I have to say that as a computer enthusiast, the past two years have been really sad. As the price of virtual currency continues to rise, many graphics cards have been mined by professional teams. In addition, due to the impact of the epidemic, the output of graphics card manufacturers has declined sharply, causing various graphics cards to be speculated, and there was a scene where one card was difficult to find. It is common for the market price of graphics cards to far exceed the original price. Moreover, under the behavior of channel merchants hoarding goods, the market price of graphics cards is even more ridiculous.
Fortunately, as time goes by, everything has ushered in a turning point. At the beginning of this year, due to the cryptocurrency collapse caused by the turmoil in Russia and Ukraine, cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin fell sharply. Bitcoin even fell below $20,000 for a time, down two-thirds from the high price of $66,000 in November last year. With the big collapse of the cryptocurrency market, the phenomenon of high prices of graphics cards has finally come to an end.
(Photo source: Twitter )
Unfortunately, even though the premium of graphics cards is no longer there, and many high-end graphics cards have even halved prices, most computer enthusiasts still dare not buy graphics cards easily. The reason is very simple. With the decline of the mining trend and the arrival of mining disasters, many profiteers began to purchase mining card at extremely low prices, and then used renovation methods to allow the mining card to be circulated and sold in the second-hand market. Of course, we consumers are the ones who suffer. The problem is here. As an ordinary consumer, how should we correctly deal with the comprehensive mining and card storm? In my opinion, first of all, we can focus on new graphics cards launched in 2022, such as RTX 3050, RX6650XT, etc. Although these new cards are stable in price, they absolutely have no risk of mining cards. Secondly, if you don’t know if it is a mine card, why not just buy a standard mine card and try it?
(Photo source: AMD official website)
With this idea, Lei Technology recently bought an RX5700 graphics card that was clearly marked as a mining card. Today, I will share with you the experience of purchasing and dismantling mine cards, and let’s test the true performance of this graphics card.
Select, purchase, disassemble
Before starting, let me introduce the RX5700 graphics card. RX5700 is a dessert-level graphics card released by AMD in 2019. This graphics card is built using TSMC's 7nm process technology . The architecture is upgraded from the GCN architecture to the first generation of RDNA architecture, providing 36 computing units, 2304 stream processor and 8GB of GDDR 6 memory. The official promotion of floating-point computing power reaches 7.95tflops.
(Photo source: AMD official website)
At that time, RX5700 was a very good graphics card with good cost performance. The low reference price, reasonable energy consumption ratio, and good performance RDNA architecture all made it the most cost-effective choice for mining at a price of 2,000 yuan. Many AMD 5000 series graphics cards, including RX5700, RX5700XT, RX5600XT, and RX5500XT, were basically unanimously recognized as the hardest hit areas for mining cards.
Perhaps because the amount of stockpiling is large enough during the mine tide, the RX5700 has become the batch of graphics cards with the largest volume of shipments after this mine accident. For a time, various second-hand/e-commerce platforms launched RX5700 mining cards of varying numbers, and the price of RX5700 dropped from around 2,000 yuan at the beginning of the year to around 749 yuan now, which is about half cheaper than the RTX 3060 with similar performance.
(Photo source: e-commerce platform)
Choose the target, and it is time to study the purchasing channel. There are several channels for buying mine cards at present. One is to buy it in Taobao stores. Of course, few people will say that they are mine cards, but they are all mines by default; the second is professional sellers selling mine cards in the seafood market; the third is a mine card group organized by WeChat official accounts. WeChat official accounts generally have three months of store insurance, Taobao sellers have many store insurance from several months to one year, and seafood market sellers are basically uninsured.
I have no sense of trust in Taobao stores. Although the seafood market is cheap, it is not guaranteed. In the end, I chose a WeChat official account that I felt was smoother in the conversation.
From the results, we received a RX5700 public graphics card. In terms of appearance, this graphics card has added line texture to the metal shell of the flow shield, and a special curve design is added near the fan. This structure not only increases the visual effect, but also has a certain positive impact on the airflow efficiency. It is just that the scratches accumulated on the graphics card shell remind us of the essence of the "trained" graphics card at all times.
(Photo source: Self-made by Lei Technology)
flipped to the back of the graphics card. The RX5700 public graphics card does not have a graphics card back panel, so the back of the entire PCB is exposed. From the appearance, the back of the graphics card is relatively normal, not as scarred as the graphics card case. Apart from the rusty screws, there is no dust or obvious signs of use on the layout. It seems that it has been initially cleaned when it was left factory.
(Photo source: Homemade by Lei Technology)
Interestingly, from the perspective of the gold finger, the scratches on this mine card are not very obvious, and they are even cleaner than many brand new graphics cards. If this graphics card was not plugged in less frequently and did not switch the mining machine frequently, the merchant would have cleaned it before shipment. If it weren't for knowing the truth, I'm afraid many people would think that this would be a relatively normal second-hand graphics card, but no matter how bright and beautiful the appearance is, it cannot cover up the fact that it is a mining card.
(Photo source: Self-made by Lei Technology)
Enter the disassembly stage. Remove the eight screws on the outer shell of the graphics card and you can see the cooling module of this graphics card. The graphics card turbofan and radiator have obvious signs of use, and there is also a lot of dust on the heat sink. It seems that the merchant has not disassembled the card for deep cleaning.
(Photo source: Self-made by Lei Technology)
Continue to remove the screws on the back panel, remove the heat dissipation module, and you can see the entire PCB board. As shown in the figure, the silicon grease covered on the core of this public version of RX5700 mine card is basically dry, and the thermal pad covered on the video memory has also softened in a high-temperature environment due to long-term working. This situation will inevitably have a certain negative impact on the continuous performance of the graphics card.
