Second-hand video card recommend?

ljk082000_d86e67f7

The performance is required to be no less than 1060, and the video memory is required to be no less than 8GB. My budget is less than $220. I have investigate 1080ti 11g and 2060 12g in the second-hand market,the price is close.Which one won't not be screwed  up(avoid mining card)? Can you recommend  any video card cost-effective? Thank you.

Gordig

Other things being equal, an RTX card (20xx and up) will perform better in Iray than a pre-RTX card like the 1080ti. 

PerttiA

GTX cards lose about 1GB of VRAM against RTX cards as the RTX features need to be emulated in software, so the 2060 is better than 1080ti in that respect.

Iray benchmarking thread; https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/341041/daz-studio-iray-rendering-hardware-benchmarking#latest
 

ljk082000_d86e67f7

thanks

kyoto kid

...I've been running with a second-hand Titan-X which after the RTX emulation still has the same VRAM as an RTX  1080/2080.Ti (11 GB).  It does have fewer Shading Units ( CUDA cores) but still completes a render job in an acceptable time frame. If you're really on a budget and just want more VRAM, it  or the PAscal  version may be a good interim until you can step up to a 30xx or 40xx card.

I also did see a Quadro P 5000 (16 GB of VRAM) with a current bid of 355$ on sBay.

outrider42

The second hand market can vary so much, and what is available in place can be very different than another. You might get lucky and find somebody just wanting to unload their card.

It will be difficult to judge a card and say it was for mining or not. There have been reports on mining cards sold as BRAND NEW products, which is pretty scary. They took the cards and cleaned them, then repacked them. 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/the-mystery-of-the-radeon-rx-6000-mass-extinction-event-may-have-been-solved

It is hard to trust sellers. One thing to look for is if the card has any kind of warranty. Some cards warranties can transfer to second hand owners. While EVGA has stopped making GPUs, they were awesome with these warranties. EVGA warranties do transfer, and it doesn't matter if it mined or not. Given that cards have 3 year warranties, that means every EVGA 3000 series card in existence is still under warranty at this time, even if you bought it used! For second hand owners, if you have no original proof of purchase, they will use the card's serial number to determine when it was built and go by that date. That sounds more than fair in my opinion. But since EVGA doesn't make cards anymore, they might run out. They also reserve the right to change their policy, but given the company's (very good) history, I doubt that. I happen to own a EVGA 3060, I bought it new, though. But the cool thing is that doesn't matter.

https://www.evga.com/warranty/graphics-cards/

I bring up warranties because the odds of getting a mining card are still present even when the seller claims it wasn't used for mining. You will not get a warranty on older cards, unless they bought an extended warranty. Again, pointing out EVGA, they sold extended warranties of 5 and 10 years. These warranties can transfer, too! But you will have a tough time finding one, and if you do, the seller probably wants a higher price. Not just because of the warranty, but some may look at these as collector's items now.

The 3060 is within reach at your price point if you get lucky. That really would be the ideal upgrade for you. Each generation of RTX steps up the ray tracing dramatically. The 3060 can render near the speed of a 2080ti, the previous flagship. The 2060 Super can beat a 1080ti. Just so you know, the 1080ti is a bit more than twice as fast as a 1060 that you mentioned. This gives you an idea of just how much the Iray performance has increased. The ray tracing cores make a huge difference. I would frankly avoid any non RTX card at this point. They are slow, and just not optimized for this anymore.

The 2060 with 12GB could be alright, but these cards were targeted at mining operations. They were very quietly released in limited quantities to consumers, it is believed many went to miners. The reason is that the extra VRAM was needed for mining. The original 6GB was not cutting it anymore for mining Ether.

Now I would not be too worried about mining, it depends on the miner, just like buying used has always depended on how the previous owner treated the card. While big mining farms might not treat them well, there are also miners who take care of their hardware, and underclock to use less power. I wouldn't be concerned buying from a small miner, other than the fact that I personally wouldn't want to give any miner a single dime.

Expozures

If you could squeeze a little more, you can find RTX 3060s on eBay for around $300USD.