In a nutshell: The developer of MSI Afterburner is teasing some intriguing updates to the program. Fans of Nvidia's upcoming Blackwell GPUs may soon gain access to more advanced voltage controls, but there's a catch. To take advantage of these new capabilities, users will need an MSI-manufactured graphics card.
Alexey "Unwinder" Nicolaychuk, the sole developer of MSI Afterburner, is working on a new beta version of the program. The world's most popular GPU overclocking tool is set to deliver significantly improved voltage control on upcoming "MSI 50x0" GPUs, with the first working samples of the new cards already in the hands of the Russian coder.
Nicolaychuk first revealed the project in August. According to him, the new MSI GPUs will feature an expanded voltage-control module supporting the MP2988 and MP29816A pulse-width modulation ICs. These controllers already appear in "most" RTX 5080 and 5090 cards currently on the market but cannot yet be used to extend voltage control any further.
Nvidia is reportedly blacklisting these PWM ICs at the graphics driver level, rendering the controllers essentially "invisible" to software tools accessing the I2C bus via drivers. MSI's upcoming non-reference cards are expected to unlock the ICs, targeting customers interested in extreme overclocking experiments or high-end gaming builds.
The new MSI Afterburner beta, which supports the PWM controllers, is reportedly just around the corner. The update will introduce "extended triple channel" voltage control and monitoring for owners of the new MSI cards, offering three separate control options: core voltage, memory voltage, and auxiliary voltage.
Additionally, MSI Afterburner will allow overclocking enthusiasts to adjust core GPU voltage with a 100 mV offset, compared to Nvidia's default 20 mV control on reference cards. The new version will also include an option to "hide" support for a specific GPU, a feature that could be useful for users wishing to conceal their CPU's integrated GPU, according to Unwinder.
The Russian developer did not provide a specific release date for the update. Historically, MSI Afterburner has issued numerous beta versions, with occasional stable releases. From experience, most beta releases are sufficiently stable for reliably controlling GPU behavior and voltage.
MSI Afterburner is more than a tool for extreme overclockers. It offers a powerful framework for creating custom on-screen display layouts, and can also record gameplay or capture screenshots.