[SOLVED] Why is Afterburner considered better than Xtreme Engine?

Jan 18, 2019
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I heard a lot that Gigabyte's Xtreme Engine is a very bad software, but my question is why? I ordered a new gaming PC with a GTX 1070 G1 Gaming and I want to know how much performance I lose by using Gigabyte's software for OC.
 
Solution
Gigabyte Xtreme Engine is extremely laggy. Did you notice the buffering circle that goes on for like 10 seconds every time you change your input clock speed? This gets very frustrating when doing incremental change. The whole thing is just slow and very laggy. The same is true for Aorus Engine (which comes with the 20x series).

On the other hand, MSI Afterburner is so fast. Having used both, I can tell you it is a WORLD of difference. And as Dunlop mentioned above, msi ab just has superior UI and many other features, including Riva tuner which is a superior OSD.

You probably can't find a better OSD than msi ab's riva tuner. ASUS also has its own gpu overclocking utility called GPU Tweak II, which I have used and can tell it is...

Dunlop0078

Titan
Ambassador
You shouldn't lose any performance assuming you are applying the same OC in either program. I personally don't like gigabytes software because of it's UI and lack of functionality versus afterbuner, afterburners monitoring software is far superior in my opinion and it comes with rivatuner which is good for in game overlays or capping framerate. However in terms of applying an overclock they both work fine. MSI afterbuner is just more mature, gigabyte will likely keep updating their software and I would expect it to be just as good eventually.
 

thtran6

Upstanding
Oct 2, 2018
167
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Gigabyte Xtreme Engine is extremely laggy. Did you notice the buffering circle that goes on for like 10 seconds every time you change your input clock speed? This gets very frustrating when doing incremental change. The whole thing is just slow and very laggy. The same is true for Aorus Engine (which comes with the 20x series).

On the other hand, MSI Afterburner is so fast. Having used both, I can tell you it is a WORLD of difference. And as Dunlop mentioned above, msi ab just has superior UI and many other features, including Riva tuner which is a superior OSD.

You probably can't find a better OSD than msi ab's riva tuner. ASUS also has its own gpu overclocking utility called GPU Tweak II, which I have used and can tell it is equally fast as the MSI Ab. However, the OSD that came with asus GPU Tweak is extremely buggy, causing game lag and fps drop.

So yea, MSI AfterBurner is the one to go after.
If I was to rate gpu overclocking software, it would go like this (1 being the absolute best, and 10 being the worstttttttttttttt)

MSI AfterBurner (1)
ASUS GPU Tweak II (2)
Evga Precision (3)
Gigabyte Aorus Engine/ExtremeEngine (1000)
 
Solution
Feb 19, 2020
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Gigabyte Xtreme Engine is extremely laggy. Did you notice the buffering circle that goes on for like 10 seconds every time you change your input clock speed? This gets very frustrating when doing incremental change. The whole thing is just slow and very laggy. The same is true for Aorus Engine (which comes with the 20x series).

On the other hand, MSI Afterburner is so fast. Having used both, I can tell you it is a WORLD of difference. And as Dunlop mentioned above, msi ab just has superior UI and many other features, including Riva tuner which is a superior OSD.

You probably can't find a better OSD than msi ab's riva tuner. ASUS also has its own gpu overclocking utility called GPU Tweak II, which I have used and can tell it is equally fast as the MSI Ab. However, the OSD that came with asus GPU Tweak is extremely buggy, causing game lag and fps drop.

So yea, MSI AfterBurner is the one to go after.
If I was to rate gpu overclocking software, it would go like this (1 being the absolute best, and 10 being the worstttttttttttttt)

MSI AfterBurner (1)
ASUS GPU Tweak II (2)
Evga Precision (3)
Gigabyte Aorus Engine/ExtremeEngine (1000)
General rule of thumb , You use MSI's software and Gigabytes hardware lol.

Gigabyte seems to have had 1 stressed out software dev for the past 15 years meanwhile they have legions of Electrical Engineers and Hardware nerds. They were pumping out solid copper capacitors , heavy layered pcb's and just badass hardware in general before most of board partner's figured out up from down. However ...Asus /Abit MSI , even Asrock and Zotac have always had better software.

Doesn't matter utilities or actual BIOS interfaces Gigabyte has never had the best GUI's on any release. Ive been using their hardware for i dunno since the Pentium 3 850mhz processor launched. Back then u realistically had two choices , Asus or Gigabyte for Motherboards. and the same bios interface Gigabyte had then ...they had essentially the same interface as recent as the X470 chipset HAHA which I don't mind as im use to it .

Now I hear they finally hired a couple of ppl to help ole Dude and their bios is easy enough to use that Gamers Nexus and some of the other Tech channel guys actually promote gigabyte finally. Truth is they have always (with some exceptions) released solid hardware that u can pump volts thru for years. (that p3 system will still boot up and give ya 975mhz np) Hell the cheapest 1660TI u could get on launch was Gigabytes (no brainer for me) ...It clocked up to 2100mhz and held above 2000 never dropping below that for gaming. Avg 51c (29 over ambient) after several hours of tinkering and directing my case fans properly to allow me room for the curve I needed . For reference the dual fan 1660TI card Im talking about my wife currently has ...I finally upgraded , the 5600xt from XFX was slower ...so i took it back got an msi 5700 non xt....it too was slower in many cases at 1080p while obviously having the potential to be faster the power delivery on the pcp was trash and it just couldn't hang finally got a 2060 super and it is an actual upgrade tho to be fair we are talking maybe 10 frames on avg from Giga's cheap as$ dual fan card lol.

Anyway yea don't use gigabytes utilities , don't be shy about buying the hardware , every spot on every benchmark list Ive occupied has been assited by them. I don't use LN2 or a chiller or anything exterior to the case , meaning every performance lvl ive hit ...anyone can hit with that hardware. And actually game on it.

Precision is fine , looks better than afterburner , but afterburner has been around so long it just has a few more features at this point.
 
Feb 19, 2020
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Oh btw , You can just use Rivatuner (for frame cap limiter which u should anyway to reduce imput lag , as it is the best , better than the one within the drivers even)

and then You should be running HWinfo64 also , it has accurate monitoring software and picks up much more than most anything usable that I can think of.

Those two programs will help you truely find the max voltage curve for the GPU you are using and the proper CPU Overclock.

Meanwhile, You can use the onscreen display with just those two ( u do not have to use afterburner)
While its more work to setup , It provides actual processor speeds.

Afterburner does not report correct clock #'s. This is easy to test for yourself , change the base /host clock of your system just by 1 or in ryzens case even 100.10 you will see in Hwinfo that your clock speed has changed. And u can display that change in game.
Meanwhile Afterburner will not recognize this. Its not the only metric Afterburner is inaccurate in reporting .

Afterburner imo is the best GPU OC utility out there. But its the 2nd best onscreen display Utility even if it is easier to setup its not as accurate nor as feature rich with regard to sensors availability as hwinfo .