Latest MSI Afterburner Betas & Updates  

You can try setting HWinfow to open in the background/taskbar.
Unless you have the HWinfo window open it shouldn't really use any resources.

Unwinder has posted a new quick video on using the new overlay option like you would Aida64's sensor panel and keep it on the desktop, without needing a game or 3D program to have it show up.
I know what I want to do this weekend.
It would be nice to only need one sensor program running in the background(RTSS & Afterburner) and not need Aida 64 too, specially when you can also add tons of stuff using the Windows Performance counter data provider.
(click to enlargen)

There were a few similar questions in comments of my previous videos, asking about displaying OSD on desktop. So DesktopOverlayHost helper tool has been added to RTSS 7.3.0 beta 6 SDK, it is very simple and completely open source blank 3D window with adjustable size, position, background color and chroma keying support. You may use it to get an impression of "desktop OSD" and display any overlay in it including third party ones, because implementation is overlay vendor agnostic. This small video demonstrates you the key principles of DesktopOverlayHost usage:

- Launching DesktopOverlayHost and configuring its window size/position
- Displaying RTSS overlay inside DesktopOverlayHost
- Configuring chroma keying and transparency
- Making DesktopOverlayHost transparent for mouse input, so you may display it on desktop while still beeing to access underlying icons
- Using application profiles to disable OSD inside 3D application. This way you may keep DesktopOverlayHost displayed on your secondary desktop while playing in fullscreen on your primary desktop without beeing disturbed by OSD
- Using DesktopOverlayHost to display third party overlays. EVGA Precision X1 as an example

So finished setting up my data sources and info I want.
Tomorrow I'll work on the personalization part, and start "Pimpifying My OSD"

@Unwinder and anyone else interested, I created a startup task so the desktop OSD/Overlay will run at boot time:
Desktop OSD.zip
Just unzip it and import it into Task Scheduler.

Well very slowly starting work on making my own RTSS OSD overlay.
so far made change to the overlay gauges .png file.(in C:\Program Files (x86)\RivaTuner Statistics Server\Plugins\Client\Overlays)

Before



Made a red version in GIMP


I gave them a 3D effect, and I'm curious if it'll work

I've got an unknown temp reading in my RTSS OSD. I've been through each one and the one I've circled is not in the list.

Cliff S said:

Well very slowly starting work on making my own RTSS OSD overlay.
so far made change to the overlay gauges .png file.(in C:\Program Files (x86)\RivaTuner Statistics Server\Plugins\Client\Overlays)

Before



Made a red version in GIMP


I gave them a 3D effect, and I'm curious if it'll work

Your clever Cliff. I should learn too.

Are your running HWinfo or Aida 64 with permissions to let other programs use it's data?
Example from Aida64: