Agree, Ethminer is still very lucrative although it looks like Nvidia hardware hit the memory controller limitation and can't go anywhere else, much like Cryptonote.
Look at lyra2v2. It's also a memory hard algorithm.
280x Sgminer opensource(200watt) 4MHASH
750ti Djm-34 (sp-mod) opensource (40watt) 5MHASH
It's like creating a etherum miner that does 35MHASH on the 750ti.
But the opensource is only doing 8MHASH...
Not sure what you mean about a 35MH/s Ethereum miner. Cudaminer Ethereum is currently more profitable then the pub Lyra miners. 20% more and it would be more profitable then Ethereum, but still not as profitable as Quark right now (that includes power usage).
Looking at GPUZ Lyra doesn't peg the memory controller at 100% like Cryptonote and Ethereum does. It sits at about 50%
Also I don't know why, but I just checked L2v2 on .68 and it's missing about 1MH/s compared to the DJM version.