MSI Afterburner Developer is Calling It Quits after MSI Stopped Payment for over a Year Due to War Sanctions

Peter_Brosdahl

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The overclocking tool has been the de facto go-to for millions of users worldwide and this news comes as a shock to much of the community that relies on it.

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Interesting.

I just downloaded it for the first time two nights ago.

That was the first time I realized Rivatuner was Russian.

I had assumed that Afterburner was developed by MSI and was distributed along with RivaTuner. I had no idea they were both developed externally to MSI.

So, ~90% of Nvidia GPU owners use MSI Afterburner for overclocking. Without Afterburner, what will take its place?
 
I've used RivaTuner since it was released decades ago. Currently using EVGA precision.
 
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT, no more Afterburner?!?!?!?!?!!!

I used to use EVGA Precision a long-@ss time ago, way before it was called "Precision X" or whatever they changed the name to. Then there was a time when they had a falling out with the creator of RivaTuner, and around the same time they made a weird decision to have Precision be installed through Steam rather than exist as a standalone program (a decision they reversed after a lot of complaints). I found out that the RivaTuner guy fell in with MSI, and Afterburner was basically the same kind of thing Precision was back then, so I switched to Afterburner and have been using it ever since. Even when I have EVGA graphics cards, I still continued to use Afterburner. I didn't realize Precision was making a comeback. Kinda sucks since EVGA will no longer manufacture and sell graphics cards (still very upset about that).

I don't overclock much with Afterburner, but I use it to create custom fan curves, customize the OSD (which is provided via RivaTuner) to show the info I want (rendering API, framerate, frametime, GPU usage, vRAM usage, GPU temp, system RAM usage, etc), capturing screenshots (when I can't use Steam's screenshot functionality) and on rare occasion screen recording (I don't have access to nVidia ShadowPlay cuz it is locked behind GeForce Experience), stuff like that.

I knew the developer of RivaTuner lived in another country, but I didn't know that he was specifically Russian. Well, looks like war and politics f*cked something up again. Anyways the concern was only for Afterburner. RIvaTuner has always been his own thing, and he'll continue to support it. RivaTuner was there before Precision and Afterburner. So I'm not worried about that.
 
On the flipside, OC benefits are at an all-time low but it's still great software for monitoring. I'm sure there are ways to manually configure Rivatuner but I've never done it. I've used ASUS Tweak with mixed results and I forget the GIGABYTE one. I always found it amusing that X1 could allow a little higher power limit on EVGA cards though.
 
I presume EVA Precision X is done since they are no longer doing video cards. If afterburner is also done, I guess I'll have to try Asus Tweak again. My last experiences with that one were not.. pleasent.
 
Endgame said:
I presume EVA Precision X is done since they are no longer doing video cards. If afterburner is also done, I guess I'll have to try Asus Tweak again. My last experiences with that one were not.. pleasent.
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Yeah, mine were not the best either but that was when I was still using ASUS cards which ended around a year or so ago.
 
So,

Correct me if I am wrong, but MSI Afterburner is essentially just a pretty and somehwat easier to use front-end for RivaTuner.

That's why it ships with the RivaTuner statistics engine.

Sounds like we should be able to fall back on RivaTuner in the absence of Afterburner, though it will probably be less intuitive.

The question is, how will they un-afterburner RivaTuner. I wonder to what extent MSI owns the IP and how they can work around it in an unbranded version.
 
Zarathustra said:
So,

Correct me if I am wrong, but MSI Afterburner is essentially just a pretty and somehwat easier to use front-end for RivaTuner.

That's why it ships with the RivaTuner statistics engine.

Sounds like we should be able to fall back on RivaTuner in the absence of Afterburner, though it will probably be less intuitive.

The question is, how will they un-afterburner RivaTuner. I wonder to what extent MSI owns the IP and how they can work around it in an unbranded version.
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I'd say you're spot on with all of it and it's what I was thinking too but the next trick is just learning how to use Riva w/o it. I've tinkered with it a little over the years but not much more than adjusting where the OSD is located to prevent burn-in with my OLED displays. However, while I was in there, I noticed there's a lot to tinker with.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
I'd say you're spot on with all of it and it's what I was thinking too but the next trick is just learning how to use Riva w/o it. I've tinkered with it a little over the years but not much more than adjusting where the OSD is located to prevent burn-in with my OLED displays. However, while I was in there, I noticed there's a lot to tinker with.
Click to expand...

I haven't looked at vanilla Rivatuner in probably 15 years. I do vaguely remember it wasn't as user friendly as Afterburner though.

I wonder if the Dev is open to leaving Russia. Someone should offer him an O-1 visa and get his *** over here. An entire industry relies on the software he develops.

Reminds me of this XKCD comic turned meme:

dependency.png
 
Zarathustra said:
I haven't looked at vanilla Rivatuner in probably 15 years. I do vaguely remember it wasn't as user friendly as Afterburner though.

I wonder if the Dev is open to leaving Russia. Someone should offer him an O-1 visa and get his *** over here. An entire industry relies on the software he develops.

Reminds me of this XKCD comic turned meme:

dependency.png
Click to expand...
Sort of also reminds me of the companies who develop an app using someone else's code w/o giving credit and get into trouble later on.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Sort of also reminds me of the companies who develop an app using someone else's code w/o giving credit and get into trouble later on.
Click to expand...
You could do that with digital AI art as well with a few artists work underpinning everything created by AI. (a few in comparison to the bulk of AI art.).
 
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