MSi Afterburner is a free utility that lets you overclock, monitor, benchmark, and video capture. Regardless if you have an Nvidia or AMD-based GPU, MSI Afterburner works with all brands of graphics cards.
Afterburner gives you complete control over your hardware, lets you monitor in real-time, and it’s completely free. All important information including the GPU core clock, memory clock, temperature, voltage, and fan speed have a real-time on-screen-display monitor in games and real-time information in the Windows Tray Icon. All adjustments can be saved as profiles, and users can quickly switch to different settings with hotkeys.
Is it safe to overclock my GPU with MSI Afterburner?
Yes, MSI Afterburner will allow you to overclock your GPU without any hassle and it should be safe if you have some basic understanding of what overclocking means and what’s your GPU core clock and memory speeds.
Does MSI Afterburner work with integrated graphics?
No, integrated graphics won’t work with Afterburner. It will however work with any Nvidia and AMD GPUs, even in laptops.
Is MSI Afterburner better than Asus GPU Tweak?
Asus GPU Tweak lets you monitor and overclock your GPU as well, but it only works with Asus GPUs, while MSI Afterburner will work with any Nvidia and AMD GPU regardless of the brand.
MSI Afterburner for Android
You can use the MSI Afterburner for Android to monitor and overclock your machine from your Android device. To use the MSI Afterburner App you must have installed the MSI Afterburner Remote Server on your computer.
Install Instructions for MSI Afterburner Remote Server:
To access your machine from your Android device first download and install the Remote Server from the download links found here. Once you download the MSIAfterburnerRemoteServer.zip from TechSpot, extract the file to a folder and run MSIAfterburnerRemoteServer.exe. Once installed, it should appear in the system tray. Click on it and copy the bottom IP address shown (you will need it for the MSI Afterburner App).
Configuring the MSI Afterburner App:
After downloading the MSI Afterburner App for Android on your device and installing MSI Afterburner Remote Server on your computer, open the app and click on settings. In settings select ‘Host IP Address’ and enter the IP address you got from the MSI Afterburner Remote Server (it should be something like 192.168.101.22:82). Once you enter the IP Address your Android device will automatically connect to your personal computer.
Features
Afterburner has added Predator in-game video capture. Gamers can now capture all of their most intense moments in their favorite games and share them on YouTube.
Overclocking tools
Exploring and exceeding the limits of your graphics card might sound scary, but it’s actually easier than you think. Afterburner overclocking tools provide easy and precise access to your graphics card settings. While increasing your GPU’s clock frequency and voltage, the fan speed control will enable you to find the perfect balance between performance and temperature.
One-click Overclocking
OC Scanner is an automated function that will find the highest stable overclock settings for your card. Giving you a free performance boost for a smooth in-game experience thanks to higher FPS.
Custom Fan Profiles
Heat dissipation is an essential factor for graphics card performance. Afterburner lets you fully customize a predefined fan speed curve, allowing you to determine cooling performance all the way!
Video Capture
Share your greatest moments! With Predator, you can record your best performance in games or overclocking without missing a single frame. The Predator software supports the H.264 codec, multiple file formats (.WMV, .AVI), size and quality to capture your match winning frag, beating the game on hard or breaking a record in overclocking.
Hardware Monitor
The Hardware Monitor shows critical hardware information in real-time; temperature, usage, clock speed, and voltage. You can display selected information on-screen to keep an eye on key statistics while you are in game.
