The Tool Desk
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What NviWatch does
NviWatch presents GPU telemetry in a terminal UI rather than a graphical desktop dashboard. According to the project README, it is written in Rust and accesses GPU information through NVML using the nvml_wrapper crate. Its documented metrics are temperature, utilization, memory use, and power consumption. It can also list GPU processes and terminate a selected process.
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The interface is aimed at people who want to inspect NVIDIA GPU activity from a terminal. It is software, not a hardware product, and it does not replace the NVIDIA driver or NVML.
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Requirements and installation options
The project lists NVML availability as a prerequisite. Its documentation does not establish a comprehensive compatibility matrix for GPU models, driver versions, Linux distributions, or other operating systems. Check the current repository instructions against your environment before relying on it.
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The README documents three ways to install or build NviWatch:
- Download a prebuilt Linux binary from the project’s releases.
- Install through Cargo with
cargo install nviwatch. - Build from source with Cargo, following the repository instructions.
For the exact release location and current build steps, use the NviWatch repository. The README says NVML must be available before running the application.
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Views, refresh timing, and keyboard controls
NviWatch documents a default view, bar-chart mode, and tabbed graph mode. The command-line options listed in its README include:
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute--watchsets the refresh interval in milliseconds; the documented default is 1000 ms.--bar-chartstarts the bar-chart view.--tabbed-graphsstarts the tabbed graph view.
The README lists these keyboard controls:
qquits the application.- Up and down arrows navigate the process list.
- Left and right arrows switch between GPU tabs.
xterminates the selected process.d,t, andbswitch view modes.
Because process termination can interrupt a workload, confirm that the selected process is safe to stop before using x.
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Optional InfluxDB streaming
NviWatch also documents optional streaming of metrics to InfluxDB for persistent storage and visualization. Its command-line configuration includes an InfluxDB URL, organization, bucket, and token. The project provides a setup script and describes a dashboard for memory utilization, GPU utilization, temperature, and power use. Follow the current repository guidance for configuration and security; do not reuse example credentials as deployment credentials.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the published performance figures show
The NviWatch README publishes a resource-use comparison conducted on a test system with 32 GB of RAM. It says NviWatch, nvtop, and gpustat were run with a 100 ms interval, while nvitop used 250 ms because that was its minimum. The figures below are the project’s own results, not independent measurements; the README does not identify when the benchmark was conducted.
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| Tool | CPU mean / maximum | Reported memory use |
|---|---|---|
| NviWatch | 0.28% / 10.0% | 18.26 MB |
| nvtop | 0.25% / 20.0% | 20.46 MB |
| nvitop | 0.88% / 10.0% | 41.07 MB |
| gpustat | 3.47% / 49.9% | 33.82 MB |
These results describe the particular conditions reported by the project; they do not establish which monitor will use fewer resources on another system or workload. The README also lists package-size figures—NviWatch 1.98 MB, nvitop 4.1 MB, gpustat 3.7 MB, and nvtop 106 KB—but says the values came from different methods: Python package sizing for the Python tools and apt show nvtop for nvtop’s installed size. They are not a like-for-like binary-size ranking.
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NVIDIA describes nvidia-smi as a command-line interface for interacting with and monitoring GPUs, with monitoring and daemon modes. DCGM is NVIDIA’s suite for managing and monitoring datacenter GPUs in cluster environments, including metrics and health data for monitoring and alerting.
NviWatch’s documented emphasis is an interactive terminal view of GPU metrics and processes, with optional metric streaming. The tools serve different contexts: nvidia-smi provides command-line reporting and interaction, while DCGM targets datacenter and cluster management. The available documentation does not support declaring one a universal winner; choose based on whether you need an interactive local view, command-line reporting, or fleet-level management and monitoring.
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