Question GPU Died

lifeblood

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Oct 17, 2001
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My GPU, an RX 5700, has died and I’m using my RX 570 as a replacement. It’s not ideal but the 570 does a decent job and will work for now.

My monitor setup is nonstandard. I have a 29” ultrawide 2560x1080 Freesync as my main display, and a 21” 1080p monitor above it. This works well for gaming, school, and work. The 5700 (now 570) drives them both. Gaming is only on the big monitor.

What should I replace the 5700 with? I prefer an AMD card which supports my Freesync display (it’s not Gsync compatible). A 6600 XT will give roughly the same performance as the 5700 but I feel it limits me for the future. A 6700 XT would be preferable. Of course the 10 million dollar question is, now or wait as prices are (currently) dropping, and new or used? Anyone have a reliable crystal ball they can query? Or even a pretty reliable magic 8 ball? My RX 570 is doing acceptable so I can wait a month or two.

The second question is, should I continue to run both monitors on 1 GPU or get a second low end GPU for the small non-gaming monitor? At one time I ran an AMD GPU and an Nvidia GPU at the same time. It worked flawlessly and allowed me to run a couple of games that required an Nvidia GPU. A single GPU is simpler but it does make it work harder if it has 2 displays on it.

Thoughts?

Edited: Changed FX to RX
 
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VirtualLarry

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"FX" 5700? An Nvidia card from long ago?

Your story makes more sense with an RX 5700 and RX 570. Is that more correct?
 
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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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"FX" 5700? An Nvidia card from long ago?

Your story makes more sense with an RX 5700 and RX 570. Is that more correct?

The 6650XT's is a bit faster... its also worth the extra 20-30 dollars.

So id push the 6650XT, unless he wants to go up to 1440p which then i would highly recommend you spend the extra for a 6700XT or 6750XT.

Just please make sure you get a 3 fan card, unless the card is too long to fit inside your PC.
The 3 fan heatsinks are superior, and not by a small amount either.

EDIT:
I personally am against buying ANY Used GPU on the market right now as 90% of them were all mined on.
Unless you know how to recondition a card, and the seller offers you a form of personal warranty of 30 days, i heavily recommend you not getting anything used, no matter how cheap it is, unless your basically getting it for free.
Assume all used cards you get were mined on, even if the seller says they weren't.

To recondition a card it will cost you a minimum of 30 dollars in pads, and paste.
Possibly also an addition 20-25 dollars in new fans. In short, its better off you buying a new card.
The only exception to this rule, is if its a watercooled card, and not a AIO watercool, but a real custom watercooled card, as most won't spend the addition 170 dollars for the waterblock to just mine on it, and a full cover waterblock can in essence triple the life on the videocard. So that is my 2 cents on the current used market.
 
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Shmee

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What brand is the RX 5700? A chance you could use the warranty? Also, what games do you play generally, and what refresh rate is your main monitor?

I would say you could buy an upgrade now, or wait for RDNA3, or even try to get the warranty replacement till RDNA3 if possible. None of these would be bad ideas, since in the mean time you have the 570 at least. What you buy depends on the deals at the time though. Is there a budget you have in mind for a card? Also, considering bottlenecks etc, what is the rest of your system?
 
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VirtualLarry

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Yeah, my card was mined on... for a whole month. Shouldn't need pad/fan replacement, it's basically new.


No selling outside of the FS/T forum.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director
 
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Aapje

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The 6600 XT and 6700 XT have very similar price per FPS, so they are equally good/bad value. I don't foresee big price drops in the next 2 months.

For your screen, I would go for the 6600 XT and not worry too much about future proofing, which is usually a bad idea and especially bad in a market where prices are still inflated and where a huge dump of mining cards may happen later this year. After all, you are paying an inflated price for that future proofing and are reducing your ability to take advantage of a temporary glut.
 
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Shmee

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I personally have no problem buying used, as long as the product is as described in condition, and a reasonable price is agreed on. In many cases, the only real loss is the lack of warranty, depending on age and manufacturer terms. IMO usage doesn't really matter, what matters is current condition. I would certainly give the used market a look if you are on a budget and need another card.

