How to overclock graphics card using msi afterburner?

In this article we will teach you how to overclock your graphics card step by step. Many manufacturers offer their own graphics chipset management and overclocking applications, but there is a utility that has been the reference for years to take advantage of our investment in graphics chipsets and it is none other than MSI Afterburner.

This application works with the vast majority of graphics on the market, both AMD and Nvidia, and today we will explain a little how to take advantage of it and how to use other utilities that surround it and that complete all full functionality.

Index of contents

The keys to secure overclocking

Before starting to make any increase in the frequency of a graphics card, we have to be clear about certain concepts that, on the other hand, are very simple and respond to the pure logic of the operation of any electronic component.

The first is that the design and architecture of the chip, in this case our GPU, is the great determinant of the working frequencies they can achieve. This means that a graphics chipset, under normal conditions such as those that we all have in our personal use computer, there will be no great differences in performance or capacities within the same version.

On the other hand, and due to the lithography system with which modern processors are created, there are some chips within the same wafer, usually the most focused ones, which tend to have more quality than others and therefore may have some performance difference. between these different levels of quality, performance that in this case can be translated into supported working frequencies.

Every electronic component requires electricity to function and this necessary energy will also depend on its manufacturing process, the closer the transistors are to each other, the less energy they need, and will also depend on its complexity.

The more energy a graphics processor or any other chip needs, the more energy is transformed into heat, the more heat the processor emits the more cooling it needs. The warmer the less working frequencies it can support and the cooler it is, the more stable it will be and the higher frequencies it can support.

Design, energy and cooling are therefore the three pillars for quality overclocking and we will have to balance all of them based on our goals and, of course, the means we can put in place to achieve that goal.

The better our graphics card is cooled, the better our chipset is for overclocking and the more energy we can supply it, the higher the frequencies we can reach. Energy and cooling are undoubtedly the fundamental keys and to a large extent it will depend on the design that the manufacturer has made with our specific model.

Be that as it may, no graph is the same as another, so if you overclock it is best to set yourself achievable and logical objectives that allow us to enjoy more performance without putting our hardware at risk and without being a frustration represented in stability problems.

Frequency, voltage, power limit, target temperature, and fan operation

We are going to focus today on overclocking a Nvidia Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition graphics. These graphics cards, like almost all that we will find in the market for both Nvidia and AMD have four fundamental elements to balance their stable working frequency in turbo mode and in fact much of this data comes precisely from the introduction of the working frequencies. in turbo of modern graphics cards.

The turbo frequency of our card will depend on the temperature that we want it to withstand, in addition to the manufacturer's own working temperatures for each GPU and, of course, on the power that we want to supply to the card. As we said before, the more food, the more heat.

There are two basic frequencies that we can play using MSI Afterburner. The one with the GPU and the memories. We can play with both, but my advice is that we always start with one of them, the most effective in modern games is undoubtedly increasing the performance of the GPU, and when we have the stabilized frequency then we can start the tests to increase the frequency of the memory.

MSI Afterburner will show us six control dials in the center of its interface. It is with them that we can play to achieve our best overclock:

• Control of voltage (Core Voltage) in%: It allows to increase the voltage of the GPU, it is a delicate subject so my advice is to make short adjustments and always after we do not achieve our goal by touching the rest of the available options. More voltage, more heat, more stress for our GPU. Power Limit%: This setting is safe, we simply tell the GPU that it has our go-ahead to power as it please to maintain the turbo frequencies we have dialed for as long as possible. This increases the stability of the performance and its own potential. Here we will always adjust to the maximum, without fear. In my case the diet is 100% and I can increase it by an additional 18%. Temperature limit (degrees centigrade): This setting can be linked to the previous one, but we can also do it independently. The more power the more margin of working temperature we must give to the card. This tells the chipset that it doesn't matter that it works hotter, what we want is for it to keep the frequencies longer despite the increase in temperature. Here, if we are conservative, we can untie it from the power limit and keep the temperature lower, so that our refrigeration system is capable of maintaining the type without side effects such as more noise, something that we may be willing to assume in order to see our chip work cooler. I will adjust it to the maximum, 87 degrees, 4 degrees more than what is requested at 100% of the feeding limit. GPU frequency adjustment (Core Clock): This point is important to be clear. This adjusts the turbo speed, and the base speed of the card (not on all graphics chips, but almost all) and also does not interfere with the card's idle states. When we increase this control bar we will have the MHz data added to the side and the arrows that mark on the dial the base and turbo frequencies will move to the right in accordance with the adjustment. Memory frequency adjustment (Memory Clock): It is the same as before but here we will have it clearer because there is only one frequency to adjust, the memories always work at their maximum, except when the card is idle. Memory is more delicate to play in modern graphics so don't be surprised that you can't add even a few MHz to its factory working frequency. Fan Speed ​​(s)%: All or almost all modern cards have an automatic management system for the rotation speed of their active fan system. MSI Afterburner gives us the option to keep that system automatic or to force working frequencies. This can be used to stabilize noise or always achieve a high cooling profile. Personally, I think that the automatic profile should be adequate for regular use of the card with the overclocking achieved during our tests.