(Photo source: Lei Technology homemade)
Performance test: The gaming experience is unexpected
Next is the performance testing link. The test platform we prepared this time is as follows:
First conduct the benchmark test to test the performance of this graphics card under DMark TimeSpy:
In DMark Time In the Spy (2K rendering) test, the graphics score of the RX5700 public graphics card reached 8341 points, the average temperature of the graphics card is up to 61℃, the maximum power consumption of the graphics card reaches 150W, and the maximum core operation frequency is 1750MHz.
In the DMark Time Spy Extreme (4K rendering) test, the graphics score of the RX5700 public version graphics card reached 3991 points, the average temperature of the graphics card is up to 62℃, the maximum power consumption of the graphics card reaches 150W, and the maximum core operation frequency is 1750MHz.
We use RTX 3050 and RTX 3060 with similar performance as comparison. As shown in the figure, the performance of RX5700 surpasses the entry-level graphics card RTX 3050, and is very close to RTX 3060. The full load power consumption of nearly 150W is also more "energy-saving". No wonder this graphics card is attracted by the mine.
Next is the traditional raster performance test. In the following game performance tests, we will test the performance of ultra-high image quality at 1080P or 2K resolution.
, F1 2022
, Tomb Raider: Shadow
, Horizon: Zero Dawn
4. CS: GO
, Red Dead Redemption
, League of Legends
Summary, in the case of traditional raster testing, the operating effect of our RX5700 mining card is second only to RTX 3060 is significantly higher than the RTX 3050. Even at 2K resolution, the RX5700 mine card can be stable at frame rate in many mainstream games. If this graphics card is measured by the standard of 749 yuan, this performance is obviously unexpected.
Other tests: After disassembly and maintain, the performance is very different
, stress test
Of course, for mining cards, being able to run is just a standard, and whether it can run stably for a long time is another standard. In order to simulate the graphics card's full opening situation under daily games or performance programs, we use FurMark to copy it and test it, and at the same time monitor its temperature, frequency, speed, power consumption and other parameters. You can know the debugging and performance of this card in about 10-15 minutes of simulation.
At room temperature 24℃, we directly start the one-click grill. After running for 15 minutes, the temperature of the RX5700 mine card remains at around 78℃, the power consumption of the graphics card remains at around 150W, and the speed of the full-load fan is about 1500RPM, without any noise.
In order to improve the heat dissipation of this mineral card, we used a small air pump to perform simple cleaning, replaced the core with new silicon grease, and replaced the video memory with a new thermal pad. After some rest, we started the one-click grill again. After running for 15 minutes, the temperature of the RX5700 mine card remained at around 71℃, the power consumption of the graphics card remained at around 150W, and the speed of the full-load fan is about 1500RPM, which is better than before changing the silicone grease.
, overclocking test
After testing, this RX5700 has a certain overclocking space. After repeated attempts, we finally passed various graphics card tests while increasing the core frequency by 100MHz. At this time, the Boost frequency of the graphics card has reached as high as 1850MHz. After
overclocking, the graphic score of 3DMark TimeSpy is 8799 points, which is 458 points higher than the 8341 at the time of the silent frequency, and the increase is nearly 5%.
At the same time, we also tested the frame rate performance of the graphics card after overclocking in "Tomb Raider: Shadow". After overclocking, the RX5700 can run 110FPS frame rate with a super high resolution of 1080P, which is 6 frames higher than the 104FPS of the silent frequency, and the actual increase is about 5%. Such a subtle improvement, considering that this is just a mining card, I personally do not recommend that you overclock .
Summary: The performance is very attractive, you need to be cautious when getting in the car
Advantages:
, good performance
Without considering the graphics card situation, RX5700 is indeed a good graphics card. Although the ray tracing ability does not have ray tracing ability and the current support effect of FSR 2.0 is not as good as DLSS 2.0, the traditional grating capability of this graphics card is very close to RTX 3060, which can theoretically bring players a good gaming experience.
, low price
, the current standard price on the market is 759 yuan, and the slightly stronger RX5700XT is also priced at around 800 yuan. Based on the performance, it is indeed very cost-effective to buy such a card at this price.
Disadvantages:
, worrying operating conditions
From our disassembly, even a public account certified mine card, which is known as "full-body cleaning and strict testing", is essentially just a simple cleaning of the shell, and the operating conditions inside the mine card are still as bad as ever.Consumers need to have a certain hands-on ability to clean the dust, change the silicone grease, and replace the thermal pads so that these mineral cards can run more stably.
. A false warranty
From the customer's feedback, even the so-called official account sellers who seem to be the most reliable, their warranty is just to replace another mining card directly if they really cannot be turned on. You will never know whether the next mining card is good or bad.
(Photo source: Homemade by Lei Technology)
The results of this test are mixed in my opinion. Some people may think that since there is no problem with the mining card in Lei Technology's test, the mining card is still worth buying. In fact, the operation of each mining card is completely different. Although there is no problem with the mining card in our hands, it only represents this. The mining card that has been exposed by a large number of netizens is a real hidden danger.
In general, I do not recommend that ordinary consumers purchase mining cards. Buying a mine card is like gambling with stones, it is a pure luck game. After a long period of "exercise", some minor problems and inaccurate diseases will inevitably arise. However, when I first arrived at the user's hands, I was in a state of broken but not completely broken. If you are lucky, you may not have any problems if you continue to use it for 1-2 years. If you are unlucky, you will have a strange noise in a few months. When you are at that time, you will regret it.
