Bitcoin Forum

Hello people.

We all know current situation on the GPU market is not exactly bright. So I was thinking about actually buying used R9 290X AMD cards. Now this card is old, but its a beast of a card still. I have one at home mining ethereum at 28.2 MH/s without overclocking. I just have the bios moded for lower consumption. If I OC this beast it mines 31 MH/s but its not stable. It seems my card had not the most quality RAM.

Anyway its not only ETH hash rate that is impressive but also other algos. It does (stock settings):

- Ethereum: 28.2 MH/s
- Neoscrypt: 1 MH/s. Yes it does 1000 KH/s. Very impressive
- Equihash (ZCash): 360 Sol/s
- Cryptonight: 760 H/s

Its a very versatile and powerfull card. Now ofc the bad part. Its a power hog. It can literally use 280-300 W from the wall. It can be optimized but I did not yet try how much low I could get. Now the good thing is I pay around 0.06$ per KWh so electricity is cheap here. The card can be bough at around 280$ on Ebay.

The question I can't seem to answer is: Is it worth it?

I mean with current prices of cards its a great deal looking power / price wise. Also while RX 580 and other newer cards are mostly one trick ponnies this card is very versatile and can mine basically any popular coin efficiently. But yea the consumption is horrible.

Your thoughts on it?

If you are familiar with the downsides - as it seems you are - then go for it.
I have some mining since 2014 or so and still going strong.
They are beasts as you say, but noisy and hot!

everything you write is exactly how the things are

myself i have several series of AMD cards, R9 280,280X, 390, HD 7950 and RX 480, 580
The smaller ones i got them used since 8-10 months (from gamers) ago at about $120 each and they are
still working fine, for sure they made me profits

the 390, which is like yours, i also bought it from a gamer at $300. It's a beast!
i had it rebulling once and it works great, 30H/s for ETH

My opinion regarding your thoughts
i bought those used cards before the panic in the GPU market, in which every card disappeared. People wasn't aware of the mining staff yet and the cards i bought were "clean", just used only for gaming.
nowdays how can be sure if this 290x that you saw on ebay wasn't mining 24/7 with overclocked bios and probably it's life is coming to an end near soon...?

Hope that helped in expanding your thoughts

If profitability doesn't change and you're mining with Nicehash (or just plain Ethereum as it's currently one of the most profitable coins you can mine with the 290X), you'll break even in around 11 months. Whether or not you think that's good is your own interpretation, though I will say that if the card does last that long then it's a good investment (considering most other investments aren't as lucrative as mining), even though profitability may have been greater in the near past. When you're buying a used GPU from pretty much anywhere (but especially eBay) you're taking a gamble that the card wasn't overclocked, even if the description says it hasn't been. eBay is buyer sided, but I often see people with broken GPUs shortly after the return period ends.

Wait a week or two and try to get a RX 470/570 for that price.

It's a good GPU however they are crazy loud and bad power consumption.

You can forget dual mining on them.

I don't know where you are getting the RX 580 is a 'one trick pony' compared to the 290X. The RX 580 does better at ETH and about the same on the other algorithms you mention. It also does it at half the power consumption.

RX 580 4GB Neoscrypt ~970 KH/s:

https://image.ibb.co/grNAcx/RX_580_4_GB_Neoscrypt.jpg

RX 580 4GB Equihash ~333 H/s:

https://image.ibb.co/kt7nPc/RX_580_4_GB_ZEC.jpg

RX 580 4GB Cryptonight ~935 H/s:

https://image.ibb.co/cKt5AH/RX_580_4_GB_XMR.jpg

With hardware and electricity cost that was cheap, it is still worth to use that rx290 for mining the only downside is the longevity of the hardware of how many months of year can it stand, the only way to make profit is to hold the coins, don't sell it immediately after mine. Consider also the electricity is still part of the investment and not part of the operation cost for short term goal.

Better to wait a couple of weeks and see what will be going to happen with the market. Market condition at this time plus many issues about new devices might give you a chance to get a card with better speed/power (cheaper also).

Personally, I'm also an R9 user. A few of my rig use 290, 290X, 390, 390X. My electricity cost higher than yours. Still, I can pay my electricity bill plus a box of pizza.  ;D

my advice is you better buy rx 580 than the old type like r9 290 ..
because the diff coins will go up every once a month, you still have to know that. in the next year your r9 290 may no longer work, almost every country has its own mine at home, so soon the level of difficulty to mine will rise.

Not worth it. GIven that the card is old and has less support, it also has more chances of dying out soon.

Not to mention the fact that it is a power consuming monster. With profitability down, you will need power efficient cards to even make a dent in profits.

Which coins that increasing its difficulty each month? Go, read and back here again after. It sounds what you said referring to almost all coins, except you said, X coin with 10 minute block time and difficulty retargeting each 4032 block (acceptable). Be a good boy!  ::)

totally wrong...
the diff doesn't increase every once a month but a matter of minutes and depend on a coin its, every coin has a technical data each.

useless for what coins?

way not worth it, too high consumption so at the rate of where mining profits are going, you'll only get to run it for a few months before it start to eat more money than it produces

Buy RX5xx instead. It's the right time to get in when prices seem to draw back. R9's wouldn't make you any good since they all were worn out as for now.

I have Rx 470 8gb, Rx 480 4gb, Rx 570 4gb for sell.
Spain. I can sell for eBay too.

I have a few those cards. I undervolt them so that they are not so hot and noisy.

I always set the fans to 100% for R9 290/290X except for 390/390X (using manual temperature graphic setting). Even I add additional pwm fan's in the front of cards. This rig produces a sounds same as ASIC miner, lol.

