Bitcoin to Namecoin difficulty ratio

Namecoin original site got very interesting page with Bitcoin and Namecoin difficulties and future changes. This page contains two tables with three rows: current value in the network, instant value based on current network hash rate and next Bitcoin difficulty value with date of switching. Also there is third table with Namecoin/Bitcoin difficulty ratio which may help you decide what currency to mine - Bitcoin or Namecoin.

Current values at time of writing this post were:

Namecoin next difficulty row:

• Block number 16128
• Next difficulty switching time 22/07/2011 06:57
• Next difficulty value 22'483.11
• Next/Current difficulty ratio 0.40

Bitcoin next difficulty row:

• Block number 137088
• Next difficulty switching time 19/07/2011 22:41
• Next difficulty value 1'673'141.39
• Next/Current difficulty ratio 1.07

Table with Namecoin/Bitcoin difficulty ratio contains this data for next Namecoin switching date: next difficulty switching time 22/07/2011, NMC/BTC Ratio 74.42 BTC/NMC Ratio 0.0134

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison List

When you got your first experience with Bitcoin money you may want to try bitcoin mining on your PC. First of all you need to get configuration information of your PC and check if your hardware capable to run bitcoin mining fast enough. As you know, CPU mining currently is faster than GPU mining more than 100 times. So it's very important to have really fast video card on-board. NVidia GeForce GPU cards are surprisingly slow in comparison to AMD ATI Radeon HD. It's pointless to run bitcoin mining on NVidia cards. Here list of most effective cards to run mining:

Best performance/cost ratio have ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5xxx series cards:

Radeon HD 5750 ~140 MHash/s - 90W
Radeon HD 5770 ~190 MHash/s - 110W
Radeon HD 5830 ~260 MHash/s - 175W
Radeon HD 5850 ~290 MHash/s - 151W
Radeon HD 5870 ~380 MHash/s - 188W
Radeon HD 5970 ~640 MHash/s - 294W

AMD Radeon HD6xxx series cards are more expensive and got lower performance/cost ratio:

Radeon HD 6670 ~110 MHash/s - 50W
Radeon HD 6790 ~190 MHash/s - 150W
Radeon HD 6850 ~210 MHash/s - 127W
Radeon HD 6870 ~280 MHash/s - 151W
Radeon HD 6950 ~310 MHash/s - 200W
Radeon HD 6970 ~370 MHash/s - 250W
Radeon HD 6990 ~690 Mhash/s - 375W

Full hardware comparison list for Bitcoin mining with all GPU and CPU performance data you can find on wiki page. When you determine your mining speed in MHash per second value go to Bitcoin GPU hardware mining calculator and calculate how much money you will earn running your mining rig for week or month.