Monitoring mobile ATI & nVidia Video Card Temps - Do your temps worry you?

Do you want to monitor the CPU, HDD, and GPU temps in your notebook??
Last Updated: 2007-05-25

I have been recently more aware of the dangers of heat in notebooks because of recent posts and my own videocard overheating. Since a Clevo (as well as other ODMs and OEMs) does not supply us end-users with software level monitoring, I am glad that programs such as RivaTuner can get the job done by going low-level to detect and monitor our GPUs. Now I can monitor the GPU temps while gaming or benchmarking. (check out my examples at the end)

This guide is for those that want to know their notebooks temperatures (CPU, Hard Drive(s), and especially the video card). It will also be very useful for troubleshooting.

Therefore here is how to monitor your notebook's temps

For Video Card GPU temp monitoring:
Requirements:
- Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit)
- NVIDIA NV4, NV5, NV10, NV11, NV15, NV17, NV18, NV20, NV25, NV28, NV30, NV31, NV34, NV35, NV36, NV38, NV40, NV41, NV44, NV44A, NV48, G70, G71, G72, G73 or G80 GPU
- Note: mobile nVidia cards seem to have a higher success rate for this guide... I'll update when I can figure out why not the ATI's
- ATI R200, RV250, RV280, R300, RV350, R350, RV360, R360, RV370, RV380, R420, RV410, R423, R430, R480, RV515, R520, RV530, RV560, RV570, R580 or R580+ VPU based display adapter.
- And RivaTuner 2.01 (from Guru3d.com)

1) Download and install RivaTuner 2.01. Run the program.


2) First you want to go to the Settings tab. Then check the Send the to tray on close, Run at windows startup (via Startup registry key).
Note: This is optional if you want to enable RivaTuner to startup automatically.


3) Go back to Main tab. Click the Customize button for pull-down menu. Then click the Hardware monitoring button (the 5th button with the chip and magnifying glass)
Note: If you do not see the icon, then you should revert back to an older set of drivers.


4) This will bring up the Hardware Monitoring window. Click on the Setup button on the bottom right of the window.


5) Now you are in the Setup window. In the Data Sources section on the bottom, you want to uncheck everything except for the Core Temperature. And then hit the Apply button.
( Optional: i'll cover this in a bit... you also check the Framerate if you want to see framerates during your gaming)


6) Now highlight Core Temperature and then hit the Setup button.


7) Now you are in the Core Temperature setup window.
Optional Note: You might have to come back to this window to OFFSET the temp value. (Don't worry about it now)
-Under the Tray icon settings, you want to CHECK both items.
-Under the On-Screen display settings, now go CHECK the Show core temp in on-screen display. And then hit the Run Server button. Then click OK.
Note: the server that you have started is what is monitoring your temps, framerates, and whatever else you might want to enable.


8) (Optional) You can now do the same procedure with Framerate monitoring... as well as any other items.
Like before in the Hardware monitoring setup window, CHECK the Framerate option and hit Apply button.


9) (Optional) Hightlight the Framerate option, and then hit the Setup button.


10) (Optional) Now you are in the Framerate setup window.
Under the Tray icon settings, you want to CHECK both items.
Under the On-Screen display settings, now go CHECK the Show core temp in on-screen display. And then hit the Run Server button. Then click OK.
Note: the Run Setup button should be greyed out because it as already been started when you were setting up the Core Temp.


Hit OK to close the Hardware monitoring setup window.

You're done with the setup now.

10) Close the RivaTuner window (it should minimize into the Tray).
Now you should see only the Hardware Monitor window left (DON'T CLOSE IT).

And the RivaTuner Server icon in the bottom (it has a little green arrow) & the temp of your GPU.


Now you are done!!!

You can open a game or 3D benchmark now to see the GPU temp on the upperleft of the screen (and other enabled options that you have chosen).
Don't worry this program takes up very little resources, so you shouldn't notice a performance loss. (much better than FRAPS for framerate monitoring)

These MUST REMAIN OPENED and functional in order to monitor your selected options. (being in the taskbar still means that its open)

You can just resize it into a small window and stick it in a corner while you're gaming or benchmarking.
This is the smallest that it can get resized:


______________________________________________________________________

What if your GPU temp is incorrect (too low or too high) ?!?
Note: you want to OFFSET the temp to get it a positive Core Temp.

