The future of the popular overclocking utility MSI Afterburner has been thrown into question after developer Unwinder claimed that MSI “half deserted‘ the project and has ‘stopped performing [its] obligations.” Unwinder, who TechPowerUp reports is Russian citizen Alexey Nicolaychuk, suggesting that MSI hasn’t paid him for the better part of a year and that maybe he should stop developing Afterburner “and switch to something else so I can pay my bills.”
But in a statement, MSI says it plans to continue developing the software. A spokesperson for the company tells PC gamer that it is “completely [intends] to continue with MSI Afterburner.” They added that MSI has been working on a fix and expects it to be fixed “soon”.
Doubts arose after Nicolaychuk wrote that the “MSI Afterburner project is probably dead” on the Guru3D forums, where he provides development updates for the project. “I have tried to fulfill my obligations and have worked on the project on my own for the past 11 months, but it has only ended in disappointment; I feel like I’m just beating a dead horse and [wasting] energy to something that is no longer needed [the] company.”
MSI Afterburner is one of the most popular programs used to overclock graphics cards, allowing proficient users to – among other things – squeeze more performance out of their hardware by boosting clock speeds and adjusting voltages. Despite its name, MSI Afterburner supports both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards from various vendors beyond just MSI, making it a popular tool often recommended in overclocking guides such as this one from PC gamer or this from A rock paper gun.
Nicolaychuk says the cause of the apparent payment problem is “war and politics,” and the timeline he describes matches the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in harsh economic sanctions placed on the land by the international community.
In a statement to WCftech‘s Hassan Mujtaba, an MSI spokesperson said the “product marketing and accounting team is now dealing with this issue. Due to the war, our payment could not be successfully transferred to the author’s bank account. We are still in contact with him and are figuring out how to resolve this.” Neither MSI nor Nicolaychuk responded immediately The Verges request for comment.
If no solution can be found, it is unclear how long MSI Afterburner will remain usable with modern hardware and Windows updates. The latest stable version of the software was released in December 2021 but can still recognize graphics cards released more recently, such as the Nvidia RTX 4090. (Although in our testing it was only able to adjust clock speeds – not voltages.)
While he has indicated he wants to leave MSI Afterburner, Nicolaychuk says he plans to continue working on RTSS, a closely related application often used in conjunction with Afterburner to display information about hardware performance while playing games. A well-known competitor of MSI Afterburner is EVGA’s Precision X1 app, but with EVGA leaving the graphics card business, it’s unclear how much longer the overclocking software will be supported. I hope another manufacturer is willing to throw its hat in the ring if MSI and Nicolaychuk can’t find a solution.
