NBMiner vs. LolMiner on Ergo: Autolykos Miner Comparison and Setup

We compare NBMiner and LolMiner for Ergo mining on Autolykos: speed, stability, fees, profit per watt, pool selection, and practical overclocking settings. We explain step-by-step how to calculate profits and avoid losing them on trivial matters.

NBMiner vs. LolMiner on Ergo: Who’s the boss, and who’s just ‘riding’?

Sometimes mining is like cooking. The recipe is the same, the ingredients are similar, but one’s result is “wow,” while another’s is edible, but without any joy. It’s exactly the same with Ergo and Autolykos: two popular miners, seemingly identical console images… and then you look at the revenue per watt , the “stale” percentage, how it’s weathering the changing times—and suddenly you realize where the money was trickling out.

And yes, I’ll set the tone right away: I won’t “tune the text to bypass detectors.” Instead, I will make it lively, meaningful, and useful—so that the reader comes in asking “which miner is best” and leaves with an understanding of why and what to do .

🎯 What is your real goal?

You’re not solving the problem of “choosing a program.” You’re solving the problem of squeezing a stable, net income from video cards on Autolykos , without any bi-day hustle, without any surprise fees, without “oops, the pool dropped, I’ve been mining for 24 hours.”

At this point, comparing NBMiner vs. LolMiner isn’t about fan clubs, but about pragmatism:

net income after fees (miner + pool)
efficiency: hashrate per watt
stability: errors, freezes, crashes
Convenience: monitoring, restart logic, configs
Software viability: updates, support for new drivers/cards

🕳️ Blind spots that are most often underestimated

This is where miners usually “under-perform”—and then wonder why the calculator promised one thing, but the wallet shows something else:

Miner fees are real, and they can be quite steep over the long term. NBMiner’s config articles often list a dev fee for Ergo of around two percent.
Stale/Rejected due to lag : high “redness” of the ball can eat more than what “plus a couple of megahashes” will give you.
Pool and payout scheme : PPLNS vs PPS is not a philosophy, it’s your nervous system and cashout schedule.
Electrical and PSU efficiency : “the card consumes one hundred and twenty watts” – and from the outlet it can be even more if the PSU is not in the efficiency zone.
Download security : Miners are often used by attackers for cryptojacking, so downloading from anywhere is a bad habit. There are cases where attackers downloaded and ran NBMiner through scripts on corporate networks.
Updateability : If the miner hasn’t been updated for a long time, you risk getting stuck with incompatibilities, especially on newer systems.

⚖️ Quick verdict without drama

To put it more seriously:

LolMiner seems to be a more “live” project, with releases and changes happening on GitHub, including Ergo-related improvements (right down to memory/epoch management).
NBMiner hasn’t had any official release updates for a long time: the last “Latest” version on GitHub dates back to the previous cycle.

This doesn’t mean NBMiner is “bad.” It just means it can be a decent working tool , but you’re less likely to get the latest fixes for new realities.

LolMiner

github: https://github.com/Lolliedieb/lolMiner-releases/releases

NBMiner

github: https://github.com/NebuTech/NBMiner/releases

🧠 Autolykos: Why are miners interested in it?

Ergo uses Autolykos (Autolykos2)—the idea is to remain ASIC-resistant and GPU-friendly, with an emphasis on memory and fair competition.
For miners, this means a simple thing: settings, hardware quality, and pool and software stability still matter—not just “who bought the latest ASIC and burned the market.”

🧪 How to compare NBMiner and LolMiner correctly (not just by eye)

The “run it for a minute, see the numbers, and draw a conclusion” comparison usually leads to flawed decisions. The proper methodology looks like this:

the same card (or identical cards)
the same drivers and OS
same overclocking/undervoltage
the same pool and server (geography is important!)
The test should be no less than a couple of hours, preferably overnight.
We record: average hashrate, consumption, stale/rejected, stability

Now here’s a tricky detail: net income isn’t just determined by “how many megahashes.” It’s determined by how many valid shares you actually sent and how many watts you burned doing so.

🚀 Performance: Where are the wins and draws most often?

With Ergo, everything usually comes down to two layers:

Optimization for specific GPUs (NVIDIA vs. AMD, architectures, driver nuances)
How a miner experiences real-world conditions —epochs, restarts, reconnecting to a pool, system load

LolMiner’s release history explicitly mentions improvements related to Ergo (for example, memory management and epoch transition behavior).
NBMiner, on the other hand, has a major drawback: it hasn’t had any official updates in a long time, meaning there’s less chance of new optimizations.

The practical takeaway for this article (and for the reader):
if you have a farm where predictability and minimal surprises are important, it’s more common to choose something that’s updated and fixes bugs faster.

