Mining Applications

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It’s a showdown of the big two: Genoil’s Ethminer vs Claymore. Some people use qtminer as well, but I will only be discussing the first two.

I feel that a lot of this also comes down to preference. A no-frills, easy to use miner would be Genoil’s Ethminer. Simple to use, no fees to worry about, and has a large community backing behind it. Genoil is an active member in many communities and can often be found in support threads for users.

Where Claymore shines is its ability to dual-mine coins to mitigate risk and spread assets around different currencies. The fee is increased with this operation. Claymore miner charges a 2% fee for the developer to dual mine, and a 1% fee to mine Ethereum alone. However, in my experience, out of the box with no changes claymore earns an extra ~1-2MH/s per card over Ethminer (about $1-$2 per day, on a six-card rig). At 150MH/s, you would earn ~$32/day (at today’s rate of $380/ETH) and pay out about $0.80 in “developer fees” making it only slightly more profitable.

Another benefit of Claymore is the open API which can be utilized to monitor the rig, send notifications on downtime, etc. Ethminer has not yet implemented a solution at this time from what I can find.

Recommendation

I do not feel comfortable recommending one or the other, but I do recommend researching the developers behind both and making your decision based on the information you find. There is a lot of controversy over which miner to use, most of which is political. Try both and decide on your own which works better for your needs and skill level. Either will work, it is up to you whether you want to pay the Claymore fee for a minuscule increase in profit.

Download links located later on in this guide for your Operating System

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