That said, any transactions should be done in the AT for sale forum, not in general forums. I do recommend you check that forum out though, I have seen some good deals on GPUs and other hardware.
 
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lifeblood

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The card is a Sapphire Pulse RX 5700 that I bought from Amazon on 4 Dec 2019. That makes it 2.5 years old. I cant find anywhere that Sapphire says how long the warranty period is but Amazon says it was 2 years. I sent an email to Sapphire asking about replacing it.
The system is a Ryzen 5 3600 with 16 GB RAM. Not a high end gaming rig but not bad either.
 

Aapje

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A little online search shows that Sapphire only has a 2 year warranty and is not very inclined to go beyond what is legally required. So I wouldn't expect much.
 
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Leeea

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. . .

EDIT: I missed Larrys post on him saying to buy his GPU.
I personally am against buying ANY Used GPU on the market right now as 90% of them were all mined on.
Unless you know how to recondition a card, and the seller offers you a form of personal warranty of 30 days, i heavily recommend you not getting anything used, no matter how cheap it is, unless your basically getting it for free.
Assume all used cards you get were mined on, even if the seller says they weren't.

To recondition a card it will cost you a minimum of 30 dollars in pads, and paste.
Possibly also an addition 20-25 dollars in new fans. In short, its better off you buying a new card.
The only exception to this rule, is if its a watercooled card, and not a AIO watercool, but a real custom watercooled card, as most won't spend the addition 170 dollars for the waterblock to just mine on it, and a full cover waterblock can in essence triple the life on the videocard. So that is my 2 cents on the current used market.
I strongly disagree with the EDIT portion of Aigomoria's post.

As long as you can get the card with a normal (non-mining BIOS), mining cards are the BEST cards to buy used. The miner should flash it back to normal before selling it to you.

With many things, including GPUs, most of the wear occurs when the chip is powered on or off. When it goes from a cold state to a hot state and back again. Mining cards are ran continuously, at well below their rated wattage for efficiency, and are the best cards to buy used. They typically are well cooled, because a cool GPU uses less electricity then a hot one. Miners are strongly incentived to reduce their costs (electricity consumption) to increase their profit per mining unit.


It is completely unnecessary to recondition / repaste a card used for mining. The cooling solution has not been power cycled many times, it is fine. The only thing that wears out are the fans, which typically have years of life even after being used for mining. When they finally do die, it is easy enough to find replacement GPU fans on ebay or elsewhere.


Aigomoria is right about full cover custom waterblocks. They do triple the life of the card. If your buying used this is a very nice bonus. However, most customers should not put this on a card they already own. The cost / benefit ratio is poor.


In other words, if I was you, I would buy a used mining card.
If you want the warranty, prices on new rx6600xt or better are getting reasonable quickly.
 

GodisanAtheist

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I strongly disagree with the EDIT portion of Aigomoria's post.

As long as you can get the card with a normal (non-mining BIOS), mining cards are the BEST cards to buy used. The miner should flash it back to normal before selling it to you.

With many things, including GPUs, most of the wear occurs when the chip is powered on or off. When it goes from a cold state to a hot state and back again. Mining cards are ran continuously, at well below their rated wattage for efficiency, and are the best cards to buy used. They typically are well cooled, because a cool GPU uses less electricity then a hot one. Miners are strongly incentived to reduce their costs (electricity consumption) to increase their profit per mining unit.


It is completely unnecessary to recondition / repaste a card used for mining. The cooling solution has not been power cycled many times, it is fine. The only thing that wears out are the fans, which typically have years of life even after being used for mining. When they finally do die, it is easy enough to find replacement GPU fans on ebay or elsewhere.


Aigomoria is right about full cover custom waterblocks. They do triple the life of the card. If your buying used this is a very nice bonus. However, most customers should not put this on a card they already own. The cost / benefit ratio is poor.


In other words, if I was you, I would buy a used mining card.
If you want the warranty, prices on new rx6600xt or better are getting reasonable quickly.

- Devil's Advocate: Couldn't you argue that a miner would undervolt the core, but potentially overclock & overvolt the ram given this latest mining boom was Etherium driven (as far as GPU scarcity is concerned) and ETH hash-rates are primarily limited by card bandwidth (which can be boosted through a mem OC)?
 

