These are benchmarks of Bitcoin mining hardware. GPU's outperform CPU's by a large margin, then FPGA's outperformed GPU's and now ASICs (programs on a chip) absolutely kill everything else. Look at Xtreme Miner's "The Lion" specifically. It's only going to (alegedly) be available in Jan/Feb time, but the benchmarks they're claiming are scary.
Also there are some very very large ASIC data center deployments being worked on in China with some fairly innovative stuff like teflon shelves to avoid rack/rails and innovative cooling systems all designed to provide higher ROI per watt and capital invested. China really seems to be leading the field in mining.
Also keep in mind that as coins dry up they will be replaced by you collecting transaction fees. So it's not all about getting coins.
If I were to start mining today, and I believed Feathercoin and other smaller variants have promise (which I do) I would buy a dedicated ASIC box that can do SCrypt hashing (keep in mind you'll need more memory than dedicated ASICs for BTC) and give that a shot. With Bitcoin you're up against some very serious players at this point and the fact that ASIC boxes have a bigger advantage with Bitcoin than they do with Litecoin or Feathercoin makes it less attractive.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
These are benchmarks of Bitcoin mining hardware. GPU's outperform CPU's by a large margin, then FPGA's outperformed GPU's and now ASICs (programs on a chip) absolutely kill everything else. Look at Xtreme Miner's "The Lion" specifically. It's only going to (alegedly) be available in Jan/Feb time, but the benchmarks they're claiming are scary.
Also there are some very very large ASIC data center deployments being worked on in China with some fairly innovative stuff like teflon shelves to avoid rack/rails and innovative cooling systems all designed to provide higher ROI per watt and capital invested. China really seems to be leading the field in mining.
Also keep in mind that as coins dry up they will be replaced by you collecting transaction fees. So it's not all about getting coins.
If I were to start mining today, and I believed Feathercoin and other smaller variants have promise (which I do) I would buy a dedicated ASIC box that can do SCrypt hashing (keep in mind you'll need more memory than dedicated ASICs for BTC) and give that a shot. With Bitcoin you're up against some very serious players at this point and the fact that ASIC boxes have a bigger advantage with Bitcoin than they do with Litecoin or Feathercoin makes it less attractive.