Search the Community

According to the latest data from Statcounter, Windows XP is still installed on roughly 0.57% of PCs, which is a lot of outdated hardware and software with regular access to the internet. Most developers dropped Windows XP shortly after Microsoft ended its extended support in 2014, forcing users to switch to Windows 7 or 10. However, there are still some apps that continue working and receiving updates on Windows XP. MSI Afterburner, though, is no longer among them. MSI Afterburner has been updated to version 4.6.6 with a few notable changes, such as voltage control for the Radeon RX 7800XT, support for future Nvidia graphics cards, Unicode UTF-8, and various bug fixes. More importantly, it now uses VC++ 2022 compiler, which renders the app unable to run on Windows XP. With that said, it is not the end of the world for Windows XP users. They can still use previous MSI Afterburner versions to overclock and monitor their GeForce FX 5900, ATI Radeon 9000, and other true-to-era graphics cards. As for Riva Tuner Statistics Server, its latest update packs "more than 90 compatibility enhancements, changes and new features, including programmable conditional layers support, PresentMon, and Nvidia Relex." Here is the complete changelog for Version 4.6.6: You can download MSI Afterburner from Guru3D and the official MSI website. Source

It's the first non-beta update for the utility since late 2021. Anyone who has ever attempted to squeeze a little more performance out of a graphics card is probably familiar with MSI Afterburner, software used for GPU overclocking and undervolting and performance monitoring. Despite the MSI branding, it’s actually widely compatible with Nvidia and AMD GPUs from all vendors, and for years it has been a simple-but-effective tool for people trying to get the most out of their hardware. The app's stable version was updated earlier this week for the first time since late 2021, adding official support for Nvidia's RTX 4000 series cards and AMD's RX 7000 series cards, partial Intel Arc support, and a few other additions and fixes. The long gap between the release of version 4.6.4 and 4.6.5 results from Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The software is maintained primarily by Alexey Nicolaychuk, a Russian national who has been developing it continually since it was introduced in 1997 as RivaTuner. Nicolaychuk declared the Afterburner project “probably dead” in a forum post earlier this year, claiming that MSI had "semi-abandoned" the software and that the company had stopped paying him. MSI confirmed to PC Gamer that it had not been able to pay Nicolaychuk due to "economic regulations" caused by other countries' sanctioning of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, not because it had plans to abandon the software entirely. "We fully intend to continue with MSI Afterburner," an MSI representative told PC Gamer. "MSI have been working on a solution and expect it to be resolved soon." Although none of the parties involved have issued a follow-up statement, a new version suggests that the solution worked and that the problem has been resolved. (For his part, Nicolaychuk has "decided to stop commenting [on] the future of the project publicly.") If you're downloading a new version of Afterburner, make sure you're doing it from either MSI's website or Guru3D (the Guru3D site currently appears to be more up to date). MSI's network was breached in a cyberattack earlier this month, and the company has warned users to only download drivers, BIOS updates, and other software from official sources to avoid malware. MSI Afterburner GPU overclocking tool returns after Ukraine war paused development