How To: Display on screen information (Temp, FPS, etc) in-game using RivaTuner

This is a tutorial for using RivaTuner to display pertinent on screen statistics while gaming. Most useful for most of us will be FPS and temperature, but core MHz may be of use for some who suffer from downclocking and/or stuttering issues.

First, download RivaTuner from Guru3D's website. Install as normal. It may ask you on initial start if you want to activate the monitoring plugins, say yes.

After installation and opening, you should see a screen like this. Click the little triangle by Customize.



Next you will want to set up the plugins to display the fields you want. The initial Hardware Monitoring screen will likely display some different fields, since this is mine after I've configured it to show what I want.



You will want to click the large Setup button on the bottom right. The next screenshot shows what the screen will look like, I've scrolled down to Core Temperature as an example.



Highlight Core Temperature and click "Setup", this takes you to the individual setup for this monitoring field. Any time later on you can access this directly from the monitoring graphs by right clicking a graph and selecting Setup.



Under "On-screen display settings", select "Show core temperature in on screen display." I personally check "Show temperature in tray icon" also since I like to know what I'm idling at during general usage. You will also configure the FPS field the same way, but I don't show this in a tray icon. If you want to know what MHz your card is running at during a game, do the same for Core clock, or memory clock, or both. When done hit OK to get back to the hardware monitoring graphs.

After this is configured, you should a little orange RivaTuner icon next to the items you configured.



Click on the icon. If all goes well after starting the server, you should see the orange icon disappear from the hardware graph, and show up in your system tray. Right click on the system tray icon and select "Show". It will bring up a screen that looks like this: (It may have opened directly right away for some of you)



Things I changed were were to turn 'Show On-Screen Display' to "ON" (If not already), set Application detection level to 'High', played around with the zoom (This changes the size of the on screen display in-game), and changed the default color of the display to the bright green dot you see in the bottom right. Using the plus sign on the bottom left I also added all my game executables just in case it didn't detect them. This should be considered optional and done as needed. When finished, hit the down arrow to minimize to tray.

Final step is to test it out in game. Here is a sample of what it looks like on my system playing Mirror's Edge:



If you have any questions, suggestions, etc, feel free to post. Hopefully this will be as useful to you all as it is to me.

 

Do you recommend RivaTuner over FRAPS? If the former takes up less HDD space and runs more efficiently than the latter I might consider doing a switch.

Thanks for the tutorial, it's clear and not difficult to understand and follow.

 

I guess you beat Gophn to it

 

thats a nice guide, quite easy to follow, should help someone new to rivatuner.
+rep

 

Fraps can't display core temperature, clock speeds, or anything other than FPS. That's why I recommend Rivatuner; it's all bundled into one program.

 

That's cool. Any compatibility problems I have to worry about?

 

LOL.

Thanks for the mention.

AHEM......

The OTHER RivaTuner Guide here on NBR.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

... I guess if you someone else has made a guide, I do not have to update mine...

 

Wonder if it works for dual cards, thats what I really need.

But the real question is "Will it blend??"

 

I'm fairly sure it will display temperatures for each card individually, although I haven't tested it myself.

 

Great guide here (+ rep)

I am seriously considering this, beacuse I hate having to hit Alt + Tab, to bring up HWmonitor, each time I want to check temps when gaming

I may try this at a later time, because schoolwork is keeping me busy, but I have definitely bookmarked this page

Great Job

 

In the time it takes you to Alt + Tab your temps are likely to have dropped by 5-10C. Even something so simple as respawning in TF2 drops my temps 6C.

 

Yes it does.

 

I just tried this and it works perfectly. I have it only displaying GPU temperature and FPS in game. This is essential and great for those who overclock their GPU's. I no longer need to run fraps in game now too.

 

Exactly... It can show any info for each card (temps, frecuencies [especially usefull if your getting stutering so you can check if it's powermizer downclocking your card(s)], voltages, etc) also, if you have EVEREST, it can show Cpu info (temps for each core, and both combined, etc)...

And it uses really low resources...

 

Thanks for that info

I didn't know the temp readout could change this fast

I'm am definitely trying this out

Great Job

 

I feel like an idiot right now, I've followed all the instructions on the guide yet the monitoring program refuses to work despite adding all of the executable files to the server. I'm playing Beyond Good and Evil and there isn't anything showing up on the top-left corner of my screen when I'm playing the game.

 

Without seeing your settings it's hard to pinpoint where the problem might be...

 

GPU smoke. Don't breathe this.

 

I have trouble taking screenshots so I'll describe everything in words:

Hardware monitoring setup has framerate and several of the core monitoring options ticked for tray tooltip, icon and OSD. All of the ticked options have the tray icon settings ticked and the option for "Show framerate in on-screen display" is ticked. Both BGE.exe and checkapplication.exe are included in the statistics server application profile list, application detection level is set to high.

Considering that the statistics I want show up when playing NWN1, I see no reason why Beyond Good and Evil can't do the same.

 

Yeah mine doesnt work either i have tried doing this before with no luck, Do i have to keep rivatuner open as well as the server or just the server? and is there anyway to keep the temp on my taskbar without that stupid graph open at the same time??

 

Just close the graphs and it'll stay listed in your taskbar whether the statistics server is running or not.

Harleyquin07,

Sounds like a game issue... do you also have game detection set to high?

 

Yes I did, like I said everything works as expected for NWN1 but not for Beyond Good and Evil.

 

Just curious, I'm getting the server you're hosting the images Logo in place of all of your pictures, not sure if you knew this or if it's just me.

Aedaric