Don’t worry about how a video card was used. Unless it was handled by howtobasic, they’re gonna break long after they’re obsolete. You might worry about a bad firmware setup, but you avoid that by looking at the seller rating, not the video card.
there’s an argument to be made that a mining gpu is actually the better card to buy since they never went hot>cold>hot>cold (thus stressing the solder joints) like a regular user would do. But it’s just that; an argument. I have yet to find a well researched article on the effects of long-term gaming as compared to long term mining, but I can tell you that the breaking point for either is long after you would have kept the card in use, even second or third hand.
There’s been at least three, including this one.
https://fedia.io/m/onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone/t/1724519/Rule-of-Winnie#comments
https://fedia.io/m/onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone/t/1724706/Even-China-bans-tankies-rule#comments