What’s New
MSI Afterburner Beta 4.6.6
- Ported to VC++ 2022 compiler. Please take a note that due to this change MSI Afterburner will no longer be able to start under Windows XP. Please stay on the previous versions of the product if you need this OS support
- Please take a note that size of mandatory VC++ 2022 runtime redistributables roughly doubled comparing to the previously used VC++ 2008 redistributables, and we’d like to avoid providing overblown application distributive, drastically increased in size due to bundling newer and much heavier VC++ redistributables with it. To deal with this issue we provide our own original tiny web installer for VC++ redistributables, which allowed decreasing the size of final application distributive drastically even comparing to the previous VC++ 2008 based version. Please take a note that install time can be increased slightly due to downloading VC++ 2022 runtimes redistributables on the fly during installation. If you install MSI Afterburner offline, you can always deploy required VC++ 2022 distributives later with web installer by launching .\Redist\VCRedistDeploy.bat
- Added voltage control support for AMD RADEON RX 7800XT series graphics cards
- Added some future NVIDIA GPU PCI DeviceIDs to hardware database
- Now MSI Afterburner reinitializes skin scaling engine on DPI scaling change events to prevent cases when GUI looks cut off in some cases (e.g. after switching between display resolutions with different DPI scaling settings)
- Fixed instances enumeration for some performance counters with no localized names (e.g. GPU related Windows performance counters) in PerfCounter.dll plugin
- Added experimental support for “Beta : Use Unicode UTF-8 for global language support” option enabled in administrative regional OS settings. Now each localization description file contains additional “Codepage” field, defining runtime ANSI to UTF8 conversion rule for selected language pack
- Seriously revamped German and Ukrainian localizations
- RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.3.5:
- New version’s changes list is huge, it includes more than 90 compatibility enhancements, changes and new features including programmable conditional layers support, PresentMon and NVIDIA Reflex integration
Final 4.6.5
- Added NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40×0 series graphics cards support
- Added voltage control support for GA103 and GDDR6x based versions of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
- Added AMD RADEON RX 7900 series graphics cards support
- Added total board power monitoring support for AMD RADEON RX 7900 series graphics cards
- Added some future AMD and NVIDIA GPU PCI DeviceIDs to hardware database
- Added Intel Arc GPUs support to hardware monitoring module. Please take a note that Intel Arc GPUs overclocking and tuning is currently not supported due to Intel hardware control API support limitation to x64 applications only
- Added experimental support for Intel 13th generation CPUs
- Added experimental support for AMD Ryzen 7xxx CPUs
- CPU usage data sources in hardware monitoring module have been switched to alternate implementation based on NtQuerySystemInformation(SystemProcessorIdleInformation), because traditional legacy idle time reporting in NtQuerySystemInformation(SystemProcessorPerformanceInformation) is broken in current Windows 11 22H2 builds
- Added workaround for broken fixed fan speed programming API (Overdrive 5 compatible fallback path) for old Overdrive 7 GCN GPUs on 22.5.2 and newer AMD drivers
- Added config file switch for disabling native reliability voltage control API on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9×0 series graphics cards and forcing legacy P-state 2.0 voltage control API usage on such hardware. Power users may use this switch to bypass voltage control lock on NVIDIA Maxwell series graphics cards on release 515 and newer drivers families
- Improved correction formula parser with data format conversion, rounding and min/max functions support
- Added OCMailbox based bus clock frequency monitoring for Skylake and newer Intel CPUs. Unlike traditional legacy timestamp clock based bus clock frequency estimations, OCMailbox provides support for overclocked BCLK monirtoring. Please take a note that access to OCMailbox is blocked by design of OS when HVCI is enabled
- Improved SMART.dll monitoring plugin. Added temperature monitoring support for NVMe devices, including the secondary controller temperature for some Samsung NVMe drives
- Default clock frequency limit of voltage/frequency curve editor window has been extended to 3.5GHz. Please take a note that you may still customize the limits via config file if necessary
- Update server location changed to new URL inside update checking system. Old update server location reached EOL
RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.3.4
- New version’s changes list is huge, it includes more than 100 compatibility enhancements, changes and new features. We continue improving OverlayEditor plugin and the most of improvements are related to it, we strongly recommend you to try it if you still use legacy MSI Afterburner’s On-Screen Display output functionality
