Is MSI Afterburner Safe? Download, Setup & FPS Counter Guide
MSI Afterburner is a free tool that monitors your GPU’s usage, temperature, and clock speed in real time, and it can show an FPS counter and full overlay right inside your games. It works with GeForce and Radeon cards, not just MSI ones. This guide covers the download, whether it’s actually safe, the best settings to catch a bottleneck, and how to set up the FPS counter, all in the order you’ll actually need them.
Table of Contents
Is MSI Afterburner Safe?- Quick Answer
Quick Answer
| Question | Short Answer |
| Where to download it | Only MSI’s site or Guru3D. Nowhere else. |
| Is it safe | Yes, from official sources. Fake copies are the real risk. |
| Best settings for bottleneck checks | Enable GPU usage, CPU usage, and temp on the OSD together |
| FPS counter | Built in through RTSS, which installs alongside it |
What MSI Afterburner Actually Does
Afterburner reads live data straight from your GPU, usage percent, temperature, clock speed, memory usage, and fan speed, and displays it as desktop graphs or as an in-game overlay through RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), which comes bundled in the same installer. If you’ve already read our GPU-Z guide, think of Afterburner as the moving, real-time version of the same specs.
MSI Afterburner Download: Where to Get It Safely
There are exactly two safe places to get the MSI Afterburner download: MSI’s own site, or Guru3D’s official download page, which MSI itself points people to. Right now there are two versions worth knowing: 4.6.6 Final, the stable release from October 2025, and a newer 4.6.7 beta that keeps getting updates through 2026 with better support for RTX 50-series and RX 9000-series cards. If you own one of those newer cards, grab the beta. Otherwise 4.6.6 is the safer pick. RTSS installs automatically with it, so you don’t need a separate download.
Is MSI Afterburner Safe to Use?
Yes, MSI Afterburner is safe when downloaded from MSI’s official site or Guru3D. The real risk comes from fake copies on spoofed sites, not the software itself.
MSI Afterburner is not a virus. Two things cause most of the confusion:
- Fake sites impersonating it. MSI has publicly warned about spoofed sites hosting malware disguised as Afterburner, complete with a fake download page mimicking the real one. This is the actual danger, not the real software.
- Antivirus false positives. RTSS uses a low-level overlay hook to draw the FPS counter over games, and some antivirus heuristics misread that behavior as suspicious. A past driver component (RTCore64.sys) also had a known vulnerability that let other malware escalate privileges if it was already on your system, which is why keeping Afterburner updated matters, not just installing it once and forgetting it.
One more thing worth knowing: some competitive games with strict anti-cheat, similar to what happens with third-party tools like CPU-Z, will kick or flag you for running monitoring software at all. That’s an anti-cheat policy issue, not a sign Afterburner itself is unsafe.
MSI Afterburner Settings: Setting Up Monitoring
- Open Afterburner and click the Settings gear icon, then go to the Monitoring tab.
- Check the box next to any metric you want tracked (GPU usage, GPU temperature, core clock, memory usage). Each has its own checkbox.
- For anything you want visible in-game, also check the smaller “Show in On-Screen Display” box next to it. This is the step people miss, and it’s the top reason the overlay shows up blank.
- Confirm RTSS is running (it shares the taskbar tray area with Afterburner) and set an on/off keybind for the overlay in the RTSS settings.
What are Best MSI Afterburner Settings for Catching a Bottleneck
If your goal is specifically spotting a bottleneck rather than overclocking, keep it simple: enable GPU usage, GPU temperature, and CPU usage on the OSD at the same time, since a bottleneck only shows up when you can see both sides together, not GPU stats alone. Leave the core clock and power limit sliders untouched unless you’re deliberately overclocking.
A one-second hardware polling interval (the default) is accurate enough for this and won’t add measurable overhead. If you also want per-core CPU numbers instead of one overall percentage, pull those from HWiNFO64 alongside Afterburner’s GPU readout, since Afterburner’s own CPU usage reading is a simple overall average.
