diff --git a/src/axolotl/utils/validation.py b/src/axolotl/utils/validation.py
index 298d36c4e..2e0da69b3 100644
--- a/src/axolotl/utils/validation.py
+++ b/src/axolotl/utils/validation.py
@@ -87,6 +87,11 @@ def validate_config(cfg):
             "You probably want to disable group_by_length as it will force a streamed dataset to download completely."
         )
 
+    if any([cfg.adamw_beta1, cfg.adamw_beta2, cfg.adamw_epsilon]) and (
+        not cfg.optimizer or "adamw" not in cfg.optimizer
+    ):
+        logging.warning("adamw hyperparameters found, but no adamw optimizer set")
+
     # TODO
     # MPT 7b
     # https://github.com/facebookresearch/bitsandbytes/issues/25
diff --git a/tests/test_validation.py b/tests/test_validation.py
index dba54586e..cc6d29a23 100644
--- a/tests/test_validation.py
+++ b/tests/test_validation.py
@@ -263,3 +263,45 @@ class ValidationTest(unittest.TestCase):
 
         with pytest.raises(ValueError, match=regex_exp):
             validate_config(cfg)
+
+    def test_adamw_hyperparams(self):
+        cfg = DictDefault(
+            {
+                "optimizer": None,
+                "adamw_epsilon": 0.0001,
+            }
+        )
+
+        with self._caplog.at_level(logging.WARNING):
+            validate_config(cfg)
+            assert any(
+                "adamw hyperparameters found, but no adamw optimizer set"
+                in record.message
+                for record in self._caplog.records
+            )
+
+        cfg = DictDefault(
+            {
+                "optimizer": "adafactor",
+                "adamw_beta1": 0.0001,
+            }
+        )
+
+        with self._caplog.at_level(logging.WARNING):
+            validate_config(cfg)
+            assert any(
+                "adamw hyperparameters found, but no adamw optimizer set"
+                in record.message
+                for record in self._caplog.records
+            )
+
+        cfg = DictDefault(
+            {
+                "optimizer": "adamw_bnb_8bit",
+                "adamw_beta1": 0.0001,
+                "adamw_beta2": 0.0001,
+                "adamw_epsilon": 0.0001,
+            }
+        )
+
+        validate_config(cfg)