Rule of thumb for mobile GPU core temps that I have noticed is:

Note: all of the following is assuming at room temp (no Air Conditioning on)
At Idle (auto fan speed):
59-60 C Degrees

At Idle (fan speed at max... Clevo notebooks have this function):
48-52 C Degrees

(Temps at full load are varied on GPU type and notebook designs)

So OFFSET your GPU temp to get it near the Idle temps given.

The Main Point: is to know the limit of your GPU temp and to be aware if it gets beyond that point.


____________________________________________
(Optional) NOTE: If you want the RivaTuner Statistics Server to startup with Windows:
1) Go to the START menu > Programs > RivaTuner v2.0 RC 16
2) Right click the RivaTuner Statistics Server link and hit COPY.


3) Then go the START menu > Programs > Startup folder (right-click on this and hit OPEN)
4) Then you can PASTE the link into this folder (by right-clicking in the folder and choosing PASTE -OR- go to Edit and choose PASTE)


Thats it!!!

So when you startup your PC now, both RivaTuner icons will be in the taskbar for you. Just single-click the RivaTuner icon (the one without the green arrow) to open the program.... and then Click the Customize button for pull-down menu. Then click the Hardware monitoring button (the 5th button with the chip and magnifying glass). Then close RivaTuner window to hide it back into the taskbar.


Now your monitor window will be opened and you can start gaming.
____________________________________________________________
Examples:

3DMark06 (monitoring GPU temp & Framerate enabled)


Unreal Tournament 2004 (only monitoring GPU Temp)


Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (only monitoring GPU Temp)


Note: The reason why I only enabled GPU Temp monitoring on UT2004 and Oblivion is because the Framerate wasn't detected, where value stayed at 0.0 FPS during gameplay. I'm not sure why, but its no big deal because these games already have built in FPS monitoring already through console commands.
_________________________________________________________________

For CPU and Hard Drive temp monitoring:
Requirements:
- Windows 2000/XP and Vista (32-bit)
- Microsoft's .NET Framework Version 2.0
- And Notebook Hardware Control

This program has compatibility with all notebooks, including new Core 2 Duo's.
Note: make sure to remove older versions of NHC before installing a newer version.




You can monitor CPU temps, HDD temps, Battery Life, CPU clock speed, as well as configure videocard power settings.

There is no guide needed for this program since it is very simple to use. If you want a guide made, just ask me and I'll update this post.


Hope this helps,

Game On People,
-Gophn

 

Awesome tutorial Gophn, I'll be testing this on my own Clevo (which I have never been able to see the GPU temperature on before).

You might want to resize those two large pictures so we don't have to horizontally scroll. I have a 1280x1024 screen and they extend about 1/3 out of my browser.

Thanks for taking the time and effort to put this together.

EDIT: Hm, I don't have the magnifying glass option unfortunately :-\ Any ideas?

 

thanks for the suggestion, fixing it now

 

Chaz,

I'm not sure why you have that option missing. Your notebook has ATI R410 (X700) in it. It should be compatible with RivaTuner. It might be drivers.

If its not Drivers, then I would try the previous release:

RivaTuner 2.0 RC 15.8

-Gophn

 

I dont have the magnifying glass button either, Chaz. Maybe the x700 in the Clevos is really lacking a temp sensor.

 

If that was to be the case, then that would.. suck!!

But that is highly probable if more than one person with the same notebook has the same result.

Sorry I couldnt help any further.

 

Chaz and I have speculated that the clevo x700 doesnt have a temperature sensor before. We've both tried quite a few methods with no success.

 

Now I guess its not a speculation, RivaTuner is supposed to get as low-level as it can get.... for OC'ing, monitoring, fan control, etc.

Sorry guys, I am a bad quitter until I know that nothing else can be done.

 

It sucks. But lets see what else chaz might say before I abandon even more hope

 

UPDATE: The icon should still be there, because even if you do not have a temp sensor, you should at least be able to monitor framerate, core clocks, memory clocks, etc.

I am trying to figure out what is the in compatiblity through Guru3D right now.

Others have had similar issues and need to add a command line to the executable.

I hate quitting.

 

Heh heh, keep us posted then! I'm far too tired right now to try

Its 3AM here!

 

It unfortunate that there is no cpu tool out there to show the speed and temp by core and also the hdd temps individually. mobmeter is the only one i know that will do it and its aging fast....hopefully the guys at notebook hardware control will come up with something now that the dual cores have made it mainstream...

 

stupid reason for not wanting to talk to me... about RivaTuner issue with missing hardware monitoring option.

