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Wow ..Zotac... Wonder if they offer 6 yr warranty if you purchase 100+ units

Soldato
Joined
24 Sep 2013
Posts
2,890
Location
Exmouth, Devon
Mining makes money, which is useful and productive. Gaming is simply kids wasting their time and money away, while producing nothing.

Might as well complain about investment bankers using computers, when gamers could be making use of them instead! :p


Ever heard of 'fun'? :D Wasting time having fun? WHat you got your PC for? Oddly people find benchmarking 'fun'.

Mining doesnt produce anything other than something that exists only digitally that people swap for real money. So it doesnt produce money, it produces something that criminals have preferred that doesn't make up p[art of the FIAT money system and others have decided to invest in it further. The fact that crypto mining is designed to take forever more processing and electricity to produce a 'coin' is basically a pyramid scheme. In early make the most. I think the criminality side of crypto currency also gives it value too. It's just a shame it takes so much energy from calculation to produce something that only exists in a digital form. I see your arguement though.
 
Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2020
Posts
113
I don't necessarily see mining as a waste of time/resources myself. It's just using power to validate transactions, and getting paid for it, nothing else. The question about if these transactions are useful at all, or not, is a complete different story.

Makes me wonder if, indeed, the cryptocurrencies can be adopted as the normal way of payment, as their followers claim... when you think about it, we just need to look at the ammount of trouble mining is causing at the moment, not only in terms of computing power, stock issues etc, but also on the ammount of energy used etc... and people is only buying to speculate now, they are not even being used to pay for anything, which was supossed to be their final purpose! what would happen if we, all, switch from FIAT to cryptocurencies? I don't think we could validate all our transactions, as simply as that. And if this isn't possible, and they can't be used as the main currency in the future, or will be superseded by other cryptocurrencies later on, why are "we" mining at all now?

For me, it is just especulating, and therefore, a waste. And I think manufacturers are to blame as well.
 
Associate
Joined
10 Jul 2009
Posts
1,559
Location
London
Seeing how easy it is to pump up or down the value of e-coins, you simply cannot use it as a preplacement for normal currency. This is just too volatile. And then you have Elon start troll pumping some coin and you end up with money being created out of thin air :D
 
Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2020
Posts
113
Seeing how easy it is to pump up or down the value of e-coins, you simply cannot use it as a preplacement for normal currency. This is just too volatile. And then you have Elon start troll pumping some coin and you end up with money being created out of thin air :D

It isn't only about the volatility in prices... it's about we couldn't even validate all the transactions. Seems even my grandmother would be mining if she had a PC at the moment, the more people mine, the less profitable it is supossed to be... or that's the theory at least. The thing is, at the moment, the only transactions which need validation are these which are made to speculate... Picture yourself "investing" 1000 quid in cryptocurrencies today, your transaction is causing all this trouble really: GPU shortages, energy consumed... now, imagine that instead that only that transaction, all your family, and the people you know, need to do every single transaction this way: Hairdresser for your mom, petrol for the car, weekly shopping, a sandwich, a coke or pint at the pub, electricity bill due today... completely impossible to imagine.
 
Caporegime
Joined
24 Sep 2008
Posts
38,322
Location
Essex innit!
I agree with what you say. I guess GPU manufacturers know that the bubble for cryptocoins will burst so are cashing in on that bubble. The gaming bubble for lockdown, well I guess they've hedged their bets that gamers will still want these cards and wont want to buy ex mining cards. They'll be loads of cards for sale if the mining craze pops and they'll all say, 'never been mined'. Shame they cant put lifetime hours on gfx cards like they do monitors.

Which one you gonna get when normality returns?
Yea, ex mining cards I would avoid. I appreciate that the lifespan should be good but I wouldn't want something that has been going 24/7 personally. Also, a mileage would be great, that way you at least have a rough idea what the card has been running for.

As for a new GPU, I am holding out til the next gen, unless a deal comes up that I can't say no to but doubt it. Maybe I will look at the 3080Ti and see what is what but the 3080 at least would suit me.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Feb 2021
Posts
206
Mining cards actually has better life than gaming cards. Most of the chip damage is actually due to thermal shock than electron wear.

thermal shock causes breaks at the contacts and solder points.

giving it is on all the time at low clock rates there are no temp shocks and they actually last longer.

But in reality the mining dies can be binned to run at lower clock rates, so if nvidia decides to release cards that could not reach acceptable clock threshold at lower price it should help with stocks somewhat
 
Associate
Joined
29 Sep 2014
Posts
1,696
Location
Caithness , Wick
Mining makes money, which is useful and productive. Gaming is simply kids wasting their time and money away, while producing nothing.