Going up little by little and testing

We have adjusted the power limit and the temperature limit to the maximum for our chipset. It is time to upload turbo frequencies to our card and test them properly. The best test we can do is run our favorite games and check for improvement, stability, etc. We can rely on the Rivatuner on-screen statistics server that is part of the MSI Afterburner itself or perhaps some lighter and faster application to run such as Furmark or the MSI Kombustor which is another satellite application that MSI offers completely free of charge whether or not we have one of your cards.

Whatever we use, we must be careful and moderate. Not so much because of the risk of damaging anything, but rather because of the fact that having to restart the PC every few minutes, or waiting for the driver to recover from the error is always quite frustrating . Let's not put an RTX 2060 2200MHz in our first setting, it will not work and we will only have to restart the computer.

Be patient and prudent.

As we increase we can see how GPU-Z marks the improvement in the " GPU Clock " row, just above the default values ​​which is the " Default Clock " line. We can go from 50 to 50Mhz in the beginning, and then adjust those settings unless we start to see problems. This as a general rule, not for our particular card. In each adjustment we will test the stability in the way that we think is most convenient. As we reach high frequencies, which we think are at the limit of our architecture and with the cooling media we have, it is good to try real games.

If we think that the frequency it reaches is insufficient for our card or for our objective, then we can carefully play with the voltage and check the working temperature. If the card reaches high temperatures the turbo speed will have peaks, sometimes important, by throttling where the GPU protects itself by limiting its performance. This is pernicious and can make our card perform less with overclocking than without it.

The stability test, therefore, has to go beyond artifacts or crashes but also in that the chosen frequency is stable over time, which has a real effect on our continued performance with our games.

Analyzing the test data

In modern graphics many times the capacity of the card is not so much determined by what comes in the factory data but in many other factors such as temperature or power. If we have an adequate temperature we can achieve higher Turbo frequencies than the brands, as is our case where our RTX 2060 with 1710MHz turbo is able to work around 1800 constantly without overclocking.

If we do not manage to keep the turbo frequency within the working temperature specifications of our GPU, the chip itself will reduce frequency to maintain stability and its own security.

That is why it is important to first check how our card works without touching, with its default frequencies, it can surprise us and also give us a clear idea of ​​where we want to go with overclocking. Give it time, be patient, let it take its target temperature to really check what frequencies it stabilizes and if the noise generated is within our desires.

The cooling will be essential in this process, many times as much as we want the card will not go faster because its cooling does not last. In our case, adding 100MHz to the base frequency you see how the card has peaks of 1935MHz, but immediately it is around its maximum temperature and begins to regulate at lower frequencies, closer to those of the factory than the brands by us. In fact, it is around 1700Mhz more than 1800Mhz as it did at its standard frequencies so in average FPS we will be losing performance.

We only get stability at 1900Mhz when we pass the graph of 63% fan, in automatic mode, to 100% with an unpleasant noise that is not recommended at all. In this case overclocking is incapable and therefore we will have to improve the cooling.

With proper cooling the possibilities improve

In our next demo we use the same principles only now we have an RTX 2070 with no reference design and three fans plus a more powerful heatsink. As you can see in the capture, this graph works without touching a single MHz by overclocking at almost 2GHz in a stable way and with an average temperature of 60 degrees.

Its limit feeding is also an additional 10% and its limit temperature is also 87 degrees. Now increasing MHz will be easier and will have a real effect on performance. We are increasing frequencies and testing. Our Geforce RTX 2070 also has high factory frequencies, so what we can get out of it will depend a lot on the margin left to the chipset and on the cooling capacity of our card's custom design.

In this card we managed to exceed the 2GHz frequency from the 1710MHz turbo frequency of the Nvidia RTX 2070. An important improvement but not very great considering that this card comes from the factory at a frequency of 1830MHz Turbo.

Automatic frequency scanning system.

MSI Afterburner also offers us an automatic scanning system so that it is the system itself that awards us the best possible frequency for our graphics card. Make progressive adjustments and stability scans and we will adjust the frequency to the best you find during this process.

To access it we just have to click on the appropriate icon in the interface and start the process using the "Scan" button. Once the process is finished, which will be slow, we can use the test button for an additional test of the adjustment. We can also stop the process at any time.

Performance improvement and last words

Each graphics card is a world, it depends on many factors that we can have the overclocking that we want, but without a doubt the MSI Afterburner is the ally that we want to have with us to achieve our goals. It is a very complete utility that allows us to easily adjust almost all the parameters of the card and with little risk to our hardware. We can even make the achieved adjustments be saved in profiles and also be executed automatically on every restart of our computer.

We recommend reading:

The performance we earn will depend on each card as well. We have achieved good results with the Geforce RTX 2070 but not with the Geforce RTX 2060 with which we have also tested. In two games we have been using lately these are the results we have achieved. What did you think of our tutorial on how to overclock your graphics card ? Have you learned the basic concepts well? What overclock have you got with your GPU? We want to know your opinion!