Quote from Guru3D rep: "Mobile chips are not supported."

Geez. So I am tryin to get a PM thing going with one of the original programmers about this now.

In the mean time...
Chaz, TwilightVampire, or any other Sager 5320 owner:

Try to downgrade to older drivers because thats what I was noticing with mine while I was playing with it, I used newest LaptopVideo2Go drivers were experience Rivatuner not detecting my GPU.

Keep me posted, and I'll do the same.

-Gophn

 

I'm using the Catalyst 6.3 Omega suite, they're not that new and I have not updated for some time because I can't overclock with any newer ones.

I'm going to download the older version of RivaTuner and see if that works - probably won't work, but quitting is not my game either.

 

Older version of Riva doesnt work either. I'm on the Omega 6.3's for the same reasons you are, Chaz.

 

That's a shame. I think we can sadly conclude that the Clevo M560A/Sager NP5320 lacks a temperature sensor on the GPU.
On a side note, I believe there is a new version of ATT out there but I haven't tried/looked for it yet; the only reason I would install it is to be able to jump to a newer release of video drivers and be able to overclock. One of these days I'll give it a go when I am bored enough . .

 

Try official Catalyst 6.5 and below drivers. (supposedly the new RivaTuner build incorporated them.)

And use the lastest RivaTuner 2.0 RC 16.

Now i want to have a 5320 in front of me, would make things much simpler to test with.

Thanks for the continuing efforts.

-Gophn

P.S. I am working with the scripting for RivaTuner now, trying to figure out the commands and soft-mods through it.

 

Gophn, I copied your thread into the Guides forum so more people can see it, it's also here in the Sager forum.
"Legal" cross-posting.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81690

 

awesome, thanks Chaz

 

Great article Gophn.

I went through the steps and got it to work but it reports a -154C temperature.

I'm running a 7900GTX on forceware 84.78. Rivatuner says its reading these temps from an onboard diode. Any ideas?

 

I would offset the temp by adding 100 C degrees.

If you are at idle, you card should be similar to mine.... which is around 50-55C.

If I put my fans to max (Fn+F2), it goes down to about 45-47C.

During heavy gaming (ex. Oblivion, Ghost Recon) it goes up to 80C.. with fans on max.

Hope this helps to give you the idea of the temps,

-Gophn

 

That sounds about right. When I idle my temps are around -154C so they are ~54C.
I was playing F.E.A.R for about 20 mins last night and when I closed out and opened riva tuner to see GPU temp it was around -143C and then started going down to -154C again. I set my fans to full, btw.

Thanks Gophn.

 

Wait, this doesn't sound right. I used an offset of 100C and then loaded up F.E.A.R and played for about a half hour. The temperature stayed at a rock solid -45C. That is 10C hotter than my baseline of -55C (since we are dealing with negatives). Which would put my real temp, I'm guessing, at 65C. This can't be right. You said your GPU heats up to 80C with fans on max and when gaming. I don't have Oblivion to test if it is game dependent. I'm sure Oblivion taxes those GPU transistors more than F.E.A.R, but I don't think it would be significant enough to cause a 15C temperature difference.

 

Whoops sorry my math wasnt good in the last post.

you want to offset the temp to get it into the positive Temp.

So since you have -154 C, you want to offset by adding 200 C...
therefore making it +46C.

46 C degrees is more like the idle temp.

I said 100 last time, sorry, didnt double check.

Hope the helps,
-Gophn

 

I initally set an offset of 200 and thought that +46C was too low for a 7900GTX idle temperature. Oh, well. Cooler than I originally thought.

 

Update: For folks that have installed RivaTuner and DO NOT see the Hardware Monitoring icon, it is very possible that that particular video card might not be fully supported... especially when its a mobile videocard because the manufacturer might have stripped certain sensors and monitoring options. Its unfortunate if you have a videocard that isnt fully supported, but RivaTuner has many more functions than what I have shown here, especially fan control speeds for those that don't own Clevo notebooks (which has a Fn+F2 command to max the fans speeds).

For good news, here are some snapshots that I have taken while playing Battlefield 2142 Demo (freakin 1.1 Gigs for this). You can see that RivaTuner temp monitor on top left of screen.





Game On People,
-Gophn

P.S. I am still working with RivaTuner to figure out more useful things to make guides for.

 

Ok took some suggestions, and modified the guide to include Startup options for easy monitoring with ease.

