I'm talking about Monero. I'm sure it has something to do with the set/actual diff. or something
but I can't help but feel as though I'm not able to use my cpu's full potential.. I'm not going to buy new mining hardware if I don't have to.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated!!
Different cryptocoins use different algorithms. To make it simple: when you mine one of those coins where you have a speed of several Kh/s, the algorithm requires the CPU to do hashes (calculations) that are simpler (like 1+1) but when it comes to Monero (as you said) the hashes are much more complicated (like 44+332^2+sqrt(log 345345) for example). Because of these differences your CPU won't be able to do the math as fast with all coins so you will get different hashrates.