Ethminer with Cuda vs OpenCL

Question

I'm currently mining on a pool (Ethermine) with a single NVidia GTX 1060 6GB on Linux with NVidia proprietary drivers.

When I run ethminer with OpenCL (-G), I locally see a hashrate of about 18 MH/s, and the pool website is consistent with that value. However, if I try running ethminer with Cuda (-U), I locally see a higher hashrate (20 MH/s), but the website dashboard indicates a lower hashrate (16 MH/s).

I'm a bit confused. Should I consider the local hashrate or the pool's? For mining purposes, does Cuda produce higher hash rates with NVidia cards compared to OpenCL?

Answer 1

Yes, with an nvidia card you would get more hashrates when using CUDA mining mode. OpenCL is meant for AMD cards, whereas CUDA rendering is meant for nvidia cards.

As for the dashboard showing your hashrate, it measures your hashrate based on shares submitted, which will likely fluctuate differently than what your terminal output shows.

Typically, I find if you leave your miner running for a constant 24 hours the hash rates eventually match up. Granted this isn't always accurate because mining pools typically display your hashrate as an average of your shares submitted over the last X minutes.