Please give me feedback if it still needs work.

Thanks,
-Gophn

 

UPDATE

RivaTuner 2.0 RC16.1 released!
Details of this new update

a lot of new updates, compatibilities, and fixes

If you had issues with the recent release, then try this out.

-Gophn

 

Anyone knows about the ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 if that is supported? I cant seem to get it working

 

I'm discovering that RivaTuner has more compatiblity with nVidia cards than ATI... especially when we are talking about mobile GPUs.

I'm still figuring a way around it for notebooks with ATI cards, desktop ATI cards seem fine when I do it on them.

-Gophn

 

Great post, thanks.

 

So on a Clevo, when one is gaming heavily..what would you consider "red zone" temps to be?

 

for pretty much all gaming notebooks, the GPU danger temps would be considered the 3-digit Celcius (100 degrees) to be the danger zone. But I have not reach that yet, I only max out around 90-92 degrees so far while gaming for 4-5 hours straight... (Oblivion).

I know that the 7900's (7900 GS, GTX or 7950 GTX) run a little cooler and so far havent heard it running past 90 degrees.

 

i know on my 9750, if your GPU temp hits 85C, it will start throttling back and lagging your graphics so keep it under this magic mark with the Fn+F2 and also keep the underneath vents clean...

 

any programs to monitor cpu temp in vista?
I keep getting the error with Notebook Hardware Control:

ERROR! -> Could not load the NHC driver!

 

NHC works fine in Vista,

you have to remember the following:
- you must have .NET Framework 2.0 installed before using it
- if you have issues, then get the bug fix patch on the site

 

I always turn my fans on high manually when I play a game. I use closed headphones for gaming so the fan sound doesn't bother me. I tend to be paranoid about heat so thats what I do.

Besides, heat is bad and degrades the life of your components.

 

Thats exactly what I think as well.

I also do not mind the fans on max, its not annoying at all.

 

works on vista?

 

yes.

If the temp monitor does not come up, then the drivers are not compatible with RivaTuner.

FYI: RivaTuner seems to have the best success with NVIDIA cards... especially if its for notebooks.

 

Hmmmm my CPU speed keeps switching from 998mhz to 1900+ mhz?? Why is this happening..i put to maximum performance and this happens. I thought my cpu is 2.oghz core 2 duo

 

Thats perfectly normal for notebook CPUs.

When a notebook is on and you are doing casual stuff (web browsing, typing, etc..), its CPU clock is at around 1000mhz [to conserve battery] until you do something more CPU demanding (gaming, video converting, etc..)... then it dynamically switches into the full clock speed.

 

juz tot id share a program ive been using to monitor my dell cpu,hd n gpu temp its call I8kfanGUI from http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html and it only works with dell laptops hope tis helps.. cheerz!

 

Hi, I have a D900k but the HD temp is not shown, any ideas? (I have configured my HDs as RAID 0)

 

Welcome to the NBR Forums.

Ok... I will tell you that RAID arrays are NOT normal in notebooks.

so Notebook Hardware Control will not show the temps for the HDDs.

But that is not important at all.

The HDD(s) are the components that should be the least prone to heat damage in a high-end notebook environment compared to the CPU, GPU... even the RAM to a point.

I just use NHC to monitor CPU temps and batterylife. Thats all you really need.

I just RivaTuner for the GPU temps.

I would also recommend to use the Fn+F2 command to toggle the fans to go to Max Speed (from Auto) when you are gaming and stuff.

 

Is it possible to "sticky" this guide?

There are a few guides that I think are very useful. I'm trying to find the battery life one as well. Chaz also did a nice one on CPU cooling.

 

no need to sticky this guide, its already in the Dummy Guides section.

 

I skimmed through the thread and didn't see anything about dual cards. I have SLI enabled in Vista Premium 64. I have set up Riva Tuner and have monitoring for Core, Core 0 and Core 1. Only the Core monitor is showing a temp/fluctuations. The other 2 are stuck at 0.

 

My Asus G2S-A1 has a gpu temp of 70 c normally.when i play games it moves up to around 74 c-80 c. I am using riva tuner for viewing the temp.please advise me are these temp are OK???? My gfx is 8600m GT.

 

i am actually using the modded driver from laptopvideo2go.com. My driver version is 162.18 which known the best and highest bechmark driver for 8600m GT.Is there any link of overclocking????? i mean is the driver overclocking my gfx or stuff like that?