Shmee

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- Devil's Advocate: Couldn't you argue that a miner would undervolt the core, but potentially overclock & overvolt the ram given this latest mining boom was Etherium driven (as far as GPU scarcity is concerned) and ETH hash-rates are primarily limited by card bandwidth (which can be boosted through a mem OC)?
This is true to a point, but in my experience, most modern cards have very limited software voltage controls for memory. To my knowledge for instance, you cannot adjust memory voltage on GDDR6(X), at least on the driver level. Perhaps at firmware level with a BIOS edit, but maybe not. It might require some sort of hardmod. I know neither of my 5700XTs, nor my 3090 have MVDDC adjustments available via software. I am pretty sure it was the same with my Aorus 1080Ti.
 
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aigomorla

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This is true to a point, but in my experience, most modern cards have very limited software voltage controls for memory. To my knowledge for instance, you cannot adjust memory voltage on GDDR6(X), at least on the driver level. Perhaps at firmware level with a BIOS edit, but maybe not. It might require some sort of hardmod. I know neither of my 5700XTs, nor my 3090 have MVDDC adjustments available via software. I am pretty sure it was the same with my Aorus 1080Ti.

im pretty sure GDDR was not designed to constantly be under load like that.
We have very specific ram for that, its typically server ram.

Now i don't know how the quadro's and radeon pro's work with HBM.
But i do know there is no such thing as a gamer who always has the memory cycled from load to clear for months and months straight without any pause or recourse.

Also Mining GPU's are DIRTY.
Unless you live in a dust free environment, and even me having 2 large room hepa filters in my server room, i collect a LOT of dust.
Want to clean that sink? you need to remove it.
You remove it, typically its good practice to replace the thermal pads.
While replacing the pads, might as well replace the fan too, as they been under load constantly, the oil and bearings will be used up, so its just good practice when you recondition a card.

Throwing in a dirty GPU without cleaning is to me, gross.
I don't know what the pervious owner did with it. Oh right he mined on it non stop... so we do know what the condition the card was in.

Unless the seller cleans the GPU presale, which i doubt he would especially if its a miner looking to unload quickly, your going to get a very dirty GPU.
There just is no way to keep a GPU clean when its been on for months, as they generate some form of EM field which will attract dust.
Also having a fan blowing at it, constantly, and throwing new dust on it, wont help anything.

Now if its been in a clean server room, then by all means, yes, the GPU is a good find.
However how many miners can you think of that will add the cost of electricity by putting the machine in an climate controlled sealed room with hepa filters.

This is my 2 cents on it....
Always make sure you get good pictures of the used GPU if you do buy it.
If you see it caked with dust and dirt, then, seriously, just pass no matter how good they seem on the price.
 

Leeea

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im pretty sure GDDR was not designed to constantly be under load like that.
it does not really matter.

If anything it uses it less then a game, because once it loads up the DAG it just reads it over and over.

But still, it would not matter if the ram was written to constantly. RAM stores data without any physical changes to the structure of itself.


We have very specific ram for that, its typically server ram.
The only thing special about server ram is ECC. A valuable feature, but it has no effect on the lifespan of the RAM. Does make it easier to detect and correct errors in RAM.
 
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Shmee

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Back to the issue at hand here, @lifeblood have you heard anything from Sapphire or made any progress in sourcing another one?
 

Leeea

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Video on used mining cards:
watched a number of his videos, and he always came off very knowledgeable.

Seems to give good advice on which cards to avoid, etc.
 
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lifeblood

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As expected, Sapphire replied that the warranty period had expired and I was out of luck. I expected this answer but it doesn't hurt to try.

I decided to buy a used 6600 XT. As someone else mentioned, future proofing, particularly in this crazy market, doesn't really make sense. I'm pretty happy with my rig and display right now so I don't really expect to upgrade any time soon. Courtesy of AMD I did just apply the new BIOS that allows my B300 board to support Ryzen 5000 so I might step up to a Ryzen 5 5600 if one comes my way at a good price, but that wont trigger a need for a better GPU.

The 6600 XT is actually a bit faster than my 5700 was so it is a slight step up from what I had.
 
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