Bitcoin Forum

Is it possible to use faulty cards for mining, given that some functionality may not be needed on all cards in a rig- such as visual output etc.?

If the only fault with the card is a broken DVI/HDMI port, then I don't see why that shouldn't be possible.

Indeed, but what about things like artifacts.
See, there are a nice cards on ebay (and probably other places) being sold cheap because they have a few problems. It would be handy to know which glitches may affect mining and which wouldn't.
As many people clock down their memory for mining is it feasible to use a card with memory problems?

 ???

You will not know how the particular card behaves when mining unless you run the card with miner. If you can get the cards for cost of a beer, go get them. Or if you can RMA the card, you can also buy it. Otherwise the card is dead junk.

Artifacts in theory can cause work to be corrupted, such as missing found blocks and corrupted data. Faulty memory also can cause corruption and few MH/s slowdown.

Most video cards have a lifetime warranty, so it might be worth it to look into. Granted, they won't validate the warranty if the card was broken due to user error (water damage, damaged HSF due to installing a custom one). Artifacts are usually caused by memory and I haven't looked into GPU processing much to know how much mining uses the VRAM. Depending on the price, it might be worth it to test. I'm sure people are interested in the results.

For example: Post your MH/s and also screenshots of what happens when you play games or in your OS without any load.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies guys, hopefully there are people who have tried this with their borked cards who can say if they are still good for mining. I'm loathe to chance my precious moneys on a faulty card, but it may be worth it. I will have to consider....