Everyone thinks you need to monitor everything while playing, you don't need to monitor anything while playing. I don't use afterburner or px while playing, I just simply set my fan to 100% using nvidia inspector and away I go. You could try overclocking using nvidia inspector if afterburner and px are giving you an issue, you can download the latest version of nvidia inspector here.

bsmegreg
@Sajin
How do you play with your fans in turbine mode? Besides, 50%fan and 100% fan doesn't seem to change temps on my 970 and I would suppose other models would be similar with regard to that.

Noise cancelling headphones ftw. 

stalinx20
It's a PC. The software works or doesn't work, unfortunately. This may be the most general answer ever given, but it's the truth. It's one phoneominon that we are still trying to understand. How come one software works in this computer, but not this computer? My previous build was mostly EVGA, except for the PSU. And precision would just fail running while playing games, even video software. I had everything running correctly, but precision would just not run on that PC. on "this" computer, precision will run all day long with zero issues.
It could be from corrupt registry files to actual hardware issues.
If you're wanting to monitor your PC just use HWmonitor. Works great. And tells you temps on all your hardware.
 
What kind of video cards do you have? model wise?

This^.  I starting doing a fresh install on Windows a while back whenever changing any piece of hardware or a new 'control and monitor program' and have since not had any problems.  Not a big deal with a backup of files anyway and you can download an ISO with a majority of the latest updates (if not all) from Microsoft quite easily.  Some would say that is too big a pain, but I think it is less trouble than the issues that can constantly arise if I don't.

Junkyard_Dawg

Sajin
Everyone thinks you need to monitor everything while playing, you don't need to monitor anything while playing. I don't use afterburner or px while playing, I just simply set my fan to 100% using nvidia inspector and away I go. You could try overclocking using nvidia inspector if afterburner and px are giving you an issue, you can download the latest version of nvidia inspector .

 
Why do you actually want to have Precision X running while your in a game? I used to just set up the card the way I wanted and then closed the application. I agree with Sajin on this.

Well, others are able to have Precision work for them, like me, and i have a little overclock on them and with the custom fan curves. If the program works for you, why would you not use it?

Junkyard_Dawg

Sajin
Everyone thinks you need to monitor everything while playing, you don't need to monitor anything while playing. I don't use afterburner or px while playing, I just simply set my fan to 100% using nvidia inspector and away I go. You could try overclocking using nvidia inspector if afterburner and px are giving you an issue, you can download the latest version of nvidia inspector .

 
Why do you actually want to have Precision X running while your in a game? I used to just set up the card the way I wanted and then closed the application. I agree with Sajin on this.

I guess I was not completely clear.  I don't need to monitor anything while playing, but I do need to be able to set things up and be able to play.  Isn't the only way to setup a fan curve and/or overclock is with one of these software.  Again, I don't need to monitor things.  
 
When I setup things and shut the software down, the games don't run properly.  This is the issue for me.  I had to uninstall the software to get the games to run.  I need to setup a fan curve at the minimal, but can't since these won't coexist.
 
Thanks

stalinx20
I'm not familiar with Nvidia Inspector, but it should have one. Try using that if precision or afterburner are failing to run on your pc.

I will have to check it out.
 
Thanks

I haven't had much luck with Precision anymore always crashes. I switched back to Afterburner and all is well. I mainly monitor frame rates and temps in games. Since I custom watercool I like to keep an eye on my temps in case something goes wrong I can shut down before something happens. Has saved me once already when my pump somehow became disconnected and I watched my temps soar to 90c before shutting it down and fixing it.

You really don't "need" software to overclock your card. I spent a few hours modding my bios and testing things out. The end result was uninstalling AB because I did not need it anymore. I configured the bios to do everything for me. During Valley and Fire Strike loops, temps under load never went over 50C. I set up everything in the bios that would be needed by software. Voltage, core clock/memory clock freqs., temp limit, power limit and fan profile. All of these things, plus I didn't need to disable boost 2.0 this time around to stop vdroop and core throttling. I am honestly a very minimalistic person and lazy when it come to remembering to set stuff up before gaming(3 kids that are on the go 24/7+work+normal stuff=forgetful, when I actually get to sit down and try to game). I like it better this way , set it and forget about it. I can use nvidiaInspector or GPU-Z to monitor temps, if needed. Just my two cents, I hope this helps a little.
 
Here are results after uninstalling AB. Although very marginal, some performance increases.
http://www.3dmark.com/com.re/fs/4758527/fs/4756159

flexy123
If Precision of Afterburner "makes everything slow" you have a different, more general problem with your PC/OS. Something cannot be right. I am using Afterburner for YEARS, ever since I had my first Nvidia card. I consider it mandatory and it never caused any problem nor slowed down my PC.

It only did this with BF3 and no other game (Precision, not AB).  Once I stopped using it there were no more problems with BF3.  I've started using Nv Inspector with no problems with any games.

Methodical2

DeathAngel74
You really don't "need" software to overclock your card. I spent a few hours modding my bios and testing things out. The end result was uninstalling AB because I did not need it anymore. I configured the bios to do everything for me. During Valley and Fire Strike loops, temps under load never went over 50C. I set up everything in the bios that would be needed by software. Voltage, core clock/memory clock freqs., temp limit, power limit and fan profile. All of these things, plus I didn't need to disable boost 2.0 this time around to stop vdroop and core throttling. I am honestly a very minimalistic person and lazy when it come to remembering to set stuff up before gaming(3 kids that are on the go 24/7+work+normal stuff=forgetful, when I actually get to sit down and try to game). I like it better this way , set it and forget about it. I can use nvidiaInspector or GPU-Z to monitor temps, if needed. Just my two cents, I hope this helps a little.
 
Here are results after uninstalling AB. Although very marginal, some performance increases.
http://www.3dmark.com/com.re/fs/4758527/fs/4756159

 
How do you mod the BIOS?  What do you need to do this?  I'd like to check into this.
 
Thanks

I'm curious to this as well. I would like to check this out.