Might as well complain about investment bankers using computers, when gamers could be making use of them instead! :p

The other flip side of the gaming argument is power. Gamers gpus on avg do not sit at 100% usage for the lifetime , games if cpu heavy often leave the gpu under utilised , the life time is generally exponentially longer , the power usage exponentially lower and the waste exponentially lower. The cards landing in gamers hands is always the most ecological.
 
Associate
Joined
29 Sep 2014
Posts
1,696
Location
Caithness , Wick
Yea, ex mining cards I would avoid. I appreciate that the lifespan should be good but I wouldn't want something that has been going 24/7 personally. Also, a mileage would be great, that way you at least have a rough idea what the card has been running for.

As for a new GPU, I am holding out til the next gen, unless a deal comes up that I can't say no to but doubt it. Maybe I will look at the 3080Ti and see what is what but the 3080 at least would suit me.

Be a good idea for a usage meter, SSDs have an hour on counter. Even that would be a good feature likely is already implemented at firmware level for RMA?
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2013
Posts
12,300
You might call it wasting their time, but gaming helps with my mental health issues, my psychologist even recommends I take time out to game! It's a form of therapy for me.
There are arguably more productive therapies, I'm sure... like cross-portfolio investments and Blockchain Hash Rate enhancement incentives!
However, in your case it is arguably workforce asset maintenance and thus an essential Operational Expenditure. ;)

Ever heard of 'fun'? :D Wasting time having fun?
Fun is fun, but does not put bread on the table....

WHat you got your PC for? Oddly people find benchmarking 'fun'.
Yeah, because performance efficiency reviews are effective productivity exercises in the process of making money.

Mining doesnt produce anything other than something that exists only digitally that people swap for real money.
So it makes money.
How much money does playing your games make you? Clearly not enough, else everyone would be doing it.

I see your arguement though.
Not actually my arguments, I'm merely espousing Lucifer.

The other flip side of the gaming argument is power. Gamers gpus on avg do not sit at 100% usage for the lifetime , games if cpu heavy often leave the gpu under utilised , the life time is generally exponentially longer , the power usage exponentially lower and the waste exponentially lower. The cards landing in gamers hands is always the most ecological.
Mining uses X amount of power to produce Y amount of money, with most accounts showing how they make enough that the rigs pay for themselves within two years, and everything thereafter is pure profit.
Gaming uses X amount of power, with no financial return, and in fact often ends up enabling the further spending of Y money in the form of DLC, cosmetic enhancements, loot crates and other in-app purchases.

TLDR:
Gaming = spend money to use power to spend even more money.
Mining = Spend money to use power to make money.
 

ljt

ljt

Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2002
Posts
4,540
Location
West Midlands, UK
Equally, not all of us are obsessed with making every last penny we can, it just doesn't interest me. It's the reason I don't do things like overtime at work, I'd rather spend that time for myself.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
1 Dec 2015
Posts
18,514
vendors aren't walking the best line.....

they could easily create a non display connection card, like they have done in the past for AMD . this will gain them cash selling direct to miners instead of resellers gain the profits, and when the mining crashes , avoid 2nd hand markets being swamped and making it hard for them to shift stock. Dropping sale price to miners (still selling at a profit to them) compared to retail consumer cards would least get miners to target these cards first .
 
Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2020
Posts
113
vendors aren't walking the best line.....

they could easily create a non display connection card, like they have done in the past for AMD . this will gain them cash selling direct to miners instead of resellers gain the profits, and when the mining crashes , avoid 2nd hand markets being swamped and making it hard for them to shift stock. Dropping sale price to miners (still selling at a profit to them) compared to retail consumer cards would least get miners to target these cards first .

I don't think anyone would be buying these cards, not even miners... they would just buy the normal ones instead, despite higher prices, as they would be able to sell them afterwards to gamers, as it happened in the past.
 
Soldato
Joined
31 Dec 2007
Posts
13,616
Location
The TARDIS, Wakefield, UK
TLDR:
Gaming = spend money to use power to spend even more money.
Mining = Spend money to use power to make money.

I get the fact you do not like gaming that is your opinion but you have to realise that people like gaming but dont like the thought of mining pinching GPU's which is also an opinion.

I like PC gaming, I have no interest in mining. Trying to explain that gaming is a waste of time and costs money etc etc is just your personal opinion but your logic above is a bit flawed in just one word.

Esports.

:D

You could also look at it another way gaming creates a whole industry where it allowed people to put food on the table. Developers, producers, etc all make money out of gaming and arguably more than mining would. ;) or should I say better returns quicker for something they enjoy doing.

always two sides to an arguement.
 
Associate
Joined
10 Jul 2009
Posts
1,559
Location
London
I have 4 GPUs: Radeon 7, Vega64, 5700xt and 6900xt. Instead of "making" money and feeling good about it, like some are trying to argue about, I use these GPUs, and 2 CPUs for doing actual science. In our community, we are being robbed from doing more science with 3000 series Ampere cards, because someone wants to make money.
 
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