Setting Up the MSI Afterburner FPS Counter
The FPS counter isn’t a separate download, it’s part of RTSS. In RTSS, go to Setup and make sure “Show own statistics” is turned on, which is what actually draws the frame rate overlay (skipping this is the single most common reason the counter never appears). Pick a screen corner for the OSD position, then in Afterburner’s own Monitoring tab, make sure “Framerate” is checked and set to show on the OSD too. You can also set a dedicated keybind in RTSS just to toggle the FPS counter on and off mid-game without closing the whole overlay.
Reading the Numbers to Spot a Bottleneck
Once the overlay is running, watch GPU usage and CPU usage together while you actually play, not just for a few seconds. Here’s what the combinations usually mean:
NORMAL
GPU High, CPU Lower
GPU usage at 90-100% with CPU usage well below that means the GPU is working the way it should. This is GPU-bound, and it’s expected, not a problem.
MOST COMMON
CPU Maxed, GPU Drops
CPU usage near 100% while GPU usage falls well under 90% is the classic CPU bottleneck signature. The GPU sits idle waiting on the CPU.
CHECK FURTHER
Both Moderate, FPS Still Low
Neither maxed but FPS still bad often points to RAM, storage, or background software rather than the CPU or GPU itself.
One catch: some games cap frame rate or use V-Sync, which can make GPU usage look artificially low even when nothing’s wrong. Test with frame caps and V-Sync off first if the numbers look confusing.
Confirm It Against the Bottleneck Calculator
Afterburner shows what’s happening right now, in the game you’re playing. Our bottleneck calculator gives a predicted split for your exact CPU and GPU pairing before you even open a game. Check the calculator first to know what to expect, then confirm it with live Afterburner numbers while you play. If the two don’t match, resolution is usually why, since the calculator’s estimate shifts a lot between 1080p and 4K, similar to what we cover in our 1080p vs 1440p breakdown.
Fixing the Most Common Afterburner Problems
- The “Show in On-Screen Display” checkbox wasn’t checked for each metric, only the main monitoring checkbox.
- RTSS shows a “some system component cannot be hooked” error, usually fixed by closing both apps and reinstalling to the same folder.
- The game’s anti-cheat blocks third-party overlays entirely. Some competitive shooters block it on purpose, and the only workaround is the game’s built-in FPS counter instead.
- Another overlay (Discord, Steam, GeForce Experience) is fighting for the same hook and needs to be disabled temporarily to test.
This exact sequence shows up repeatedly in Tom’s Hardware’s forum thread on the issue, where the overlay came back once the user enabled RTSS’s own statistics display and moved a conflicting keybind.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to download RTSS separately?
No. It installs automatically with the main MSI Afterburner download and handles the FPS counter and overlay.
Can just monitoring with Afterburner damage my GPU?
No. Monitoring is read-only. Risk only comes in if you push overclocking or voltage settings too far, which is a separate function from watching usage and temps.
Why did my antivirus flag Afterburner after I downloaded it from the official site?
This is a known false-positive pattern tied to how RTSS hooks into games to draw the overlay. As long as it came from MSI’s site or Guru3D, it’s safe, but scanning it once with your antivirus doesn’t hurt.
Why does my CPU usage look low during an obvious bottleneck?
Afterburner’s CPU reading averages usage across every core. If a game only leans hard on two or three cores, overall usage can look low while those specific cores are maxed. Checking per-core usage in HWiNFO64 gives a clearer picture than the overall percentage.
Conclusion
MSI Afterburner is safe and free, but only when it comes from MSI’s own site or Guru3D, since fake copies are the real security risk, not the software itself. Once installed, RTSS handles both the FPS counter and the overlay automatically, and the key to actually seeing it in-game is remembering to check “Show in On-Screen Display” for each metric, not just the main monitoring box.
For bottleneck-hunting specifically, keep it simple: track GPU usage, CPU usage, and temperature together, watch them while actually playing, and cross-check what you see against the bottleneck calculator to confirm whether you’re GPU-bound, CPU-bound, or looking at a different issue like RAM or storage entirely.
