Concerning hash rates and payment in real money i have to say that i did some basic tests to find out how efficient winminer was. I tested nicehash for a few minutes and then run winminer and compared the money they both claimed to make. Winminer was slightly less (but in one occasion it was slightly more!), but not as much as 10-20 %. Maybe just a few percent.

In order to be able to test this in real life you have to mine a specific coin and see how many coins you make in one day. This is the only way to test the efficiency! Otherwise if you look at the money made each minute it changes every half an hour or so... Even more, in the last couple of days i see that one coin might go up and down by as much as 20-30%!!! Money making has gone down in the last 2 days by at least 30%, which is crazy. So, if we want to compare, we should look into the coins made, but winminer does not report coins. So another way is to test winminer for a few minutes, and then switch to another miner, like nicehash and compare immediately. Otherwise prices might change and the result is different!

Of course, the best thing to do is to have two identical systems and run one with Winminer and the other with Nicehash and compare the outcome after one day of use. They would run the same time and at the same exchange rates, so the comparison would be fair. Maybe someone with two identical graphics cards can do it for us and report here.

I find that winminer is useful for people who want to hash with small systems and get some money, while it might also be good for larger systems. But for serious mining setups you might be better with keeping the coins and selling them when the price is right.

There is also a fee for selling coins or exchanging them, so we should keep that in mind too.

Finally i believe that if this price plunge is continued, then most people will shut off their machines, because it is unprofitable any more, unless you do not pay for electricity. Hope the situation recovers...