All of my cards are nVidia, and they mine quite well, despite Ignatius' comments.
However, Ignatius is very correct about CPU mining, and anything older than the 700 series GTX cards may not do so well (so no, a 500-series card is not very great). The best place to get the latest version of CCminer is from the CUDAmining website,
http://cudamining.cc/url/releases There are also some tutorials there (CCminer is actually
much easier to use than most miners geared for AMD cards). Also, the main CUDAmining thread is here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-cudaminer-ccminer-cuda-based-mining-applications-windowslinuxmacosx-167229 I also strongly recommend aiming your nVidia card(s) at any X-based coin or pool (X11, X13, etc) as they perform very well on those algorithms (also amazing with the M7 algorithm, using DJM's latest version of CCminer).
On a side note, the latest 900-series GTX cards outperform equivalent AMD cards in hashpower, and use about a quarter of the electricity.
What algo?
What is the HYPER return per hashrate when NVIDIA mining X11/etc?
I want to just point out that regardless of his answer, this is highly variable. You're essentially dealing with two/three volatile currencies (though HYPER has been pretty steady):
1) Alt you're mining -> BTC conversion rate
2) BTC -> HYPER conversion rate
I bring up "three" because technically BTC itself is also volatile, though really you're doing two transfers. And this is how the pools work as well.
In the past, I've found that using these pools is not as efficient as mining your alt of choice, converting to BTC (or just using a pool that gives BTC) and setting your own buy orders.
Thank you, Ranlo, you are correct. This is why I stated in terms of raw hashpower, rather than try to give some profitability statistic.
Here are some reliable numbers, for comparison:
GTX 750Ti - first-gen Maxwell architecture
2GB GDDR5 VRAM 128-bit bus width, 1020MHz base clock - 1085 boost clock, maximum 60 watts power consumption
Even with an older version of CCminer, a 750Ti should be pushing between 2.4 - 2.8 MH/sec on the X11 algorithm (depends on the cooling, brand, etc), and in many cases still only using about 40 watts.
GTX 980 - second-gen Maxwell
4GB GDDR5 VRAM 256-bit bus width, 1126MHz base clock - 1216 boost clock, maximum 165 watts power consumption
Again, using a non-optimized version of CCminer typically yields between 6.6 - 8.4 MH/sec on X11. It's a wide variance, because there is a rather large difference between the reference cards and brands with better cooling. Also depends on your machine, and how you've configured the card (OCing and other things), but in general the 980 is about equal to 3 of the 750Ti's (great for density, more output per rig).
And of course, there is a Maxwell-optimized version of CCminer which will greatly boost the performance of both cards, but will not work with any non-Maxwell cards (all of the new 900-series cards are Maxwell). That specific fork of CCminer can be found in this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ccminersp-mod-modded-nvidia-maxwell-pascal-kernels-826901 (keep in mind that this version will
NOT work with any non-Maxwell GPU's!)