What is your backup GPU?

I usually keep my previous GPU as a backup. Unless that card is toast. Currently that is a 7970.
Hopefully next CPU cycle and GPU cycle I can do a rebuilt but I wont get my hopes up.
 
GTX 960 in htpc...if that fails, I still have an gtx 460 somewhere! main card is 1060 6gb

like swapping my old card into the htpc (will buy a rtx 3060 once they drop below 300!)
 
Depends on how you define backup. The 1070 in computer #2 is the backup for my main and a 7970 is the backup for the secondary computer until we can order GPUs again. Would have preferred a 3060ti performance class for my secondary computer, if cards were available around MSRP.
 
Galaxy GTS 450!!
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Primary = Radeon vii
Backup = Radeon HD 7770

Gave away my RX 480 8GB to a former co-worker who was helping his Grandson build his first PC at Christmas. I'm tempted to email him and tell him he owes me $1000 :p
 
Primary: Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3070 I somehow snagged back in November for MSRP. I never stop feeling lucky for that right now.

Secondary: Radeon Vega Frontier Edition with a Raijintek Morpheus II cooler and two low profile Noctua fans. Previously in a Linux machine where I was playing with ROCm but now in the family PC.

After that it's a steep fall down to a 4GB Radeon Firepro W7000 (basically a professional grade 7870), then to a 560 Ti, and below that it's down to the rubble in my parts bin like a Geforce GT 610, a Radeon 4650, or a Matrox M9120... Man, I wish I hadn't sold my GTX Titan X.
 
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An AMD 7870 (ugh). And if that dies, the next in line is an AMD 5770 (uuuuugh . . . ).
 
Halon said:
Primary: Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3070 I somehow snagged back in November for MSRP. I never stop feeling lucky for that right now.

Secondary: Radeon Vega Frontier Edition with a Raijintek Morpheus II cooler and two low profile Noctua fans. Previously in a Linux machine where I was playing with ROCm but now in the family PC.

After that it's a steep fall down to a 4GB Radeon Firepro W7000 (basically a professional grade 7870), then to a 560 Ti, and below that it's down to the rubble in my parts bin like a Geforce GT 610, a Radeon 4650, or a Matrox M9120... Man, I wish I hadn't sold my GTX Titan X.
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i hear ya i sold 4 Titan X in rigs sold for $2200
 
Current GPU I'm running on is an Nvidia 2080Ti on an EK waterblock.

Backup GPU is an Nvidia TITAN X (PASCAL) waterblocked with the 5M0 resistor solder shunt mod. Do not use liquid metal to perform shunt mods. I still can't believe people are still making videos on how to perform liquid metal shunt modding on YouTube today.

Backup GPU #2 is an Nvidia Titan X (Maxwell) waterblocked and modded with the Skynet BIOS flash.

Remember Nvidia got all fucky when it came to naming the TITAN X editions, there was a Titan X Maxwell (based off the 980 Architecture) and then then Titan X Pascal (Based off the 1080 architecture). Significant differences between the two, but they named them the same!

I saw some impressive improvements modding both Titan X's. I have a first year fabrication 2080Ti so I can flash the BIOS on it.
 
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Backup GPU is a 2070 I bought from Kyle himself. My daughter has been using it for Roblox and the Sim's 4, but occasionally I will game on it.
 
Currently running EVGA RTX 3080 FTW but I have on reserve an Asus RTX 2080ti Strix and Asus 1080ti Strix. Need to sell the backups but just been too lazy. If I decide to sell the backups then there's an MSI GTX 680 Lightning waiting in the wings should something happen to the 3080.
 
Falkentyne said:
He lost performance because the stock pads can't be re-used. They compress way too much. There was no "Memory junction temperature" back then, so he was probably phantom throttling (or even had a large core to core hotspot delta!) and didn't even know it.
Proof? I've opened my 3090 FE over 15 times now (various repastes, shunt mods, fixing shunt mods, removing MG842AR silver paint for proper shunt mods, proper thermal pads on my very last disassembly 13 days ago (FINALLY got the core to core hotspot delta to not degrade anymore after switching
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You're braver than I. What solvent/conc. do you use for adhesive removal?
 
