How to use MSI Afterburner

Question

The MSI Afterburner is a great tool for monitoring your vga's health status as well as overclocking it including tweaking voltages.
Monitoring
In case you came her with a vga related problems you might be asked to tell about the load and idle temps of your vga.
So first we focus on how to monitor temps.
First we start Afterburner and see this.
Just for monitoring we don't need the sliders visible as these are for tweaking/oc and we take care of that later. To the right there is a window with different graphs of all kinds of temps and voltages. There you can montiore the idle status but that won't really help you to see what happens in a game. You will only know about your temps under load in the moment your gaming and not when already leaving the game. At least the graphs will show the temps as a graph so you can read up temps of past times also but it is quite complicated to find the temp spike of the right time and read up the value.
It's easier to have the temps and voltages displayed in the game with an OSD (note: OSD doesn't work in 64bit applications). To get that work you need to activate it.
First click on "Settings"
Now go to "monitoring" in the Settings menu
In "Active hardware monitoring graphs" you can choose what should be displayed in OSD.
On the left you have the possible graphs to be selected. When you click on a graph you activate it and the symbol next to it lights up. Now you have to choose the properties of that graph. That is done by clicking on "Show in On-Screen Display" or "Show in Logitech keyboard LCD Display" or "Show in tray icon". Choosing "Show in On-Screen Display" means the graph will be shown in the game while LCD means it will be shown on a supported LCD of a Logitech Keyboard (e.g. G510). These both options are therefor ideal to checkout load temps and voltages.
Please note that there is also a graph for Famerate to be activated to even monitor FPS in games
After setting the graphs you want to be displayed just click on "ok" and you are done. NOTE: Only graphs of sensors that can be read out can be selected. Some cards won't be able to support gpu voltage monitoring hence that graph can't be selected.
If needed you can also add hotkeys for the OSD in On-Screen Display. By clicking on "More" you have the ability to mod the look and layout of the OSD as well as setting up profiles.
Now after starting a game you can see the graphs selected displayed inside your game so you can see what happens while you are gaming and you can also find out how your vga's status will change in any game situation
Fan control
After monitoring temps you might have seen too high temps and want to lower them or you want more cooling in oc attempts. Also could be you saw low temps but your card is very noisy because of high fan speeds. All that could make it necessary to change the fan speed manually instead of auto control
After deactivating  auto control by clicking on "Auto" you can move the slider between Min and Max to select the fan speed in %. Setting 68 therefor means fan will be running at 68% of it's full speed. After selecting click on "Apply" to apply the chosen fan speed.
Besides a static speed you can also program a custom fan profile with clicking on "Fan" in "Settings" afterwards just deactivate auto control and activate "User Define"
Checking stability with Kombustor
Along with Afterburner the downloaded archive also contains Kombustor. Kombustor is a burn-in vga tool like Furmark which will apply very massive load to your vga and will reveal thermal and stability problems when letting it run for some time.
After installing you can start it out of Afterburner by clicking on the "K" to left
Overclocking and Overvolting
With the Core Clock and Memory Clock sliders you can tweak the clockrates of the Gpu and the VRAM. The Mhz value selected adds or reduces the stock clockrates. That means e.g. setting +65 for Gpu will add 65Mhz to the stock clockrate. Setting -50Mhz will reduce the stock clockrate by 50Mhz. To apply your oc remember to always click on "Apply"
Overvolting with the overvolting slider will work the same way what means what you set will be added to the stock voltage. Note that overvolting gpu on Kepler (GTX600) is limited on non unlocked cards (Lightning/Hawk) to the nvidia max of 1.175v and setting anything else will therefor be useless.
If overvolting is greyed out and can't be changed you have to activate it in "Settings"/"General".
Simply check "Unlock voltage control" and "Unlock voltage monitoring"
NOTE: Despite mistakable informations on the web the only MSI Radeon 7850/7770 cards able to overvolt are R7850 Power Edition 2GD5/(OC) and R7770 Power Edition 1GD5/(OC). Due to technical restrictions all other 7850/7770 models can't be overvolted therefor overvoltage slider won't be available.
Triple overvolting will only be available with Lightning, Hawk or Power Edition cards and is a unique MSI feature that won't work with any other manufacturers card.
