Please note that overclocking very much depends on the 'silicon lottery.' Just because one person with a 'HappyGPUs RTX 4090 X-Factor-Wow' model card (that's a made up name, if you couldn't tell) managed a 20% core overclock and a 25% memory overclock doesn't mean that every RTX 4090 card will hit those same clocks, or even that the same model will reach similar clocks. It's also possible to overclock AMD and Nvidia GPUs using the built-in utility in AMD's drivers or Nvidia's GeForce Experience, which we'll cover below, but we'll start with the universal approach to overclocking your GPU. The same basic process can be used with other utilities, including EVGA Precision X1, Asus GPU Tweak (opens in new tab), and other graphics card vendor utilities. There are a variety of utilities, but we're going to focus on MSI Afterburner, which is one of the most popular and commonly used GPU overclocking tools.

Once you have your baseline stock performance data, it's time to start overclocking. Check our guide on how to test graphics card performance, and you'll also want to check your graphics card temperatures and clock speeds. You want to be able to see how much faster your PC runs after tuning, after all - if performance doesn't improve, you'll want to know.

But if you have one of the best graphics cards and you're looking to eke out a bit more performance, we'll discuss how we go about overclocking and determining 'safe' settings.īefore overclocking, it's useful to get a baseline measurement of how your graphics card performs. Of course, as with any overclocking, care should be taken to avoid running your GPU at unsafe settings.

Overclocking your graphics card can improve its performance by 5% to as much as 15% (or more), depending on the particular card model.

Overclocking gpu msi afterburner