- New version also includes upgraded DesktopOverlayHost utility, which can be used to display overlay right on your Windows desktop or on small external display mounted inside PC case similar to AIDA64’s SensorPanel
4.6.5 Beta 4
- Added new MSI Windows 11 themed skins (Light and Dark editions) by Drerex design
- Added voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON RX 6700 XT series graphics cards
- Added experimental support for Intel 11th generation CPUs
- Added experimental support for Intel 12th generation CPUs
- Added experimental support for mobile AMD Ryzen CPUs
- Fixed issue with missing memory temperature sensor on AMD RADEON 5700 / 5700 XT series graphics cards
- Fixed issue which could prevent MSI Afterburner from opening from tray via main application icon after accessing properties via clicking monitoring tray icon
- Increased memory overclocking limit for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30×0 series graphics cards
- Added workaround for internal DirectInput issue, which could cause hotkey handler to stop processing hotkeys correctly after locking/unlocking PC from keyboard with
+ + or+ . To bypass it MSI Afterburner is resetting hotkey handler state after lock screen transition now - Optimized monitoring profiles switching implementation for situations when profiles contain different sets of data sources displayed in monitoring tray icons
- Application tray icon is DPI aware now:
- OS level tray icons scaling is disabled now to prevent tray icon text distortion. Power users may revert back to the previous DPI unaware tray icon rendering mode via configuration file if necessary
- Added new bigger tray icon fonts for >=150% and >=200% DPI scaling ratios. Power users may also select tray icon font independently of selected DPI scaling ratio via configuration file if necessary
- Application installer is DPI aware now
- RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.3.3
4.6.5 Beta 2
- CPU usage sensors have been switched to alternate data source to bypass wrong CPU usage reporting on 22H2 due to broken idle times returned by NtQuerySystemInformation(SystemProcessorPerformanceInformation)
- Fan control tweak documented in this post, which allows bypassing recent fixed fan control API changes on Polaris, is now forcibly enabled on such cards with newer drivers.
- Added new AMD/NVIDIA PCI DeviceIDs to hardware database
- RTSS has been upgraded to 7.3.4 beta
- We switched update server to new URL in update checking system. Old update server location is reaching EOL in near future.
Afterburner 4.6.4
- Added new NVIDIA GPU to hardware database
- Added support for revised shared memory layout, introduced in RivaTuner Statistics Server v7.3.2 beta 4
- Minor improvements in tray icon monitoring implementation aimed to prevent monitoring tray icons blurring in high DPI modes
- RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.3.2 beta 5
- Added voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON RX 6700 XT series graphics cards
- Added experimental support for Intel 11th generation CPUs
- Added experimental support for mobile AMD Ryzen CPUs
- Fixed issue with missing memory temperature sensor on AMD RADEON 5700 / 5700 XT series graphics cards
- Increased memory overclocking limit for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30×0 series graphics cards
- Added voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON RX 6700 XT series graphics cards
- Added experimental support for Intel 11th generation CPUs
- Added experimental support for mobile AMD Ryzen CPUs
- Fixed issue with missing memory temperature sensor on AMD RADEON 5700 / 5700 XT series graphics cards
- Increased memory overclocking limit for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30×0 series graphics cards
- RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.3.2
Afterburner 4.6.3
- Added NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture support:
- Added new fan control 3.0 API support
- Added new integrated OC Scanner API support, please read below to get more information about new OC Scanner implementation
- Updated bundled MSI Overclocking Scanner application:
- Starting from 455.xx drivers family, NVIDIA OS Scanner is no longer implemented as a separate software component redistributed with each AIC partner’s overclocking software. Now NVIDIA OC Scanner is integrated into the driver and third party software can natively access it via NVAPI. Such implementation simplifies the process of OC Scanner maintenance for NVIDIA, it is no longer necessary to ship updated software components to AIC partners and re-release each partners’s software when something needs to be changed inside OC Scanner from NVIDIA side. MSI Overclocking Scanner supports both implementations of NVIDIA OC Scanner API:
- Old legacy implementation of NVIDIA OC Scanner via separate software components for NVIDIA Pascal and Turing architectures for pre-455.xx drivers family