On supported cards you can access it (after enabling overvoltage, see above) when clicking on the grey symbol next to the voltage slider
the voltage slider will then change to triple overvoltage (core/mem/aux)
Note that triple overvoltage for Lightning and Power Edition GTX680 & GTX670 vgas will require Afterburner version 2.2.3, the latest GTX 660 & 650 cards will require Afterburner 2.2.4 or above. GTX680/770/780 Lightning users must use an unlocked Afterburner version for full triple overvoltage abilities (Nvidia gpu voltage limit). Until Version 3.0.0 Beta 17 a special SE variant was required. With 3.0.0 Beta 18 the SE version has been merged to the normal version. To unlock the advanced voltage settings simply go to "General" tab of the settings, check "unlock Voltage control and choose "extended MSI"
Power Limit
The Power Limit slider is only accessible on GTX600 or above cards as it is required to modify the unique GPU boost feature. GPU boost is nvidia's auto oc feature for Kepler cards and will increase clockrate when not reaching the pre-defined TDP value under load. With the Power limit slider you can change the TDP limit in %. Anything over 100% will extend the limit and enable the gpu to boost clockrate while already at 100% TDP.
If the Power limit is not visible although you are using a GTX600 vga you chose the wrong afterburner skin in "Settings"/"User Interface" The Power Limit slider will only be visible with "Default MSI Afterburner Skin"
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Temp Limit
With the new GeForce GTX7xx / Titan series vgas came an enhanced version of the boost introduced with GTX6xx vgas. Boost 2.0 adds a Temp Limit to the previous Power Limit. So now the available boost is not only determined by the Power Limit but also by the set Temp limit. To change the Temp limit you need a supporting version of Afterburner (3.00 Beta 10 and above). Click on the down arrow next to the Power limit slider and Temp Limit becomes available.
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By default Temp limit is set to a target temp of 79°C what means anything below will allow max boost. Increasing Temp limit will allow boosting at higher temps. In standard configuration Power and Temp limit are linked what means increasing Power Limit will also increase Temp limit. If you want to change that and set individually uncheck "Link". Clicking on "Prioritize" you can decide if Temp or TDP Limit should be the primary factor to determine boost.
Gaming APP
Another thing which needs to be kept in mind is that maximum clockrates for the latest GeForce GTX7xx Gaming requires running >>Gaming APP<<. Switch to Gaming Mode (N770 TF 2GD5/OC (GeForce GTX 770 GAMING)) or OC Mode (N780 TF 3GD5/OC (GeForce GTX 780 GAMING)) to allow maximum boost clockrates.
Oc Profiles and starting up with oc
After tweaking clockrates, voltages and power limit you can setup five profiles with these values. Just click on a profile number followed by clicking save. Now you can change between your profiles by choosing the number of it.
If you want to startup with the oc applied just click on "Apply overclocking at system startup" and make sure the green button left on that lights up in green.
Dragon Army Skins
A nice modification for Afterburner are the new MSI Gaming series skins to adapt to the latest MSI Gaming lineup: http://game.msi.com/
Just download the skins >>here<< and copy them in your Skins folder in the MSI Afterburner main folder. After restarting Afterburner you can now choose the Dragon Army Skins in "Settings"/"User Interface". Dargon Army Skins are included by default from Afterburner 3.0.0 Beta 18 and above and can there be chosen like shown before.

Answer 1

Version update
Afterburner 4.0.0 final/stable is out. Click >>here<< for download.
This is a new official version.