Undervolting pretty good to decrease 2^o-4^o C.

Profitability is pretty low at the moment, hence, it will take ages to reach ROI (Return of your investment). As others have said, it will take 11 months, I don't think it's worth it for that price. I just checked eBay myself and found better priced ones than the one you found at $280. I would do a market research first if I were you, see what GPU suits your needs and see if it is worth it in the long-run, since mining profits have decreased significantly.

Thanks to all the people who responded. A lot of usefull feedback and information was given, I appreciate it.

As lucrative as the used 290x was I decided not to buy them simply because they are all old and I could risk to much in terms of failure. Also the power factor cannot be thrown away, even if electricity is cheap here.
So I will probably do one of two options:

1. Buy some RX 580. I have these marked as good deals atm: https://www.whinkel.be/sapphire-nitro-radeon-rx-580-8gb (https://www.whinkel.be/sapphire-nitro-radeon-rx-580-8gb) and https://www.whinkel.be/sapphire-nitro-radeon-rx-580-8gd5-special-edition (https://www.whinkel.be/sapphire-nitro-radeon-rx-580-8gd5-special-edition)

Thats the cheapest new cards I could get in EU. Newegg and similar would be great, but then I have to pay customs which is a whooping 20% VAT. So no way. Did anyone buy at this shop? Any credibility?

2. I will simply wait as the crypto prices keep droping and the market should correct itself with the GPU prices. But its not a given.

Anyway I am in for the long run. I also find it fun to do mining and I took it as a hobby with long term investments. So 12 months ROI is not a problem for me, neither is holding the mined coins untils the prices rise. I still think the GPU mining is going nowhere and there are and will be plently of coins to mine, no matter the market and ASIC situation.

That whinkel.be looks like a scam. And given the current market prices of GPUs its probably best to wait until either pricess fall or new cards come to market to update the situation.

I had a full rig of 290x and 390... of which one is left, experimnted alot.

In brief, Zcash with claymore on STOCK speeds of 390 (1010 mhz) gives 390 H/s which imo really GOOD!
290x Should have wether same or higher numbers.
Unmodded bios, GPU-z= 146watts (190 watts real world maximum?) But also its main GPU so, they are profitable 100%, same hash rate as the Garbage gaming Nvidias for 700$? with abit more of electricity, much higher ROI and quit mining with no real losses (i would never pay more than 125-150$ for these used, but also, you have to make sure they aren't absued)

Stilt Bios lower vrm switching frequency makes better effiecincy and wattage but increases vrm temperatures (or thats what i thought) ! (one of my 290s was burnt this way, that GPU was making 870 h/s cryptonight with 92 watts in GPU-Z!)

No point in mining ZEC with these cards (or the 290/390/390x) as they're all more profitable on ETH by a fair bit.

Worthwhile depends on your electric cost and how much you can get the cards for, even with an undervolt BIOS from TheStilt on my R9 290 cards they're still pulling ballpark guess 250 watts on ETH mining at 30ish Mhash/sec.

TheStilt BIOS get a lot of their efficiency from switching OFF a lot of the "video output" related parts of the card as well as undervolting - they do NOT "lower vrm switching frequency" as that would DECREASE efficiency.

GPU-Z wattage figures for AMD cards ALWAYS understate them a lot - seems like it only looks at the PCI-E power connection inputs and NOT at the power draw from the PCI-E bus or some such.
Nvidia-SMI does a MUCH better job of that on the Nvidia side of things.

r9 290's are profitable even in 2019 while mining Ethereum (29-30 mh/s) on Ubuntu (version no higher than 16.04 for GPU compatibility). While mining Beam it gives 12-13 sol/s, CryptonightR - 650 h/s. There is a guide how to do it (in Russian): https://www.cryptoprofi.info/?p=3313. Also these cards are very good heaters in winter time...

From what I recently learnt from a similar ancient GPU thread,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1540107.0

You can still mine ETH with the Hawaii GPUs however it won't work under Windows and/or with Claymore.

You need to use software like SMos or PhoenixMiner and you will get the full 30MH/s that everybody got in 2016/2017. I didn't realise this and pretty much almost got rid of my R9 290, however most likely in the winter months will power them up again.

It works perfectly with Claymore 14.7 and last Phoenix under Ubuntu.

Yes, R9 290 is possible to buy for 50 dollars. ROI is 5-6 monthes if you have price for electricity about 0,05 dollars.

I was just looking for something related to these cards, in terms of price performance and capacity I am undecided

In my area I found some "offers" in the informal market (already used for mining, of course)
r9 290 4GB 65 $
rx 470 4 GB 75 $
R9 390x 8 GB 70 $
rx 570 8 GB 100 $
rx 470 8 GB 100 $

Some vendors say they have been used only for "games", come on ... I do not even think so. I would be encouraged to buy if any will go down for around $ 40 ...

they are usually double the price mentioned I suppose they will be desperate sale

yes, buy them. That way your profit will be -50 dollars per month, if not more.

Are people mad or what? Not even RX 580 hyper-undervolted are profitable on ETH right now. at 0,10$ per KWh you are lucky if you break even.

In my area the pricing is pretty similiar. The RX 470 4GB resell value is very low probably because AMD made millions of those GPUs and almost all got bought by miners and now nobody wants them anymore.

The 8GB always goes for more because it has more memory and in certain newer and more intensive games it performs better. It also performs a little faster with ETH mining due to the faster ram.

The 290/390 pricing is similiar since they are power-hog type of GPUs and miners don't want them. And gamers might want them but due to the power issues they are noiser than say an RX 580 or some Nvidia 1070 GPU.