- New integrated NVAPI based implementation of NVIDIA OC Scanner for 455.xx and newer NVIDIA display drivers
- New NVAPI based OC scanner implementation features the following changes and improvements:
- Automated overlocking support for both core and memory clocks
- OC Scanners’s results are now persistent. It means that once the scanning process succeeds, NVIDIA driver internally saves optimized voltage/frequency curve and overclocked memory clock and apply them as new system defaults after reboot, even if you close or uninstall overclocking application. Now there is new “Revert” button inside MSI Overclocking Scanner, which allows you to revert overclocked curve and memory clocks to their real defaults
- Manually adjusted clock/frequency curve stability testing functionality is deprecated and no longer available
- Added voltage control for reference design NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30×0 series graphic cards
- Added new MSI Ampere and Indigo skins by Drerex design
- Added experimental support for Intel 10th generation CPUs
- Added native NVAPI based implementation of absolute GPU power monitoring for NVIDIA GPUs
- Altered synchronization mutex name for AMD SNM registers access in AMD Ryzen temperature monitoring implementation
- Fixed abnormally high PCIE bus usage value monitored on NVIDIA GPUs after display driver crash and recovery or on Optimus
- platforms when discrete GPU is sleeping
- Added workaround for AMD driver bug causing short display flicker during applying new fan settings on some multi-monitor or
- single monitor high refresh rate display configurations
- Now MSI Afterburner is forcibly disabling Zero RPM when applying new fixed fan speed in order to bypass AMD driver bug
- preventing fan control from working when Zero RPM mode is enabled on some systems. If Zero RPM is working properly on your
- system and you still want to keep it enabled when adjusting fan speed, you may disable forcible Zero RPM override with power
- oriented switch in application configuration file
- ow MSI Afterburner is displaying the minimum allowed fan speed in software fan curve editor window on Overdrive 8 capable
- AMD GPUs. The latest AMD drivers will not allow you to set fan speed below this limit, that’s by design of driver
- AMD ADL components are loaded by absolute path now to prevent possible DLL hijacking
- Tightened IO driver access policy, the driver can no longer be accessed by users with no administrative rights
- RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.3.0. This version introduces plugins architecture and brand new visual overlay editor plugin, we strongly recommend you to try it if you’re advanced user and want to customize your OSD beyond the possibilities of MSI Afterburner’s internal OSD layout editor
Afterburner 4.6.2
- Added voltage control for reference design NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20×0 SUPER series graphic cards
- Added voltage control for AMD RADEON RX 5700 series graphics cards
- Added new MSI Steampunked, MSI Lightning Anniversary and MSI Mystic skins by Drerex design
- Improved hardware monitoring module:
- Added CPU temperature monitoring support for AMD Ryzen 3X00 processors family
- Added thermal offset for CPU temperature monitoring on AMD Ryzen Threadripper 29X0 processors family
- Added package CPU power and per-core CPU power monitoring for AMD Ryzen processors family
- Improved monitoring plugins architecture:
- Added API function for reading host application’s hardware monitoring timestamp from the plugins. The timestamp is updated by host on each hardware polling iteration, so it allows the plugin to precache and reuse some sensor data if the same physical sensor value is being used in multiple data sources exported by plugin. Such approach is demonstrated in updated CPU.dll plugin for duplicating the same temperature sensor value for all cores on AMD CPU
- Added optional plugin unititialization callback function, which is called by the host before unloading the plugins. New multithreaded Ping.dll plugin is demonstrating new function usage to shut down ping monitoring thread properly
- Improved monitoring plugins:
- Updated CPU.dll plugin is demonstrating AMD Ryzen CPU temperature monitoring implementation and optimal duplication of the same temperature sensor readback for all CPU cores
- Added new Ping.dll plugin for monitoring ping to desired server via ICMP echo requests. Please take a note that the plugin is configured to monitor ping to www.guru3d.com by default, it is up to you to specify target server name or IP address in the plugin properties
- Improved skin engine:
- Optimized skin rendering performance for skins using multiple overlapped animated indicators
- Added position smoothing support to skinned indicators
- Now skinned applications can forcibly disable indicator animation if necessary
- Skin format reference guide has been updated to v1.8 to document these changes
- Updated IO driver provides more secure MMIO and MSR access interface
- RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v7.2.3
Previous versions:
