MSI Afterburner update enables RTX 50 series owners to push their GDDR7 VRAM up to 36 GT/s

One of the things that Nvidia does not exactly encourage its partners among add-in-board (AIB) manufacturers to do is to 'factory overclock' memory on graphics cards featuring its GPUs. However, it looks like MSI's Alexei 'Unwinder' has managed to unlock this possibility for GDDR7 memory on GeForce RTX 50-series products, as noticed by VideoCardz. Good news, it works for all GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards. But, as always, there is a catch.

A new unofficial update for MSI Afterburner enables RTX 50-series GPU owners to push their memory overclocking limits by an additional 3 GT/s, achieving data transfer rates of up to 36 GT/s. While some may say that a mere 10% overclock — especially in the case of the GeForce RTX 5090 that has a wide memory interface and barely needs that extra bandwidth — is not a big deal, this is not as simple as it sounds.

GDDR7 memory ICs available today from Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix are rated for an up to 28 GT/s — 32 GT/s (Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung have GDDR7, but the latter does not disclose its specs). Nvidia recommends reducing data transfer rates to 28 GT/s (except for RTX 5080, which is set to 30 GT/s), though the chips can handle higher speeds, which is where Unwinder's achievement represents a breakthrough as it 'unlocks' available capabilities of the memory chips.

This is particularly significant for GeForce RTX 5080-series boards that come with 32 GT/s chips that are 'down-clocked' to 30 GT/s by default. However, keep in mind that on the GPU side there are memory controller peculiarities and this represents risks in terms of overclocking.

The new update involves replacing a specific database file and is compatible only with MSI Afterburner version 4.6.6 Beta 5 Build 16555. Although this update might eventually be integrated into a future beta version, it remains to be seen when exactly this happens. Some users have instead turned to GPU Tweak III, Asus's software, which supports both AMD and Nvidia GPUs and avoids known bugs present in MSI Afterburner.

Ultimately, both MSI Afterburner and GPU Tweak III can now support GDDR7 memory overclocking on GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards. This is especially beneficial for the GeForce RTX 5080-series users who aim to maximize performance beyond the default 30 GT/s limit. With the modified database, pushing speeds beyond 32 GT/s should now be achievable without issues.