It’s doable to repurpose one among Nvidia’s devoted crypto mining GPUs right into a gaming graphics card, however you actually shouldn’t, because the adventures of an intrepid modder clearly illustrate.
VideoCardz reported this story of the conversion of an MSI CMP 50HX graphics card right into a gaming mannequin by Spanish YouTuber Sfdx Show (initially highlighted by Professional Review).
That MSI mining graphics card is powered by a TU102 chip. This is similar engine discovered within the RTX 2080 Ti, so it’s a repurposed gaming chip, albeit a distinct variant of TU102 (with considerably fewer CUDA cores). However in principle, this CMP 50HX may be was a gaming GPU with some intelligent chicanery.
The hope being it’s not too far off the highly-rated RTX 2080 Ti, however the actuality, as we’ll see, could be very totally different…
So, let’s listing the issues right here. Firstly, the crypto mining card doesn’t have an output for a monitor (mining doesn’t want one, and allotting with it cuts prices). On condition that, it must be hooked as much as a system with built-in graphics (that may pipe out to a show) and used as a secondary GPU.
On prime of this {hardware} consideration, the CMP 50HX is provided with a blower-style cooler (which is lower than splendid).
The opposite massive downside is with the graphics drivers, because the repurposed GPU will not be acknowledged by Nvidia’s GeForce driver (seeing because the product doesn’t exist, formally). The YouTuber wanted to tinker with modified driver binaries with the intention to get the GPU to work, not one thing that’s simple to do (Sfdx Present observes it was an actual ‘ache’ going by Google’s translation of the Spanish clip).
Ultimately, Sfdx Present obtained the mining GPU working as a transformed GeForce mannequin, however the outcomes had been disappointing – it was not, as hoped, an RTX 2080 equal.
This was all the way down to the CMP 50HX being restricted to 4 PCIe lanes, and the modder couldn’t get round this, even checking (by soldering in lacking bits) that the GPU chip doesn’t have these lanes enabled (despite the fact that they’re current on the cardboard itself).
Evaluation: Extremely impractical however nonetheless fascinating
In the long run, given the outlay to purchase a second-hand mining GPU, and complexity of tinkering with drivers (although one other third-party has made the method simpler, we’re informed) plus the opposite talked about caveats, this isn’t a smart path to get an inexpensive graphics card.
You would possibly as nicely simply fork out for a second-hand GeForce GPU, particularly contemplating that used mining graphics playing cards could also be on their final legs with many, many miles on the clock.
The YouTuber paid about €160 to get the CMP 50HX from AliExpress which interprets to round $170 / £140 / AU$270. For that cash within the US, for instance, on eBay you’ll be able to choose up an RTX 2070 (if we’re trying on the Nvidia facet of the equation) for not that rather more than $200, with none of the hassles, a number of caveats, and likely far fewer miles on the clock as talked about.
Nonetheless, despite the fact that it’s an impractical experiment on this case, the repurposing of a mining graphics card is definitely fascinating to observe.
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