Recently, graphics cards can be said to be getting cheaper week by week, especially in the second-hand market. Therefore, players who have been waiting for graphics card prices to drop for a long time may want to take advantage of this opportunity to grab a bargain, but you have to think more. Recently, in a Chinese forum, a netizen shared the painful experience of buying a second-hand RTX 3080 mining card. He even directly wrote in the title “Don’t buy a mining card, never buy it, don’t buy it if you just need it.”
Can I buy mine cards at a discount? Chinese netizens share their painful experience of buying a second-hand RTX 3080 mining card
In the Chinese NGA.CN forum, a netizen shared his experience of recently buying a second-hand RTX 3080 mining card. He bought it for 3,600 yuan, which is about NT$16,000. According to the normal specifications, the RTX 3080 has 10GB of display memory and a memory interface bandwidth of 320 bits. However, using GPU-Z, it was measured that the remaining display memory is 8GB, which is 2GB less, and the memory interface bandwidth has also become 256 bits:
He also used another software to confirm again, and the result was the same. Some people are wondering whether this is a fake RTX 3080, but actually an RTX 3070 Ti, right? But the GPU core code is indeed GA102. There is no way to fake it, so it cannot be RTX 3070 Ti (this one is GA104):
In addition to 2GB less memory, he also conducted a benchmark test, and the results showed that the score was 1/5 less than the normal RTX 3080, and the relative power was also 1/5 less. Although the impact on the game was not significant, the value retention rate and second-hand circulation rate were extremely different, so never buy, never buy a mining card:
Therefore, this second-hand mining card damaged the display memory during mining, and then the original mine owner modified the vbios to block the damaged 2GB. What makes people feel amazing is that it turns out that the graphics card can be used in this way, and it can still be used after mining is damaged and blocked. I can only say that these miners are too powerful.
Many people commented that it is impossible to continue to use the memory after it is shielded. The probability of a fake RTX 3080 is relatively high, so this Chinese netizen also checked the hardware and confirmed that the core is A102 and the power supply is also 3-pin. Therefore, it is determined that the RTX 3080 can turn 10G into 8G by shielding the broken core:
If you want to buy a second-hand mining card at a bargain, you should not only worry about how long it has been manipulated, but also pay attention to whether it has been tampered with. This is really tiring, so it is better to avoid subtleties.
Having said that, this Chinese netizen actually bought an RTX 3080 for about NT$16,000, which is only NT$5,000 less than the original price of a brand new graphics card (there was even a short-term promotion a while ago that only had a difference of NT$3,000). It is worth considering at least a 50-40% discount.
In any case, the price of graphics cards drops almost every few weeks, and the same goes for new cards. Most of the NVIDIA RTX 30 series will soon return to their original prices, and may even be sold at a lower original price. So those who want to buy cheap should wait a little longer. It should be coming soon. If you really can’t wait, you can also consider the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series. The CP value is very high now.
Source: KOCPC Chinese