Main is 3070, first backup is 2070 super, than amd 6970, than gtx 440. Last two have been sitting in the drawer for a better part of a decade. 6970 is a leftover from the last mining craze.
 
My backup is a 2080Ti I have in my TV computer... if that goes, my next backup is 2 1080's in SLI.... lol. I have a problem keeping old video cards... I have every card I ever owned going back to my Voodoo3... haha
 
I had a RX 570 4GB card from previous mining spike as it was all I could afford at the time. Bought an EVGA 1660 from a forum member in January. Decided to start mining to help pay for new PC components. Got an RX 480 8GB from a friend, then got a 1070 Ti from a forum member. So I have a couple of backup cards and making, now, >$300/month mining ETH. Maybe I'll win the Newegg shuffle someday and get a shiny new card...
 
If my card died the closest backup is a 2GB 1050 from the HTPC... I really should have held onto my 1070.
 
A 5600xt for my primary, it was all i could get when i built my new rig in july.

First backup is a R9 290x and if worst comes to worst i have 2 Ati 1950pros in crossfire in my retro 775 PC
 
1660Ti in my old rig. I built a new rig last fall and bought the 1660Ti as a "temp" card until I could get an RTX 3xxx or RX 6xxx card for it. Landed a 3090 last December, put that in the new rig, and moved the 1660Ti over to my old rig. I was going to get a 1660 Super, but when I got to Microcenter they didn't have any Supers with more than one DP output so I sucked it up and coughed up an extra $40-50 or so for the Ti. Pretty much one of those dammit I'm here and so are all of the other parts and I don't want to wait on one part for $50 sort of things.
 
zandor said:
1660Ti in my old rig. I built a new rig last fall and bought the 1660Ti as a "temp" card until I could get an RTX 3xxx or RX 6xxx card for it. Landed a 3090 last December, put that in the new rig, and moved the 1660Ti over to my old rig. I was going to get a 1660 Super, but when I got to Microcenter they didn't have any Supers with more than one DP output so I sucked it up and coughed up an extra $40-50 or so for the Ti. Pretty much one of those dammit I'm here and so are all of the other parts and I don't want to wait on one part for $50 sort of things.
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Amen brother.
 
1080Ti is my primary, Vega 56 is my secondary. I also have a pair of 1060 6GB and a RX480 4GB. Was hoping to upgrade to a 3080 or 3090 but well… we know how that goes.
 
My laptop is my backup (Zephyrus G14 with 4900HS/RTX2060). Basically have to downgrade from 4k to 1080p, but it's honestly not all that big a deal and makes for a great portable setup.
 
Many of us clearly have multiple PCs and probably help / support family and friends with PC issues and also worry about games viability when the primary GPU is down.
I haven’t really sold anything myself either but over the years I build or donate the older cards away. This is the first time i’ve been tempted to sell anything (I have a spare rtx card) but I deeply dislike the idea of scalping so I will wait until prices dip below parity or sell it to a family member or friend that isn’t looking to flip it. Well that’s what I will likely do as soon as low end cards are back to MSRP for the purpose of having a backup.

One other thing I’ve seen mentioned before is that low end cards often have lower quality parts like ultra cheap fans that die silently and can leak from overheating caps and the like but I suspect that’s old info. I like the idea of having a low powered highly compatible card like a 1050 ti or similar but of decent quality that I expect to power on a decade later.
 
I have a 3070 in my primary gaming machine. Got 2x 1070's doing distributed computing (BOINC) in secondary boxes that I could pillage on minimal notice if needed.

I've also got a 1080 that I need to try again to get the waterblock off of. (I over tightened the mounting screws, and when I tried removing them I was stripping heads and breaking the other ends of the standoffs free from the polycarbonate part of the block instead of loosening the screws from the standoffs as intended.)

Beyond that I've got a GTX 980 and an RX 560 gathering dust because I never got around to selling them after getting the 1070's during the last crypto-crash.
 
currently using an rx6800, but have a 3070 on backup too.. May swap those 2 around for primary/secondary :)
 
8800gt. My old backup was EVGA GTX 580, but that's in my retro rig now. And I gave my Asus DCUII GTX 670 to my mom.
Asus Strix 1070 and Zotac RTX 2080 is on current rigs, so if one of them goes kaput, I would need a newer GPU which is still impossible to get.
 
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