Videocard under $160

atp1916 said:
This is true. What i have noticed from my mining experiences is that the fans on the cards can be extremely suspect. I've had to buy quite a few AF cooling kits for my cards because the fans tend to get blown out. The chips themselves are fine...but those fans. Wobble Wobble Wobble! The MSI / XFX fans are the worst and i kept all fans at 75% max rotational speed.
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I ran some benchmarks on my r9 280 as soon as I popped it in. I monitored the GPU temperature, but I never bothered to change the fan speed. Temperatures got up as high as 96 C GPU and 94 C memory. Afterwards, I changed fan speed to 100% and the temperatures barely broke 70 C. I looked at the card shortly afterwards and noticed that the blue sticker for my HIS IceQ video card had peeled off, presumably from the times in which I ran it at close to 100 C. I suppose sustained usage at those numbers can eventually break down the integrity of the plastic that is attached to the card.
 
atp1916 said:
Quite a few of the miner 280 / 280x / 290 cards on Ebay and such have very,very little wear on them. Miners bought late / high and when the market went down... panic-sold to get some of their $$$ back.

I personally have over 45 R9 cards that i will under no circumstances sell for such low prices. They are all ROI'd mind you, but selling a 280x / 7970 for $150-170 when the card was $400 6 months ago is just silly.
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What are you doing with them now?
 
I think the best you can do for 150 is a used 280x. I also have seen the 280 new after rebate recently for 150. Both are pretty good options for 1080p gaming.
 
My vote is a 750 ti ( 02G-P4-3757-KR ) or R9 270 ( 100365L ) I've used about 4 of each of these on builds for people in the last year. I use which-ever one I can get the best deal on. Last one happen to be the 750 ti for $130 before rebate. 270 probably comes with a few games...
 
joeh4384 said:
What are you doing with them now?
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They are all sitting idle. I am quite positive there will be another Scrypt algorithm type scenario where GPUs get back into the game... I just don't know when.
 
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