It’s imaginable to repurpose considered one of Nvidia’s devoted crypto mining GPUs right into a gaming graphics card, however you truly shouldn’t, because the adventures of an intrepid modder obviously illustrate.
VideoCardz reported this story of the conversion of an MSI CMP 50HX graphics card right into a gaming type through Spanish YouTuber Sfdx Display (firstly highlighted through Skilled Assessment).
That MSI mining graphics card is powered through a TU102 chip. This is similar engine discovered within the RTX 2080 Ti, so it’s a repurposed gaming chip, albeit a distinct variant of TU102 (with reasonably fewer CUDA cores). However in concept, this CMP 50HX will also be was a gaming GPU with some artful chicanery.
The hope being it’s no longer too a long way off the highly-rated RTX 2080 Ti, however the fact, as we’ll see, may be very other…
So, let’s checklist the issues right here. At first, the crypto mining card does no longer have an output for a observe (mining doesn’t want one, and doling out with it cuts prices). For the reason that, it must be hooked as much as a device with built-in graphics (that may pipe out to a show) and used as a secondary GPU.
On most sensible of this {hardware} attention, the CMP 50HX is supplied with a blower-style cooler (which is lower than best).
The opposite large drawback is with the graphics drivers, because the repurposed GPU isn’t known through Nvidia’s GeForce motive force (seeing because the product doesn’t exist, formally). The YouTuber had to tinker with changed motive force binaries with a purpose to get the GPU to paintings, no longer one thing that’s simple to do (Sfdx Display observes it used to be an actual ‘ache’ going through Google’s translation of the Spanish clip).
Ultimately, Sfdx Display were given the mining GPU operating as a transformed GeForce type, however the effects had been disappointing – it used to be no longer, as was hoping, an RTX 2080 identical.
This used to be right down to the CMP 50HX being limited to 4 PCIe lanes, and the modder couldn’t get round this, even checking (through soldering in lacking bits) that the GPU chip doesn’t have those lanes enabled (even supposing they’re provide at the card itself).
Research: Extremely impractical however however fascinating
In spite of everything, given the outlay to shop for a second-hand mining GPU, and complexity of tinkering with drivers (despite the fact that any other third-party has made the method more straightforward, we’re informed) plus the opposite discussed caveats, this isn’t a smart path to get an inexpensive graphics card.
You could as neatly simply fork out for a second-hand GeForce GPU, particularly taking into account that used mining graphics playing cards is also on their remaining legs with many, many miles at the clock.
The YouTuber paid about €160 to get the CMP 50HX from which interprets to round $170 / £140 / AU$270. For that cash in the USA, as an example, on eBay you’ll be able to pick out up an RTX 2070 (if we’re having a look on the Nvidia facet of the equation) for no longer that a lot more than $200, with none of the hassles, a couple of caveats, and without doubt a long way fewer miles at the clock as discussed.
Nonetheless, even supposing it’s an impractical experiment on this case, the repurposing of a mining graphics card is indubitably fascinating to observe.
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