FinalWire have released another new version update to their highly acclaimed AIDA64 system information and benchmark suite, following quick on the heels of a v1.7 which was released not too long ago, bringing it to v1.8. If you raising an eyebrow, wondering exactly who FinalWire are, and what AIDA64 is... Well it's actually less confusing then you might think! If you have ever used or seen the program EVEREST, then AIDA64 will look very familiar to you as it is the successor to that great program of yesteryear.

We personally use AIDA64 for many tasks, which despite the numerals in its name is fully x86 compatible, as well as x64. I personally have been using the SenorPanel feature for a few months now (incorporated into v1.7) to monitoring for all sorts of system components and I/O connections, be that temperatures or speeds. It isn't quite as fancy as FinalWire's template (which can be found here) but it gets the job done! I was actually about to do a writeup on some of the (perhaps) lesser known features of AIDA, such as the SensorPanel, but it would appear as though that is already brought to light through the Press release :)

Aside from improvements to and an official release for the SensorPanel feature, they also have given it quite an upgrade under the hood. The biggest features being support for the Bulldozer and AVX benchmarks, but also optimization for VIAs recent Nano Quad Core. Here's the official PR:

AIDA64 Summer Update

SensorPanel

A brand new, highly customizable hardware monitoring module to display temperatures, fan speeds, voltages, currents, clock speeds, and various other system details on a graphical panel on the Windows Desktop.

Support for the upcoming AMD Bulldozer and Llano processors

AIDA64 CPUID Panel, Cache & Memory Benchmark panel, System Stability Test, and all memory and processor benchmarks are now fully optimized for the upcoming AMD FX-Series “Bulldozer” processors, and A-Series “Llano” desktop and mobile APUs. Detailed chipset information for AMD 970, 990X, 990FX, and A75 “Hudson-D3” Fusion Controller Hub.

FMA4 and XOP optimized 64-bit benchmarks and System Stability Test

FPU Julia and FPU Mandel benchmarks utilize FMA4 extensions of AMD Bulldozer processors. CPU Hash benchmark is now optimized for AMD Bulldozer using XOP instructions. System Stability Test module has also been enhanced to put even more stress on the system using FMA4 optimizations.

Optimized benchmarks for VIA QuadCore processor

All 64-bit AIDA64 benchmarks are now fully optimized for the latest VIA QuadCore and Nano processors. Chipset information is now available for the latest VIA platform controllers, VN1000 and VX900. For legacy processors all benchmarks and the System Stability Test are available in 32-bit version as well.

Support for the latest graphics technologies

Graphics processor and GPGPU details, temperature and cooling fan monitoring for the latest GPUs: AMD Radeon HD 6970M, nVIDIA GeForce 410M, nVIDIA GeForce GT 520M/545, nVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M, nVIDIA Quadro 7000. Exhaustive Direc3D and OpenGL video card capabilities detection with DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 support.

Rivatuner OSD Server support

Hardware monitoring values (temperatures, fan speeds, voltages) can now be exposed to Rivatuner’s OSD Server feature via RTSSSharedMemoryV2 shared memory. Rivatuner OSD Server is capable of displaying those values on an OSD in full-screen 3D games.