MSI Afterburner Guide: Overclock, Undervolt, and Monitor

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MSI Afterburner is the go-to free tool for monitoring and tuning almost any GPU, regardless of brand. This guide covers everything a gamer needs: live monitoring, a custom fan curve, overclocking, undervolting, and an on-screen overlay for FPS and temps.

MSI Afterburner Guide: Overclock, Undervolt, and Monitor

Afterburner works on NVIDIA and AMD cards alike. It’s the Swiss-army knife of GPU tuning — and it’s free.

Install and set up

  1. Download MSI Afterburner from MSI’s official site (it bundles RivaTuner Statistics Server, which powers the overlay).
  2. Install both Afterburner and RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS).
  3. Launch Afterburner — you’ll see sliders for clocks, voltage, power, and fans.

The main controls

ControlWhat it does
Core ClockOffsets GPU clock for overclocking
Memory ClockOffsets VRAM clock
Power LimitRaises the power ceiling for higher boost
Temp LimitSets the thermal throttle point
Fan SpeedManual or custom curve
Voltage (Ctrl+F)Curve editor for undervolting

Set up the on-screen overlay (FPS + temps)

The overlay is one of Afterburner’s best features:

  1. Open Settings → Monitoring.
  2. Tick the stats you want (GPU temp, GPU usage, Framerate, CPU temp, RAM usage) and enable “Show in On-Screen Display” for each.
  3. Go to Settings → On-Screen Display and set a hotkey to toggle it.
  4. In-game, press the hotkey to see live FPS, temps, and usage — essential for diagnosing stutter and bottlenecks.

Build a custom fan curve

  1. Open Settings → Fan and enable user-defined software automatic fan control.
  2. Drag the curve so fans ramp earlier as temps rise — a cooler card boosts higher.
  3. Balance noise vs cooling to taste, then Apply.

Overclock safely

  1. Raise Power Limit to max first.
  2. Add small Core Clock offsets (e.g. +15 MHz steps), testing each with a benchmark.
  3. Then tune Memory Clock the same way.
  4. Back off when you see artifacts or crashes. Full method: Best GPU Overclock Guide for Gaming.

Undervolt with the curve editor

Press Ctrl + F to open the voltage/frequency curve and follow How to Undervolt Your GPU for cooler, quieter, more stable performance.

Save profiles and apply at startup

  1. Click the save icon and store your tuned settings to a profile slot.
  2. Enable “Apply overclocking at system startup” so it loads automatically.

MSI Afterburner does it all: monitor your GPU, run an FPS/temps overlay, set a fan curve, overclock, and undervolt — for free, on any card. Set up the overlay first, then tune clocks and voltage and save a startup profile.