold all 24 of my mining cards on ebay back in March, having also posted pictures of the neat and clean rigs they were in, offered returns window of 14 days in case they weren't happy, and listed them as "mining BIOS" or "original factory BIOS". I stated the typical CPU & VRAM temperatures, the static fan speed I used for the 18 months they were mining, and the voltage/clocks of the undervolt.
I made good money, the cards were a bargain, and not one person has come back to me yet with a single question. I can't speak for all miners, but part of my assumption when buying cards for mining was to treat them well so that I didn't lose a card or waste profits on having to repad and repaste as a result of pushing them to the limits. Perhaps I could have earned 5% more ETH by doing that, but then I wouldn't have had 24 cards in great condition to sell on later...
My early mining test was the 5700XT I bought for myself and it is still working fine as a normal desktop GPU despite having been mining 24/7 for about 9 months during the pandemic. As long as they're not abused by idiots they should be fine and the constant unchanging load is very low-stress on the card indeed. All you really have to worry about is fan bearings because they'll have had a harder life than a desktop GPU which is probably turned off for 70% of the time.
you so funny Doctor jones, it's better than a R4 with the solid front panel and a few vets around it. I have 4x120mm sucking air in, funny choker.
