MSI Afterburner basically consists of two panes, up/down or left/right depending on what skin you use (change it under settings > user interface). Modern GPUs such as Turing, Pascal, Polaris or Vega will not run at maximum clocks constantly but change over time, just like processors. By default, a real-time temperature graph is drawn below the gauges and you will also see clock changes in real time. There’s an assortment of controls and gauges in Afterburner that you should get to know first. Furmark, for stability and stress testing.

What makes Afterburner a good choice is that MSI has included some additional useful features, such as an OSD overlay and logging. You don’t need an MSI graphics card to use the tool, it should work with any brand. You could also try EVGA Precision (Nvidia only) or Asus GPU Tweak (or still others), but we will use Afterburner in this guide. MSI Afterburner is one of the best options and works with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Overclocking software optionsįirst you need to download the tools of the trade. Although it is very uncommon for hardware to be damaged from overclocking, you do it at your own risk. So it’s obvious that you can get some additional value out of your GPU investment by overclocking. All GPUs are individually different – some will go a lot higher than others even with the exact same chip, card and cooling.ĭo note that overclocking is not entirely risk-free. It’s impossible to know exactly how much extra performance you can get out of overclocking, but up to a 15% performance increase is not unheard of.

Overclocking other components such as the CPU or RAM makes very little difference to your frame rate (FPS) in comparison. If you’re a gamer, there is no more effective way of boosting your frame rates than overclocking your GPU, short of buying a new one. With tools such as MSI Afterburner, anyone can overclock their graphics card in a few simple steps. Squeezing some extra performance out of your GPU investment is not particularly difficult.

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