By default, Afterburner locks out voltage adjustments. It shows sliders for core voltage, power limit, core clock, memory clock, and fan speed. Here's the main interface for MSI Afterburner, using the v3 skin. Case in point: Even though all the RTX 4090 cards (opens in new tab) we've seen so far appear to use Micron 21Gbps GDDR6X memory (opens in new tab) ('D8BZC' labeled chips), we've seen maximum stable memory overclocks range from 22.6Gbps to as high as 25Gbps. Please note that overclocking very much depends on the 'silicon lottery.' Just because one person with a 'HappyGPUs RTX 4090 X-Factor-Wow' model card (that's a made up name, if you couldn't tell) managed a 20% core overclock and a 25% memory overclock doesn't mean that every HappyGPUs RTX 4090 XFW card will hit those same clocks.

It's also possible to overclock AMD and Nvidia GPUs using the built-in utility in AMD's drivers or Nvidia's GeForce Experience, which we'll cover below, but we'll start with the universal approach to overclocking your GPU. The same basic process can be used with other utilities, including EVGA Precision X1, Asus GPU Tweak (opens in new tab), and other graphics card vendor utilities. There are a variety of utilities, but we're going to focus on MSI Afterburner, which is one of the most popular and commonly used GPU overclocking tools. Once you have your baseline stock performance data, it's time to start overclocking.

Check our guide on how to test graphics card performance, and you'll also want to check your graphics card temperatures and clock speeds. You want to be able to see how much faster your PC runs after tuning, after all - if performance doesn't improve, you'll want to know. But if you have one of the best graphics cards and you're looking to eke out a bit more performance, we'll discuss how we go about overclocking and determining 'safe' settings.īefore overclocking, it's important to get a baseline measurement of how your graphics card performs. Of course, as with any overclocking, care should be taken to avoid running your GPU at unsafe settings. Overclocking your graphics card can improve its performance by 5% to as much as 15% (or more), depending on the particular card model.

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