MSI Afterburner Project ‘Probably Dead,’ Due to Ukraine War Sanctions (Updated)
One of the most popular GPU performance monitoring and tuning tools is “probably dead,” a developer announced. Alexey ‘Unwinder’ Nicolaychuk, the Russian developer of his MSI Afterburner, took part in the Guru3D forums last week explain Its progress has already been halted for almost a year due to “political issues”.[al] This is clearly a reference to the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia, and is endorsed by many companies such as MSI and Asus.
News about the end of MSI Afterburner development came to light when a forum member was talking ‘Unwinder’ about using the tool with new AMD Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards like the RX 7900 XT. In response to a question about upcoming support for the new RDNA3 GPUs, the developer revealed that those waiting for new GPU support have probably been waiting for a very long time. It is possible that you are.
‘Unwinder’ has informed its forum mates that MSI Afterburner has already been stalled for some time. It’s been almost a year since MSI collaborated on software with Russian developers. Apparently, his Afterburner license agreement, which was key to the company’s developer relationship, was effectively dissolved about 11 months ago. “Unwinder” attempted to keep updating and improving the project without the support of MSI’s hardware and software resources, but opined that the task was like “whipping a dead horse.” . He said he would continue to provide support for his GPU tools in his spare time, but now would have to focus on other paid projects just to pay the bills.
MSI Answer: It’s Not Dead. It’s getting better!
The story seems to be developing rapidly, and MSI wants to make sure the popular Afterburner app continues.our colleagues PC gamer Have Received statement from MSI, should put some worries to rest. “We intend to continue with MSI Afterburner,” a rep told the publication. “MSI is working on a solution and we hope it will be resolved soon.”
Whether or not that “solution” would involve the original developers was temporarily left up in the air. WCCF Editor Hassan Mujitaba Posted an answer from MSI on Twitter“Our product marketing and accounting teams are currently working on this issue,” an MSI representative reportedly told Mujtaba. “Due to the war, our payment was not successfully transferred to the author’s bank account. We are still in contact with him and are working out ways to resolve this.”
Now that the Afterburner situation is in the public eye, MSI suddenly wants to figure out how to pay for Nicolaychuk’s continued efforts. Hopefully this includes compensation for last year’s development and quick work to get support for AMD’s latest cards and Nvidia’s improved support for his 40-series GPUs as well.
We will contact MSI by asking our own questions and will update this story if we get any more substantive information from the company.
Stick to the official MSI Afterburner site for downloads
As of now, the last stable release of MSI Afterburner is December 2021. Only check the official site for downloads and updates if you have a supported GPU and use Afterburner by default in new builds. Last November, MSI Afterburner was in the news when it was targeted by malware distributors who set up fake but convincing download websites.Real downloads are still available Directly from MSIdespite the news above, there is no hint of development being put on hold (or worse).
Users looking for alternative modern overclocking and undervoltage tools for their GPUs can check with their specific GPU vendor or consider universal alternatives like Asus’ GPU Tweak. AMD GPU users also have some very extensive tools in the Adrenaline Edition software that you install ([パフォーマンス]tab).
RTSS development continues
In better news from “Unwinder”, in the same forum thread, he mentions RTSS (the popular RivaTuner Statistics Server) is another hobby project that doesn’t rely on MSI, so it’s very active and will continue to “get future updates and support”.
