back when I used the gui in linux, I used the following often
to continually watch temps:
watch -n 2 aticonfig --adapter=all --odgt
to get one fanspeed:
DISPLAY=:0.3 aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get fanspeed 0"
to set one fan speed:
DISPLAY=:0.1 aticonfig --pplib-cmd "set fanspeed 0 70"
to get all fan speeds: (if you have 5970, ex: 0 2 4 6)
for i in 0 1 2 3 4; do DISPLAY=:0.$i aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get fanspeed 0"; done