The MSI Afterburner project is going through difficult times
Alexey “Unwinder” Nicolaychuk has confirmed that the Afterburner project may be dead.
The most popular overclocker for modern graphics cards is facing licensing issues due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Due to the sanctions, companies like MSI cannot fulfill their obligations under the signed agreement with the developer. Alexey, who lives in Russia, is now continuing the project without MSI support.
The developer has confirmed that the project has been on hold for over 11 months. The current political situation, he explains, prevents the MSI from fulfilling its obligations. The project is now supported by Alexey only in his spare time.
Alexey does not support MSI Afterburner, Source: Guru3D
MSI Afterburner is one of the most popular discrete GPU overclocking tools. The program is a spiritual successor to RivaTuner, which has been used for GPU overclocking for many years. Users may struggle to find a replacement that natively supports all GPU vendors. Most brands now include their own simple overclocking and monitoring software that also controls GPU functions such as lighting control or fan speed. MSI also has a tool called MSI Center.
It’s worth noting that MSI still officially lists the software for its newly released GPUs, including the RTX 4070 Ti. The popularity of the program means that scammers try to take advantage of it by releasing cloned apps that contain malware. MSI is aware of this fact and keeps pointing out that the official source of the software is still the MSI website. The following tweet was posted in November after several months of failing to meet Afterburner’s licensing obligations:
MSI mentions Afterburner, source: MSI
The only good news is that RTSS (RivaTuner Statistic Server) is not an MSI tool and therefore not subject to sanctions. This statistics and overlay software has and will continue to be fully supported by Alexey. However, third-party software that uses RTSS shouldn’t be affected.
Alexei guarantees that he will continue to support the Afterburner project in his spare time, but this is not the full support many of us would prefer. It is important to note that penalties may not be limited to financial compensation, but also access to experimental hardware, essentially blocking or completely preventing the development process.
Source: Guru3D Forum
