Some observations and questions.

[Nalika]

Just gave HWiNFO32 3.51-748 a run and must say it's pretty cool. Must be a job and a half to keep up with all the different hardware around.

A couple of thoughts come to mind.

1. With the "Features" group in the system summary what about showing if the feature is enabled / disabled either through different color such as green/red or bold/regular or background color etc, while not available as grayed out as usual.

2. Graph temperature color change as DTS gets to 0. Something like 20-0=red, 30-20=yellow, 50-30=green and ??-50=blue? or make it configurable.

Is it possible to increase the sampling? I have noticed that on the i7 the core temperature can rise and fall by 20C in the space of 200ms, something that would probably be missed by the usual 1 second sampling. Do you think core thermal changes this quick are real or a side effect of core loading? What about PECI? I don't see anyone using it but it might be a better approach as IINM an average over time is taken and the hottest core given.

 

[Martin]

Thanks for your feedback.
Here are my answers:
1. This is a good idea, I'll put it into my queue
2. I don't understand this exactly. Do you mean to show the graph value with different color if it reaches a critical margin? I have in plan to add customizable thresholds for sensor values + alarms, but haven't got enough time to implement it yet.
3. Sampling would be possible to increase, but only for few types of sensors. However, a rise by 20C in just 200ms sounds a bit strange to me and I'm not sure if this is really possible under normal conditions and specifications.
4. PECI is not accessible by software, it's used only internally by HW between CPU and other components on the bus (PCH currently).

Just gave HWiNFO32 3.51-748 a run and must say it's pretty cool. Must be a job and a half to keep up with all the different hardware around.

A couple of thoughts come to mind.

1. With the "Features" group in the system summary what about showing if the feature is enabled / disabled either through different color such as green/red or bold/regular or background color etc, while not available as grayed out as usual.

2. Graph temperature color change as DTS gets to 0. Something like 20-0=red, 30-20=yellow, 50-30=green and ??-50=blue? or make it configurable.

Is it possible to increase the sampling? I have noticed that on the i7 the core temperature can rise and fall by 20C in the space of 200ms, something that would probably be missed by the usual 1 second sampling. Do you think core thermal changes this quick are real or a side effect of core loading? What about PECI? I don't see anyone using it but it might be a better approach as IINM an average over time is taken and the hottest core given.

 

[Nalika]

2. Okay, perhaps number 2 was not such a good idea :lol:

3. Maybe it's a bi-product of the lower idle temperatures being unreliable, don't know, the reading valid bit was always set. I tested by sampling at 10ms while briefly running linpack on one core. This even showed high temperature differential between cores, >25C between core 3 (loaded) and core 2 (idle) which was surprising. I could look into it some more but don't feel it's worth the effort.

4. I was hoping this information might be available through a suitable super I/O chip or maybe a PECI translator such as one of the maxim chips. If I could only get hold of a proper datasheet for the IT8720F.

 

[Martin]

You're right, that some SIO chips can act as PECI clients as well. I have the IT8720F datasheet and you can select there if the external temperature sensor is connected via PECI. So I assume in this mode it will report the CPU temperature via standard outputs.
However, it depends on mainboard manufacturer if they connect CPU PECI to SIO or PCH (which seems more likely to me for today's platforms ).

4. I was hoping this information might be available through a suitable super I/O chip or maybe a PECI translator such as one of the maxim chips. If I could only get hold of a proper datasheet for the IT8720F.

 

[Nalika]

Okay, the PECI / IT8720 wasn't hard to figure out and seems to work well even though there's a strong possibility I may be missing something important due to lack of PECI documentation. The extra psuedo resolution is so nice, I can even see the small temperature spikes each time your sensor program appears to poll for information hehe. Thanks for your help with the IT8720 doc, it made it all possible.

I have attached a gif showing PECI output sampling at ~16x per second and also the reported temperature difference between 2 cores while running Linpack for 15 seconds on one core and the other core fairly idle. I suppose a similar thing to PECI could be achieved by reading the MSRs and applying a filter but I feel interrogating this way on a sleeping core leads to noisy and possibly inaccurate readings, not that they are that accurate to begin with.

BTWFYI on my Gigabyte bd it seems the BIOS writers decided to take the Tj target value from the CPU, subtract ten and use that for the zero offsets for all three SIO sensors, PCH, CPU and mainboard ambient. LOL, I guess they don't consider it important enough to worry about. Who knows, maybe they're right.

 

[Nalika]

I see you added the color scheme to the features box, looks nice.

I was wondering if it went just a little further...

Grayed - Unsupported features
Black - Supported with no enable/disable function.
Green - Supported and enabled.
Bold Green - Supported, enabled and locked.
Red - Supported and disabled.
Bold Red - Supported, disabled and locked.

Or something like that.

Examples of possibly locked features would be VT-x and EIST. VT-x most likely being locked whether it's enabled or disabled.

 

[Martin]

Will think about it But I currently don't think there's a need to go that far..

I see you added the color scheme to the features box, looks nice.

I was wondering if it went just a little further...

Grayed - Unsupported features
Black - Supported with no enable/disable function.
Green - Supported and enabled.
Bold Green - Supported, enabled and locked.
Red - Supported and disabled.
Bold Red - Supported, disabled and locked.

Or something like that.

Examples of possibly locked features would be VT-x and EIST. VT-x most likely being locked whether it's enabled or disabled.

 

[NZ-Simplicity]

New guy here
One thing really jumped out at me when I first tried this great program, hows about the ability for it to remember where I want the sensor status window on-screen and the size that I want it.. - Having the sensor window pop up in the middle of the screen when I start windows is a pain as I have to move it to the right of my screen and re-size it to have all the info showing every time I load windows or restart the program.

One other tiny little thing I have noticed, if I double click the icon in the taskbar to bring up the main program window, there is no way to get it back to an icon just on the right, and that it also takes the sensor status window with it..

I know it might not seem important, but it would be nice

 

[Martin]

Good idea about the sensors window, I'll add this to my to-do list.
You're right about the minimized icon, I'll think about how to improve this...

New guy here
One thing really jumped out at me when I first tried this great program, hows about the ability for it to remember where I want the sensor status window on-screen and the size that I want it.. - Having the sensor window pop up in the middle of the screen when I start windows is a pain as I have to move it to the right of my screen and re-size it to have all the info showing every time I load windows or restart the program.

One other tiny little thing I have noticed, if I double click the icon in the taskbar to bring up the main program window, there is no way to get it back to an icon just on the right, and that it also takes the sensor status window with it..

I know it might not seem important, but it would be nice

 

[Martin]

I have added the preserving of Sensors window position and size. Watch out for the next release

New guy here
One thing really jumped out at me when I first tried this great program, hows about the ability for it to remember where I want the sensor status window on-screen and the size that I want it.. - Having the sensor window pop up in the middle of the screen when I start windows is a pain as I have to move it to the right of my screen and re-size it to have all the info showing every time I load windows or restart the program.

One other tiny little thing I have noticed, if I double click the icon in the taskbar to bring up the main program window, there is no way to get it back to an icon just on the right, and that it also takes the sensor status window with it..

I know it might not seem important, but it would be nice

 

[NZ-Simplicity]

Peeks into announcements... - hehe still 901.... I will be patient
But thank you in advance for that it will be great...

I do have another little idea, but want to take some screen shots before I post..

I have added the preserving of Sensors window position and size. Watch out for the next release