Totally Confused by Mhash/s vs K/Hash/s Hardware Comparisons

[toknormal]

Hi

I've just spend all day looking at the viability of various mining options. At the moment I've just played around with an old graphics card to "get the feel of everything". What's confusing me is this:

[1] - As a rough reference, I am mining Worldcoin with an olf NVIDIA GT-220 and getting about 1.2 K/Hash per second using cgminer (cudaminer reports 10 KH/s)

[2] - If I check my card on this and other sites,

[2] - This comparison chart shows the cards performance as 10 MHash/s (Mega instead of Kilo)

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#Nvidia

[3] - To confuse me even further, the pool's website reports my worker's performance at 21 KHash/s

I'm confused by all this because I don't know how to estimate another graphic's card's performance against my current one. For example, a USB Block Erupter Sapphire is spec'd at 333 MHash/s.

Can it really be true that the erupter is 333 x 1000 (333,000) times as fast as my current card ? (i.e. It is 333 MHash and mine is 1.2 KHash ?

If anyone can help me out here I'd be most gratefull !

Pete

[Kane49]

I have been confused by this as well,
my Radeon 6950 only does like 17khash with cgminer while according a hardware chart it should be doing 340+ Mhash

I dont think any command line switch will increase the performance x2000 ^^

[Vivisector999]

If you are mining a coin with an SHA-256 algorithm (IE Bitcoin, or it's clones), your video card will mine in MHash/s, as you card will be able to burn through as it's much more efficient.

If you are mining a Scrypt based algorithm your video card will be measured in Khash/s as the Scrypt algorithm has a lot of stuff going on in the background that makes it more resistant to ASIC miners, so in turn your card will only be able to push approx. 1/1000th of the hash speed.   Not to worry though, as every other person mining the same coin will be mining at the same speed as you.  

[toknormal]

If you are mining a Scrypt based algorithm your video card will be measured in Khash/s as the Scrypt algorithm has a lot of stuff going on in the background that makes it more resistant to ASIC miners

Wow. That explains a lot. I didn't realise that.

I am indeed mining SCRYPT. Many thanks for that reply.

[Vivisector999]

Also noticed you question about an Eruptor. That is an ASIC miner.  It can only mine SHA-256 coins such as Bitcoin.  It will do nothing if you try to get it to mine Scrypt, or anything else as a matter of fact.  

You are obviously mining Scrypt based coins like LTC with your video card, which is why the rating is so much different then what you are expecting.  The chart you will want to be looking at is here:

https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison


Not here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

[toknormal]

Also noticed you question about an Eruptor. That is an ASIC miner.  It can only mine SHA-256 coins such as Bitcoin.  It will do nothing if you try to get it to mine Scrypt, or anything else as a matter of fact. 

Thanks - I was wondering about that as well. I noticed the Litecoin hardware specs are in KHz, so that explains why.

I'm not really interested in mining Bitcoin - that looks like being for pros only.

Thanks for the help !