nvgpumon – Nvidia GPU Performance Monitor for Windows 7 x64

Posted on by acme

Have you been looking for a performance monitor tool for your brand new and expensive Nvidia graphics card, and didn’t find anything working for a Windows 7 x64 system? Me either 😉

Even the brand new GPU-z tool, available in version 0.3.8 (as of 1st December, 2009) doesn’t show a graph on my Windows 7 x64. See picture to the right.

But I’ve coded a tiny tool, which is able to monitor your Nvidia GPU. It’s pretty much alpha, but it shows a graph, which is the utilization of your GPU (1.0-gpu_idle).

It’s bleeding alpha, so it’s more or less a feasibility study. But already now it can be a help, if you want to know whether your card is going some e.g. CUDA work, like Badaboom, or stuff.

I’m planing to extend the feature set, add will likely add a few functionalities, like

  • rop_busy
  • geom_busy
  • shader_busy
  • texture_busy
  • savable loggin
  • temperature
  • bigger history >150 values

nvgpumon-1
Prerequisites:
You need to install Nvidias NVPerfKit first. Download it here:

Download:

Inststallation:
No installation is required. Just ensure “Instrumentation” is ENABLED from your NvPerfKit. MD5 checksum will follow. Use a virus scanner, if you don’t trust this site.

Troubleshooting:

  • If NVPMinit report anything else, that “0“, then the NVPerfKit isn’t installed properly or is disabled.
  • This code is really only for Windows 7 x64, it won’t run on anything else. There are working monitor tools available for other Windows versions, use them.
  • If feedback reflects a demand for other platforms, I’ll rethink the build process.

10 thoughts on “nvgpumon – Nvidia GPU Performance Monitor for Windows 7 x64”

  1. great 🙂 Can’t wait to test this when I get home. May I suggest also developing this as a background app (like everest, speedfan) or even better, as a desktop gadget, it’ll be much more useful to keep running all the time that way.

  2. @Psy-Blade
    Hold your horses 😉 I’m coming from Linux – and don’t know much about Windows – not yet.

    The first very ugly step is in my eyes to purge the necessity of installing this very heavy (almost 50MB) NVPerkKit. Then I plan to get rid of the Debug data. In other words – I’d like brush it up a bit.

    I don’t know everest, neither I dunno speedfan, but it’s a great help for me to know what is worth looking at. I stumbled upon RivaTuner, and liked the performance graphs very much. Unfortunately they don’t work for Windows 7 x64.
    So – be patient – more to come…

  3. Hi,
    now that GPU-z 0.38 is released it is already a working solution for Windows 7 x64, no?
    Note they also add Memory utilization and Video engine functionality..
    I think they use NVAPI (by the way it not needs any extra installs as it ships in drivers (x32,x64)).. i think they are using NDA version with features introduce in 195
    NDA version is very hard to get, I’m not able to get it..

    Thanks
    I don’t know if you know but the PerfKit API is avaiable for Linux so you could get working on Linux..
    the problem is that uses driver before GT200 release so you could test only on Ubuntu 8.04 and G80,G9x cards..

    Also I’m trying to do and OpenCL benchmark test and would be awesome to have overlay reporting GPU utilization
    So could you please your code for testing it..

  4. @oscar
    Thanks for the hints. But also the new GPU-z doesn’t show a performance graph.
    Concerning the development plants, it’s hard to say for me, when I will have a bit more time to do it. Hopefully around xmas.

  5. it didnt work for me

    i have installed perfkit and enabled instrumentation
    using 8800gt 195.81 drivers on 7x 64

    keeping crashing nvgpumon-0.1.exe

  6. Same here.Installed perfkit.Enabled.
    The tool is crashing when i open it.
    8600 GT Win 7 x64 latest nvidia drivers.

  7. @benq;@Marius
    Hm, strange. Unfortunatelely I do only have one System, wher e I can test it, and this is a GT260.
    But I didn’t test it against 192.81.
    Anyway, thanks a lot for your feedbacks.
    As soon as I find a bit time, i’ll have look in to it.

    Regards,
    Andreas

  8. Crashing
    Win 7 x64
    GTS 250
    Lastest nvidia driver
    –
    System.IO.FileNotFoundException
    –
    Trying to Open/Read something that doesnt exists?

  9. Either this error is due to the G92b revision of your GPU (it’s not a GT200), or NVPerfKit isn’t installed.

    But of course, honestly, it could be something completely different.
    I’m afraid also to say, that I’m atm not up to it any longer. Maybe again in fall or winter this year.

    Thanks for your feedback anyway.

  10. Won’t start. When I try to run the NVIDIA Developers Control Panel to check to see if “Instrumentation” is enabled I get a Warning message, “Failed to initialize NVPerfKit, please make sure you are running on an NVIDIA Instrumented Driver. I’m running V296.10 on a GeForce GTS450.

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