GPU Monitor is a handy Windows gadget that monitors your video card and provides a wide array of statistics straight on your desktop.

Although just a gadget, GPU Monitor impresses mostly thanks to the amount of information it offers, showing everything from fan and GPU load to temperature and memory.

This little utility comprises multiple graphs to help it in the task of delivering video card details, presenting temperature, fan, GPU load, used, free and total virtual memory in what could very well be considered a clumsy interface.

While we admit that GPU Monitor may only come in handy to experienced users, the options menu is pretty impressive, especially when taking into consideration that it's not an application per se, but just a simple Windows gadget.

It thus lets you pick the graphic adapter you wish to use, the window size (which is indeed a very handy option), the refresh rate, temperature units and alarm sounds. Furthermore, you can configure temperature graph ranges and its appearance settings, interface colors and logging.

Of course, it all takes just a few minutes to figure out how to use the gadget, but the first thing you should do is actually to change the size of the window and thus read the provided information easier.

Obviously, the fact that it's a gadget means that it runs exclusively on Windows Vista and 7 using the built-in support. On the other hand, that's a pretty good thing because the amount of resources it needs is very low.

As a conclusion, this is clearly one of the most useful gadgets we've ever seen and since it provides such a large amount of information, make sure to give it a try if you're in the market for a video card monitor.