katimon is a GUI for monitoring and controlling ATI Graphics Cards that support the OverDrive feature.

It was originally developed as a program to auto-adjust the fan speed of an EAH4870 which was very loud. Since then it evolved into a GUI front-end for some of the aticonfig command line utility capabilities.

The program is written in python and uses PyQT4, PyKDE4 and PyQwt. It can:

• Monitor and auto-adjust the fan speed based on temperature readings.
• Display core and memory speeds.
• Display graphs of temperature, fan speed, gpu usage and core speed.
• Notify when temperature exceeds a limit (read bellow!).
• Overclock the graphics card.

Just when the program was developed the fan of the graphics card stopped working. It seems that this was the case for many owners of Asus EAH 4870 graphics cards. The problem seemed to be on the controlling circuit and not on the fan.

This made the card reach its upper limit (about 110 celcius) and stop functioning. I was lucky to use the computer when it happened and immediately turn it off. Judging from how hot the graphics card was, a fire could be started (!) if any cables were touching gpu heatsink.

If you have such a graphics card expect your fan to fail during the first 6 months and get yourself a third party cooler/fan like the "Accelero twin turbo" from Arctic Cooling (which btw is quiet). Don't go for RMA since reports say that returned cards look like used and fail too. One person did this 2 times and all 3 cards failed.

The above two paragraphs may have saved you 2-3 hours of googling.