What's a good CPU Monitoring Utility?

[life626]

Hi,

I just installed a AMD Phenom II x4 925 processor. I have Speedfan 4.40, is that good enough? I have it on a Arctic Silver 5 with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro 92mm heat sink and I want to monitor the temperatures as I run Prim95.

Thanks,

Life626

 

[someguynamedmatt]

I really prefer CPUID HWMonitor. It's a lot simplet, cleaner, and seems to be slightly more accurate. That's just my opinion, though, and you can download it here:

ftp://ftp.cpuid.com/hwmonitor/hwmonitor_1.16-setup.exe

http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.16-setup.exe

 

[wolfram23]

HWMonitor is really good, but I like Real Temp as well. Real Temp seems to have slightly different (possibly more accurate) temps than HW but it also shows realtime CPU speed.

 

[life626]

I just pulled up task manager and HWMonitor and they only show I have two cores running. Do you know why that is?

 

[ekoostik]

Run msconfig.exe (System Configuration). Go to the Boot tab. Click the Advanced Options button. Is the "Number of processors" checkbox checked? If so, uncheck it.

If it is not checked, then go into your BIOS and make sure that all cores are enabled.

 

[life626]

Run msconfig.exe (System Configuration). Go to the Boot tab. Click the Advanced Options button. Is the "Number of processors" checkbox checked? If so, uncheck it.

If it is not checked, then go into your BIOS and make sure that all cores are enabled.

Bingo! That did it, I went were you told me and it was checked, so I unchecked it restarted my computer and now I see all four in both windows task manager and HW Monitor. I really appreciate your help! It was something so simple but yet so difficult. You just have to know what to do.

Thanks!

 

[life626]

Best answer selected by Life626.

 

[life626]

@someguynamedmatt

Thanks for the link, I'll be using the program more. I really just wanted a confirming source to speedfan and didn't know what program was good.

@Wolfram23

I'll have to try that one, especially if I decide to do any overclocking.

 

[ekoostik]

Glad that worked for you. I'm not sure what causes it but it's amazing, to me anyway, how often people run into that.

I like RealTemp too. It's a little cleaner when all you want is temp info. Although personally the first time I check temps in a while or on a new system I run two programs to watch for consistency. Which it sounds like is what you're doing, comparing SpeedFan to HWMonitor. Any wide variation between two programs, and I grab a third.

RealTemp link: http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

 

[life626]

I will get the RealTemp then. Mainly because, like you said, HWMonitor has a lot of info when you just want to have the temp.

Side note. I have turned on Prim95 and my processor is only getting to 40C. It has been about 35 min of testing. I only have a Arctic Freezer 64 Pro on it! And a Antec 900 case with Arctic Silver 5, I suppose that might help a little.

Update: The RealTemp is only a Intel monitoring program, I just found that out.

 

[ekoostik]

Update: The RealTemp is only a Intel monitoring program, I just found that out.

Thanks for passing that on. I wasn't aware.