Monitoring on a whole new level
To complement the nForce control panel's vast array of overclocking and hardware tweaking options, Nvidia has created an all-new hardware monitoring app that keeps tabs on system variables tied to standard and ESA components. The monitoring tool has a fancy 3D interface that uses OpenGL and is about as sexy as any system monitoring tool we've seen.

System components are presented on a virtual Lazy Susan that users can spin by clicking on the various 3D icons. Below each we find a series of individual monitoring windows that track variables associated with the given component.

Spinning the Wheel of Components probably isn't the most efficient way to monitor system variables, but it's very slick, and provides users with numerous customization options.

This 3D interface pops up when you load the system monitor for the first time, and it serves as a library of sorts that catalogs all variables being monitored. Most users will only want to keep track of a subset of these variables, and doing so is as easy as double-clicking individual monitoring windows. Selected windows move over to a secondary interface that drops spinning 3D icons in favor of a less obtrusive display.

Individual monitoring windows can be spread throughout the Windows desktop and even banished from the screen with a hot-key combination. Each window provides real-time tracking of the variable associated with it, and you can expand the windows to display little graphs that track variables over time.

Even the little graphs can be customized, allowing users to select from an array of colors for each window. Unfortunately, there's no "snap to" feature that allows one to line up the individual display windows easily.

Instead, one can drag and drop windows on top of each other to create groups. Graphs associated with each display window are grouped automatically, as well, although it's not possible to combine multiple variables on a single graph.

One can, however, set individual preferences for each graph, including a polling frequency and an alert threshold. The latter is particularly useful for monitoring system temperatures.

When an alert is activated, the monitoring window turns red and starts flashing. It's a little touch, really, but a nice one to have.

Speaking of little touches, users can also control the transparency of monitoring windows, allowing monitoring to blend seamlessly into a desktop landscape.

Perhaps more valuable is the monitoring utility's logging capability. Every variable being tracked is eligible for logging, and Nvidia has managed to keep CPU utilization under 1% (on a Core 2 Duo E6850) with even the tightest polling frequency. Variables are logged to an XML file that can be viewed in any web browser and imported into Excel for further manipulation or graphing.