Currently I'm using 1 r9 380 card with 20 MH. I've only been mining for 3 days straight (72hours). I used the Mining Calculators from Etherscan and Cryptocompare. While these sites calculate it will take me approximately 1 month to solve a block for 5 Ether on this single card, with the exponential rate of difficulty increasing is it futile to mine solo? Should I just jump into the adult swim (mining pool) for at minimum some payout in finney? Or should I expect some finney payout in my 20 mh solo mining efforts at least once a week if not daily?
Basically I'll never see a single amount in my wallet , not even a penny ('finney') because the pools collectively out pace a 20 mh card (or even a 45mh rate for that matter if I added crossfire).
To answer my question please also include the 'reward' process for solo mining. These calculators are not descriptive enough and I have yet to find a Q&A to this delimma.
Best Answer
short answer too, that will take the exact opposite stance as @nicolas-massart ;)
in the long run you'll be always better off mining solo, ever because you get uncles and pay no fees
pool mining reduces your variance, period.
this reddit post is quite interesting, it's basically @vitalik-buterin asking as to why people mine in pools.
It's not true for all pools but most of them don't pay you uncles : that substracts to your gains. It's almost true for all pools, there is a fee that substracts to your gains too