- The MSI Afterburner tool is getting a feature to overclock RTX 5000 GPUs in new ways
- It’ll allow for memory voltage and auxiliary voltage to be pushed up, which isn’t currently possible
- While it’s only for MSI GPUs to begin with, other card makers will hopefully follow suit
The developer of a popular utility for overclocking graphics cards is improving the software to allow for bigger performance boosts to be potentially achieved – albeit only for future RTX 5000 GPUs.
This is the MSI Afterburner app – which despite the official affiliation with the graphics card maker MSI, works with a range of GPUs – and developer Alexey Nicolaychuk has revealed the next step forward for the tool.
As Tom’s Hardware reports, Afterburner is getting ‘triple channel voltage control’ as explained by Nicolaychuk in a post on the Guru3D forums.
What this means exactly is pretty techy and involved, but in a nutshell, the move will allow those using the tool to ramp up more than just the core voltage of the Nvidia GPU (which is all you can do currently).
The new functionality will enable enthusiasts to juice up memory voltage and auxiliary voltage, too, and doing so unlocks further possibilities in pushing ever faster frame rates in the best PC games.
The developer is currently testing this feature behind closed doors in a beta of MSI Afterburner which should be released soon enough.
There’s a catch, though, and as Nicolaychuk explains, this extra overclocking capability will be limited to “future MSI 50×0 graphics cards”, so just MSI models of RTX 5000 GPUs. And not existing boards, either, only MSI models going forward which swerve around restrictions Nvidia’s put in place with default voltage controls.
As the developer explains, triple channel voltage control “won’t work on current reference design 5080/5090 cards because Nvidia locked access to such PWM controllers there”. (PWM stands for Pulse Width Modulation and it controls the speed at which cooling fans are spinning).
So, that’s going to leave most PC gamers out in the cold – at least for now, but there’s hope that situation will change.
Analysis: disappointment for some gamers – but hopefully other card makers will bring in support
The ability to overclock the graphics card’s memory (VRAM) could usher in considerable gains, and this is the most exciting prospect here. Furthermore, Afterburner is also enabling a boost for core voltage control, which will boast a higher possible offset (100mV versus 20mV currently). How much difference that might realistically make is unclear, though.
Suffice it to say that this could mean some considerable performance uplifts for those who are willing to tinker with their GPU. The main catch is the limited application of this functionality – it’s just MSI’s RTX 5000 models to begin with, as noted, but that could change.
The developer expects that future GPUs aside from MSI boards could play nice with triple channel voltage control, provided that other manufacturers don’t stick to Nvidia’s restrictions in terms of the reference design as outlined above, and follow MSI’s lead.
Of course, it remains unknown whether other graphics card makers will bother, but with any luck, those selling higher-end boards designed for overclockers – with beefy cooling solutions – may act to enable this functionality. After all, it’s an attractive addition for enthusiast overclockers who pay a lot of money for an Nvidia RTX 5080 or RTX 5090.
MSI Afterburner continues to make steady progress, and the tool recently brought in support for RX 9000 graphics cards, albeit unofficially, as MSI don’t make those, so couldn’t supply the developer. Nicolaychuk had to buy a PowerColor board to bring in support – as the dev joked at the time, MSI Afterburner is also a bit PowerColor Afterburner now.
