TechPowerUp has finally added hotspot temperature monitoring to GPU-Z months after other popular tools such as HWMonitor, HWiNFO, and AIDA64 added support for Blackwell's hotspot sensor. Patch notes for the latest version of GPU-Z, 2.71.0 have added RTX 50 series hotspot sensor monitoring and hotspot monitoring for the GDDR7 memory modules on Blackwell GPUs.
The app also features a plethora of other updates and bug fixes, including a new overclocking readout interface in the overclocking tab for NVIDIA GPUs that reports XBAR, SYS video clock, and boost lock status. PCIe bandwidth can now be measured in GB/s on NVIDIA GPUs through the addition of a new sensor. Support for several new GPUs has also been added, including the unreleased RTX 4070 10GB and Steam Machine's custom RDNA 3 GPU.
When Blackwell first arrived, NVIDIA put an artificial block on the RTX 50 series hotspot sensor through NVAPI, preventing customers and even its own AIB partners from seeing the hotspot temperature of its Blackwell GPUs for unknown reasons. Months after the RTX 50 series' initial release, a repair technician found a method to return the hotspot temperature back to Blackwell GPUs by modifying NVIDIA's proprietary internal diagnostic software.
Since the discovery, multiple PC hardware monitoring programs have reintroduced hotspot temperature monitoring for RTX 50 series GPUs using this mod. There are a few exceptions, however: overclocking tools made by AIB partners, such as MSI Afterburner, can't incorporate the mod due to their close ties to NVIDIA.
We have already seen cases where having the hotspot temperature readout working on RTX 50 series graphics cards helped resolve overheating problems on some customers' cards. One such case involved a Colorful RTX 5090D which had a hotspot temperature of 106.3C under load, despite the normal GPU temperature readout being 30+ degrees lower. If the user didn't have the hotspot temperature readout, they would have never known their GPU was overheating.
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Which RTX 50 series cards does GPU-Z v2.71.0 support for hotspot and memory temperature monitoring?
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TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.71.0 patch notes:
- Added GeForce 50 Hot Spot thermal sensor and the hottest memory chip is also reported (tooltip shows all memory chip temperatures)
- Added an "overclocking" readout on the advanced tab for NVIDIA, reporting OC frequencies, including XBAR, SYS, video clock and boost lock status
- Added support for reading NVIDIA SYS, L2 and Video clocks. These can be enabled in sensor settings, they are disabled by default
- Added a sensor that reports PCI-Express bandwidth throughput numbers in GB/s for NVIDIA GPUs
- When a sensor is not logged to file, its dropdown arrow on the sensors tab will be grayed out
- Fixed NVIDIA GP102 transistor count
- Fixed LPDDR5X memory detection on Intel Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake
- Fixed LPDDR5 frequency on Intel Alder Lake
- Fixed memory bandwidth reporting on some DDR5 systems
- Fixed Qualcomm Adreno 726 unit counts
- Added support for NVIDA RTX 5060 (GB205), RTX 4070 10 GB, RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server, H100 PCIe variant, Tesla V100-SXM2-16GB variant, P102-101
- Added support for AMD Steam Machine GPU and Radeon PRO V710 (second variant)
- Added support for Intel Panther Lake, Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake H (285H, 265H, 255H, 235H, 225H), RPL-H Refresh (240H, 210H), Twin Lake (N355, N350, N250, N150)
- Added support for Qualcomm Snapdragon X2-90, X2-85, X2-45