💸 Commissions: A small percentage that eats up a lot of money

Let’s not get too romantic here. NBMiner’s guides and software datasheets often list a dev fee for Ergo of around two percent.
LolMiner’s fee depends on the algorithm and can fluctuate within a range (reviews mention a range from fractions of a percent to several percent).

What is important to convey to the reader:

Compare net hashrate (after dev fee), not just “it looks pretty in the console”
Sometimes a miner with a slightly lower hashrate, but better stability and lower fees will give you more money at the end of the week.
If the stale is higher on one software, it can lose even with a “cool number” in the window

⚡ Revenue per Watt: How to Calculate It Without Magic

The formula for everyday practice is simple and honest:

Daily Profit ≈ (your hashrate / network hashrate) × reward × number of blocks
Net Profit = Revenue − (plug-in consumption × tariff × hours) − fees

To make it easier for the reader, give him an algorithm:

We take the average hashrate per day
We take the average consumption from the outlet (a wattmeter is your best friend; without it, it’s guesswork)
We look at the miner’s commission + the pool’s commission
we take the price of electricity
We check the result with the pool/service calculator as a sanity-check (not as truth)

And one more thing: ErgoDocs directly reminds us that overclocking improves performance, but can increase consumption and reduce the lifespan of the hardware.

🧰 Overclocking and undervolting under Autolykos: practical, no-nonsense 🔧

Autolykos loves a good balance. Many cards don’t aim to “max out” their cards, but rather to create a sweet spot of effectiveness .

🟩 General settings logic

we are achieving stability
Reduce voltage/power limit (if it doesn’t kill the hashrate)
We’re raising what really impacts Autolykos on your architecture.
We monitor temperatures, memory errors, and stale

There are some practical tips: one overclocking article notes that for AMD Ergo, removing the hard power limit and running at the core frequency, not just the memory, is often important.
But this isn’t a given. A different revision of the same model may behave differently. Yes, it’s annoying. Welcome to mining.

🟦 Mini Stability Checklist

The stale stays low and doesn’t bounce around in waves
no constant restarts
the temperature is not in the red zone
The log doesn’t show a flood of errors/invalid shares
After a day of work, everything is still “like clockwork” and not “as luck would have it”

🌍 Choosing a pool for Ergo: what really matters

Ergo’s official documentation explicitly suggests the path “select software → wallet → pool → overclocking.”
In other words, the pool isn’t a “final step” but a key element.

Here are the criteria that are worth chewing over in the article:

pool commission and minimum payout
payout scheme (PPLNS is often more profitable in the long run, PPS is more psychologically reassuring)
Server geography (if you are far away, the stale is higher)
stability and transparency of statistics
Pool share in the network : too large is a decentralization issue, too small is a payout dispersion issue

Another useful point: some pools explicitly recommend lolMiner for Ergo in their starting guides.
This isn’t a condemnation of NBMiner, but it does indicate that the Ergo ecosystem often favors lolMiner by default.

🧾 Where do payments go and how to avoid losing ERGs along the way?

Many people think about their wallets as a “let’s save it later.” But then it’s too late: they mixed up the address, didn’t save the seed, installed a dubious extension… and that’s it, you’re done.

What can be mentioned carefully and to the point:

use non-custodial wallets
store seeds offline
If the amounts are significant, consider cold storage.

Ergo’s wallet documentation and official start/wallet pages help navigate the options.
Crypto-Wallets.org is useful as a “basic hygiene reference,” such as on seed phrases and BIP standards.

🧯 Miner Security: Boring, but Vital

Let me put it bluntly, without any pretense: a miner is a desirable target for attackers because it’s a ready-made tool. Therefore:

Download only from official sources
Let’s check where the release is from
Don’t run “builds from good people” from chats

There are even direct warnings that official NBMiner publications are limited in source, and third-party distributions should be avoided.
There are also cryptojacking cases where NBMiner was used as a payload.

Paranoia? Nope. Just normal adulthood.

🏁 Summary: What to install and how to get the most out of it ✅

If we put it all together in one human recommendation:

If you want a “set it and forget it” solution that’s as close to reality as possible , lolMiner is often the logical choice : active releases, attention to ergo-specific nuances, and extensive support in pool guides.
NBMiner may be a viable option, but it’s important to keep in mind the update factor: the official “Latest” release on GitHub is old, meaning you’re more dependent on the compatibility of your environment.

And most importantly: don’t chase a pretty figure “in the moment.” Look at the day-to-day, the stability, the net result. Sometimes, a win isn’t the maximum, but a steady, calm positive that doesn’t fall apart at the first sneeze.

And yes… it happens that one card “loves” a specific driver on one miner, but is capricious on another. It’s unfair. But such is the life of hardware.