SE version and normal are merged to one now
Release info:
Quote from: http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4905781&postcount=1
Changes list includes:
•   Added MSI R9 280 series voltage control support
•   Added AMD Tonga graphics processors family support
•   Added core voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON R9 285X series graphics cards with NCP81022 voltage regulators
•   Added official overclocking limits extension support for AMD Tonga graphics processors. Please take a note that unofficial overclocking mode is currently not supported for AMD Tonga graphics processors family
•   Various parts of hardware monitoring module have been pumped up to improve hardware monitoring usability and flexibility:
o   Added layered monitoring graphs rendering mode. Now you may right click source graph in monitoring window, select “Attach” in the context menu then point to destination graph to attach source graph to it and create a group of layered graphs. This feature allows you to render as many layered graphs on the same grid as you wish. The colors of graphs in layered rendering mode can be customized independently of each other so you can easily identify them
o   Added multi-column monitoring graphs rendering mode. Now you can adjust the number of graph columns in “Active monitoring graphs” section in “Monitoring” tab
o   Added “Override graph name” option to “Monitoring” tab. Now you can rename the graphs displayed in hardware monitoring window
o   Monitoring history buffer size is no longer defined by monitoring window width. Now pre-history buffer size is fixed and stores the last 3600 samples (1 hour for 1000ms polling period) for each graph
o   Improved tray icon monitoring module:
o   Now you can select either text mode or barchart indicator mode for each value displayed in tray icon. Barchart indicator mode can be extremely useful for visualizing data like GPU / CPU usage
o   Improved Logitech keyboard LCD monitoring module:
o   Ported to new Logitech API to provide support for newer Logitech LCD displays
o   Added support for color LCD display of Logitech G19/G19s keyboards
o   Added graph mode support for color LCD display of Logitech G19/G19s keyboards. Now in addition to previously available text mode you can optionally select graph mode and see exact copy of MSI Afterburner’s monitoring graphs displayed directly inside the keyboard LCD. You can also press “Menu” soft button on your Logitech G19/G19S keyboard to toggle between text and graph modes dynamically in realtime
o   Added acceleration support to LCD scrolling implementation
o   Added larger 8x12, 10x12, 12x12 and 12x16 fonts support for text mode
•   Added “Regional settings” section to “User Interface” tab:
o   Temperature format settings allow you to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit format for monitored temperatures. Please take a note that this setting affects temperature readouts only. Hardware related temperature adjustments (e.g. fan speed to temperature mapping curve for all cards or temperature target adjustment for NVIDIA Kepler series) are always being displayed and adjusted in Celsius for maximum unification, safety and compatibility
o   12 hours / 24 hours time format settings allow you to configure time format for On-Screen Display and hardware monitoring window
•   Added “Enable low-level IO driver” option to the “Compatibility properties” section in “General” tab
•   Added SLI sync performance limit graph for release 340 and newer NVIDIA drivers
•   Display device enumeration implementation has been modified slightly to allow monitoring Intel iGPUs when low-level IO driver is not enabled
•   Improved handshaking algorithm reduces the risk of seeing multiple running instances of child processes (e.g. RTSS)
•   Optimized hardware polling for NVIDIA graphics cards
•   Optimized hardware polling for multi-GPU systems
•   Added SVI2 voltage control support via AMD ADL SDK to provide compatibility with future graphics cards
•   Added automatic prerecording settings to “Videocapture” tab. When you enable automatic mode prerecording session is being started automatically on each 3D application startup. Please take a note that in this case you can still use video prerecord hotkey to stop then manually restart prerecording session if necessary
•   Drastically improved skin engine:
o   Improved skin compiler gives more detailed error messages when skin compilation fail due to error in some source image file
o   Source image file format is no longer limited to 24-bit BMP files only. Now skin compiler supports all possible bit depths for BMP format and fully supports PNG format with alpha channel
o   Added built-in bitmap effect for extracting alpha-channel from PNG image files
o   Skin format has been upgraded to v1.3. New format supports alpha channel based transparency for skinned window, allowing skin designers to define semi-transparent skin areas, apply antialiasing to the skin window edges and so on
o   Added new skinned window composition modes support and “Skin composition mode” settings to “User interface tab”. New settings allows you to use one of the following modes:
o   Traditional mode – suits best for backward compatibility with existing skins and performance testing
o   Layered mode with colorkey - provides much faster rendering of skins with non-rectangular window shape and additionally allows you to adjust transparency of skinned window
o   Layered mode with alpha – provides per-pixel alpha channel support and advanced visual effects for compatible skins and also allows you to adjust transparency of skinned window
o   Skin format reference guide has been updated to v1.7 to document these changes
o   Improved implementation of rollback to default skin
o   Full skins cross-compatibility with other overclocking applications based on RivaTuner engine. Special GUI transformation layer allows you to use the skins designed for third party RivaTuner based overclocking applications and makes the process of migration to MSI Afterburner from such overclocking tools much more comfortable for you. You can keep the look and feel of your preferred overclocking application and at the same time enjoy extended MSI Afterburner’s features including full range of supported graphics cards, industry leading powerful and robust monitoring module, flexible video recording features and many more
•   RivaTuner Statistics Server has been upgraded to v6.2.0
The added MSI R9 280 series voltage control support might be what many of the users of these cards are waiting for as the majority lacked any overvoltage support so far. After release of 4.0.0 final there will be no more public betas of Afterburner but private testing as said before.