Interesting findings with ccminer versions. Very interesting.
I had been using various versions of the 'krnlx' ccminer for the last 5 days or so and when I plugged in my MINER-reported hashrate into the profitability calculators, my actual results were immediately proven to be significantly LESS than what the calculators were saying. Using 'whattomine', and the krnlx_170810 version (32 bit Cuda 7.5) I was getting a MINER reported overall hashrate of 255 Mh/s. But, my rewards were coming at a 190 Mh/s rate. Ie., if I adjusted hashrate in the calculator to match my rewards, I had to go from my reported rate of 255 all the way down to 190.
So, I have these 12 GPU's getting 9.09 coins per hour while the calculator says I should be getting 13.5.
Reading a post that I initially through was born of paranoia, insinuating that it was possible that some of these 'faster' modded ccminer versions might be skimming hashrate and delivering it elsewhere, I decided to go with the version that poster recommended, the palingmod versions.
So, I fired that up using the exact same settings for cards and the exact same .bat files. And, this is what happened...
My MINER reported rate went from 255 to 233.
At 233, whattomine tells me to look for 12 coins per hour. That is one coin every 5 minutes. I have been running on palingmod for 138 minutes. I am told by whattomine, adjusted for difficulty mind you, that I should have 27 coins. I have 25. At my previous 'rate' of 255 I was losing 33% of what I was 'supposed to get' when using the krnlx version. I am now off by about 8%.
So, I am running SLOWER and getting MORE.
I know this is not a static environment, but I can tell you that since day one of mining this, I have been consistently OFF by 30-35% on the 'expected' numbers.
If someone has the expertise to sniff out all the network traffic that the krnlx versions are making, it might be interesting to see if anything suspicious is taking place.
138 Minutes isn't even remotely close to a good sample size. You also said it yourself, the testing environment is not stable. 5 minutes ago the difficulty was 15k, now it is 26k. Whattomine is only accurate for that one split second you hit refresh. Not saying you shouldn't be skeptical, I am skeptical myself.