BTW, ssateneth, I wouldn't call a 580 "puny"... It's not a fast miner, true... but as far as an actual graphics card goes it's blazing fast. I've gotten several years of dutiful service out of it and still maintain ultra-high framerates on modern graphics apps and simulations. It will run even sophisticated simulations like ArmA and IL-2 at max graphics settings and thousands of enemy soldiers/aircraft.
It's just that, generally speaking, mining-wise, NVIDIA GPUs are slow compared, precisely, to their gaming value.
Congratulations on 140mhash from an nvidia card
Indeed that's quite fast IMO for an NIVIDA.
About the pool war, my personal preference goes to PPLNS such as Bitminter (this one also pays tx fees as far as I know). Particularly interesting when you have a low hashrate and want to be the one (as opposed to the pool operator) taking the risk of good or bad luck without too much variance.