Question about GPU-Z for developers

[winuser]

Hello

I have question to developers of "GPU-Z". My question is, how you are gathering information about GPU clocks and VRAM clock ? I am using C++. WMI is not providing such detailed information about graphics card. Windows API too. I know that, on ATI cards i can use their SDK, but what about nVidia or Intel ?
Maybe this is not right forums, for posting questions like this, if so, please move that to another forum.

If someone can help me out, it will be blessed.

Regards !

 

[W1zzard]

aside from using various SDKs, you can call the graphics driver or read the information you want directly from the gpu.

both approaches require to disassemble software/drivers/bios to understand how things work and how to replicate what they do.
linux sources can often be useful when starting out

 

[winuser]

You want to say that there is no "legal" way to do this ? I'm dissapointed..

 

[W1zzard]

You want to say that there is no "legal" way to do this ? I'm dissapointed..

define legal.

no there is no easy way. you could write a universal sdk for all graphics cards and all operating system and open source it, that would offer an easy way

 

[winuser]

AMD is providing good SDK for their devices. I can read GPU clocks without any problems. This is "legal" way for me. nVidia can offer nvAPI, but no clocks info.

 

[W1zzard]

nvapi has clocks info too, just not in the public version

amd adl might be discontinued, not sure .. there haven't been any updates for almost 2 years now

 

[winuser]

Yes, I know. They need to sign the NDA. But how can I get nvapi? To whom to write to learn about the NDA? Have you any contact information ?

 

[W1zzard]

i'm not getting any information from nvidia, and i don't have a developer nda with them so i can't help you. check developer.nvidia.com maybe there is some contact info there

 

[qubit]

@winuser

I can't help you beyond what W1zz said, but I can understand why you want an official public API for this. It's the only way to reasonably guarantee stable operation of your application over many product and operating system revisions over time. Also, it's easier to maintain and it's guaranteed to avoid any potential lawsuits over reverse engineering.

I do wonder why they hold basic stuff like this close to their chest and it's hardly a technical challenge to provide this info. One could suppose that perhaps it's so that they are the only supplier of these kinds of apps, but that just seems petty and pointless to me, as it actually reduces interest in their product, not increase it.