Does this look like an ex-mining card to you ?

https://allegrolokalnie.pl/oferta/powercolor-radeon-6800-fighter-jak-nowa-gwarancja

Can you tell by the picture ? Cause the seller says no, but the local service shop I contacted say they can tell it is by the picture (something particular about the dust on the fans) and they'll need to repaste it and change the pads. Looks like normal dust to me, but I have no experience with ex-mining cards.

 

I'd be very curious how that local shop could tell it's a mining card judging by some dust on the outside.

 

no idea, I think some dust on the inside of the blades is normal. can't see anything else, that's why I'm asking. Contacted them cause in case the card has some mining-related damage on the vram/pcb, I'll have a better chance of protesting my case for a refund with a written document from a pc repair shop. The card is supposedly lightly used and never used for minining according the seller.

 

I dont see that much dust in the fins. Maybe somewhat dusty but that bad. You will see tommorow how it looks in person then tell us.

 

It doesn't matter if the card has been used for mining. Miners are more likely than your average gamer to undervolt for better efficiency, and modern GPUs have loads of feedback mechanisms to stay in a safe operating range. A highly variable gaming load could be much more straining to a GPU than a fixed constant load, especially one done only for a relatively short amount of time (months).

 

it f***s up the memory chips though.

He sent it on Saturday, not Friday as promised, so might take till Tuesday.

I'll check the temps, if they're similar to HUB's review, then I'll not bother taking it to the service place or even taking the card apart. Prolly just want an excuse to replace the paste and pads for cheap and tell me the old ones were going bad then bill me +20eur.

 

Is there any concrete evidence of that? As far as I know, RAM (VRAM in this case) doesn't wear easily.

 

But that constant load is on 24/7, for months, so def shortens the lifespan of the card.

With a normal desktop / gaming load the GPU gets to downclock and idle or is powered off even at times.

 

the card will be here today. yay. a now toy
the repair shop says they can tell it's ex-mining by how the dust is "hard to remove", dunno how if the card is in shipping atm.

as far as drivers, is 23.3.2 good or should I dl an older one ? dual 1440p high refresh setup.
already seeing improvements, amd's dviers download at 10x the speed of nvidia. low demand has its good sides

 

Install newesr drivers. First issue with you setup will be memory being stuck at max clocks. Its a an issue with a dual monitor setup for ages.

 

beautiful, sturdy, simple looking, all-black card. no issues with install. energy efficient even in desktop/browser use. will bench AC:O soon, Valhalla got a 13G update so that will come later. Almost no dust on blades, mine looks way worse and I cleaned it a month ago. Like the control center a lot. If this works well, best 400e I spent on a gpu.

 

22% faster in Odyssey, 90 fps using just 150w. Prolly held back by the cpu, but I won't complaing about 90fps in a TPP game.

 

More prominent on high refresh rate systems but it often occurs with monitor manufacturers setting their vertical blanking values stored in their EDID too aggressively - increasing this value did the trick for me.

 

idk blaming the monitor manufacturers when i had an nvidia card it was not an issue. Even with this ultra wide im currently using my memory clocks are at max while with 3070 was fine.

AMD drivers...

 

@cucaulay malkin how are the core and hotspot temps?

 

I'm aware that it occurs with Nvidia users too just not as frequently. It's no doubt due to Nvidia drivers having way more profiles for the various monitors in existence to solve this issue.

 

core around 60, hotspot around 87-88 max
2500MHz oc at 220W is awesome.
the cooler is unbelievalby quiet, can barely hear it even at 80%.
sadly, w3 rt on is a no go, native runs at 33-38 fps but fsr2 looks like dogshit, even quality compared to dlss perf. going with ultra+ no rt instead.
I really like the card. fsr2 needs to improve though, and I might even keep it as primary. Powe efficiency is even more fantastic than I expected.

and no, multi monitor power with nvidia is not an issue. last time I had it was on gtx1080 in 2016 with early drivers.

 

Well, I got witcher 3 RT on to run and look acceptable. Ultra preset, rtgi+rtao (no reflections sadly), fsr2 looks better when I'm not using a 60 fps target. Runs at 50-55 fps, fine by me. Still a little blurrier and noticeably more shimmer than dlss performance, and no rt reflections. Will do for now but amd should get it to look more consistently across all games, it's nice in some but can look a lot worse in a few others.

 

If native 1440p in W3 can do 38fps with rt fsr2 could bring you close to 60fps, thats not bad at all. Is fsr2 really that bad in here?

 

@Undying see the comment above