LACT vs nvcontrol

LACT is a free, MIT-licensed Linux tool for controlling and monitoring AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPUs. It reports VBIOS, VRAM, hardware units, Resizable BAR status, and Vulkan features. Monitoring provides configurable historical charts for power, thermals, and frequency, plus throttling information and CSV export. Controls include power caps, AMD power states, GPU and VRAM clocks, and custom fan curves on AMD and Nvidia. Undervolting uses voltage offsets on AMD and VF curves on Nvidia. Profiles can activate according to running processes or gamemode status. A system service applies GPU configuration without depending on a graphical session and can run headless from a configuration file. LACT includes an OpenTelemetry metrics exporter and exposes a JSON API over a Unix socket or TCP. The TCP listener is disabled by default; remote TCP management has no authentication or encryption. Packages are listed for several Linux distributions, with Flatpak and Docker service-only options. Available controls vary by GPU generation, driver, and hardware.

nvcontrol is a free, open-source NVIDIA GPU settings manager for Linux designed for Wayland. It offers both a terminal dashboard and a GUI, with controls for digital vibrance, display color, VRR/G-SYNC, HDR, overclocking, fans, and power management. The project lists KDE Plasma, GNOME, Hyprland, Sway, and Pop!_OS COSMIC as supported compositors. Read-only diagnostics cover CUDA, Ollama, local AI/ML workload fit, and environment setup; CLI workflows can create support bundles with options to redact paths and identifiers. Listed GPU families are RTX 50, 40, 30, and 20 series, plus GTX 16 and 10 series, with support depending on drivers and hardware. Matching NVIDIA open modules and userland are required, and Linux kernel 6.6 or later is recommended. The driver guide identifies NVIDIA open driver 610 as its primary target and directs users of 590 and earlier to an older vibrance-compatible build. Installation instructions cover Arch Linux, Fedora/Nobara, Pop!_OS, Debian/Ubuntu, and source builds. Overclocking and voltage modification are experimental and may cause instability or hardware damage.