I pulled out the GIGABYTE GTX260 SOC and pushed in the ZOTAC GTX285 AMP!.
The GPU of the GTX285 is running much hotter.

I use EVGA Precision X v4.2.0.2143 for the GPU card fan control,
because with the BIOS fan control the chip is running too hot, ambient 18°C, autom. fan 50%, GPU 90°C.
The tool use continuously 2% CPU (4% CPU-thread) time of my Intel Core2 Duo E7600 (WinXP 32bit).
After 24 hours this is 1h CPU time usage. Less time for SAH tasks. :-(

Is this normal?
Is there a tool out there which use less CPU time for just fan control (O/C function not required)?

Thanks.

[EDIT: Additional infos added.]

* Best regards! :-) * Philip J. Fry, team seti.international founder. * Optimize your PC for higher RAC. * SETI@home needs your help. *

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You could set the fan speed to specific value and just leave it.

For example. My gtx 460 runs the fan at 35% max speed, I think it bumps it up when the temperature reaches 80 or 90ºC. I set the fan speed to 45% and disable automatic adjustments, so the fan stays at 45% no matter what is going on.

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I have been using MSI Afterburner for a while, after having trouble with more than one alternative.

At the moment my main host has been up for about 4 days, and has accumulated 30 minutes of claimed CPU time on Afterburner. Process Lasso asserts that since startup Afterburner has averaged 0.07% CPU use. So not at all negligible, but possibly a useful amount less than you are seeing. This host is a quad-core running hyperthreaded, but with only one BOINC CPU task running, so CPU time accounting may vary a bit from what you'd see on another host.

I actually use Afterburner to get one "tick" of GPU downclock, which seems to give me more reliable operation for this particular sample of a GTX660 on this host mostly running Einstein Perseus Arm Survey.

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I use MSI Afterburner on a Q6600 running an HD 7770 that does all Einstein. In 4 days 18 hours (since last reboot), it is showing 8.127 seconds of CPU time in Process Explorer. I only use it to control fan speed based on the running temperature of the card, which is probably what the OP would also be doing, so it probably doesn't need to intervene that often. For that kind of use, it seems pretty low overhead to me.

-Dave

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If I may share, the ASUS 7950 TOP I have came with an ASUS Utility suite I uninstalled because of the large "footprint" it used and the bios updates were a pita. I went back to a utility I've been using for years called "Speed Fan" and once the fan control parameters are set, does a great job. Additionally, the footprint used is miles less than what ASUS offered as I too, had no use for the OC function of the utility. Good Luck

Wes

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Try EVGA Precision X.

Like the others mentioned, it will control your GPU fan. Generally speaking, it will default to a higher fan speed than the BIOS (thus running the card cooler).

If you find that inadequate, it also has a feature where you can specify the fan curve (% fan at various temperatures), so you can boost the fan speed at various temperatures even further.

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I use SIV64 (System Information Viewer) which provides basic fan control as one of its perks for basically showing you absolutely every parameter of your PC's software and hardware environment. I simply set the desired Temp setpoint on my two GPU's and SIV64 adjusts the fan speed to regulate to that desired setpoint. I have set 65 degrees C as the setpoint which is a balance between fan noise and absolutely no errors. The developer, Ray, is constantly updating it to handle the ever increasing list of new hardware platforms.

http://rh-software.com/

Cheers, Keith

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I use SIV64 (System Information Viewer) which provides basic fan control as one of its perks for basically showing you absolutely every parameter of your PC's software and hardware environment. I simply set the desired Temp setpoint on my two GPU's and SIV64 adjusts the fan speed to regulate to that desired setpoint. I have set 65 degrees C as the setpoint which is a balance between fan noise and absolutely no errors. The developer, Ray, is constantly updating it to handle the ever increasing list of new hardware platforms.

http://rh-software.com/

Cheers, Keith

After reading all the glowing reviews of SIV, I finally tried it last week. Imagine my surprise when it showed my cpu fan at 0 RPM when FanSpeed showing it at 1k RPM.

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I use on linux the NVIDIA provided X-server settings tool. *Set GPU fan to 90%. One time at boot during BOINC start script. No CPU cycles for fan control after that.

I know that the two of my Asus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II fan (ball?)bearings will fail - hopefully just in under 2 years . The EU/FIN standard warranty for consumer electronics.

90% setting - Loud? Yes.

The machine has its side panel open. Nice humming. Cancels out all disturbing noise from other rooms with the help of Corsair H-100 and half a dozen of Noctua fans + the Antec P280 built-in fans. What a peace/piece.

I'm glad I didn't install the RAM cooler fans for my 4x2Gb G.Skill DDR3-2200 CL7 RAM modules and as another plus the 3ware SAS 9750-4i caching RAID controller has no fan.

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To overcome Heisenbergs:
"You can't always get what you want / but if you try sometimes you just might find / you get what you need." -- Rolling Stones