Magnotorheological (MR) dampers have been demonstrated to be more effective in reducing the structural response due to earthquakes using only a small amount of external power. The performance of MR damper depends upon type of control law used and the damper force is directly depends on the input command voltage. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of input command voltage on MR damper system against recently proposed control laws under different earthquakes. The magnitude of control force increases with the increase in the input command voltage of MR damper, however for the different damper locations and configurations maximum command voltage to the current driver may not always effective in reducing the structural responses. To investigate the effective performance of the MR dampers, different control algorithms with multiple MR damper locations are considered in this study. A phenomenological model of a shear- mode MR damper, based on a Bouc–Wen element, is employed in the analysis of the controlled building. The control algorithms are tested on a five-story framed building and parametric study on variation in the input command voltage is conducted for different real earthquake ground motions. The numerically evaluated optimum parametric values are considered for the analysis of the different damper locations in the building in order to reduce the displacement, acceleration and the base shear of the building. It is shown numerically that the performance of the MR damper has a great potential in suppressing structural vibrations over a wide range of seismic inputs by selecting appropriate optimum input command voltages.