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December 22, 2017, 08:06:32 AM |
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Can you elaborate on what you would consider "quiet"? I.e. is this a concern for you when building a typical desktop system? (If so, a dedicated mining rig might not be for you.) If you're only bothered by noises on the order of server PSUs or a dozen 40mm fans spinning at 5000 RPM, then this might not be a significant factor in graphics card selection.
If you want "quiet", I would stay away from powerful cards with blower-style coolers. (These are the cards with a single fan towards the "rear" of the card, and have an otherwise enclosed body. They are designed to move air from the interior of the case, through the heatsink, and to the exterior. In general, these are used for multi-card systems in enclosures. For dedicated mining rigs in an open frame, these usually do not perform as well as other air coolers, and run at higher speeds to achieve similar cooling performance.) When you look at blower-style coolers on more powerful cards, such as the reference Vegas or 1080/1080ti cards, they start getting much noisier.
When you ask about future-proofing, do you have a certain application in mind (just mining, perhaps)? It's anyone's guess how the next generation of GPUs will influence mining, specifically. Perhaps they will only provide minor gains, or perhaps they'll blow the current low-mid tier cards out of the water. The Vega 56/64, GTX 1070, and GTX 1070ti are probably safe bets for the next year, but it is up in the air. The 8GB RX 580 is somewhat more questionable, in my opinion, but should be fine.
Of course, there's always the *very* small chance that a cost-effective ASIC will be developed for the algorithm associated with one of the coins you choose to mine, but there will always be other options for GPU mining.
For Nvidia GPUs, machine learning with TensorFlow is always a possibility. For gaming, I don't see any of these being completely obsolete in the next year, at least at typical resolutions appropriate for their capabilities, as observed today.
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