I have a simple mining rig with one AMD XFX Radeon R9 280 graphics card.
OS - Windows 7 64 bit using sgminer.
At present, I have been mining the Lyra2REv2 on the NiceHash pool at 3.36MH/s.
This pays me about $2.50 a week.
Heck, I can make that much clicking on the faucets. The ones that pay, that is.
Since I am just learning, I do not mind the lack of profit but would now like to learn more and improve it if I can.
Can my hash rate be increased perhaps or should I consider going solo?
Should I consider different equipment? My budget is very low.
Indeed tell us your going electricity rate per kWh. Here we can only recommend you to mine Bitcoin since anything not Bitcoin goes to the Alt coin board. (But i recommend checking out Ethereum)
If your electricity rate is 0.05$/kWh or lower, some S3's would do you very well. And if you need heating at winter, you should replace every electric heating in every room with some quiet ASIC. Even Downclocked S1's for this purpose could be efficient, even if you have a higher electricity cost.