MSI GTX 460 1 gig Hawk this is a card
that there's been quite a lot of Buzz about because of uh some screenshots
that have surfaced over the last few weeks showing this GTX 460 running at 1
GHz on air with stock cooling stable so
there's been just a ton of Buzz about
what makes this card so special that it is able to achieve that kind of
overclock without any liquid cooling or
any uh any you know voltage mods or
other tricks so let's have a look at what MSI has to say for themselves on
the inside of the Box first of all you've got triple overvoltage support so
you can adjust the voltage of the GPU memory and PLL just using MSI's
outstanding afterburner software next it
has a 7 plus 1phase pwm design so that
means it's capable of providing uh loads
more current up to 120 amps of current
than the reference GTX 460 which uses a
4+1 phase pwm all right so there's a
couple things it has going for it so obviously it uses a custom PCB that's
why it took so long to launch you don't have to come in and out so much you can just mostly look here for now um also it
features MSI's military class components I mean there's a whole whole bunch of
stuff in here that has to do with it's cooler and more reliable but to me the
biggest advantage of military class components is the fact that you don't
get coil wine coil wine sucks it's loud
so even if you have a quiet fan it's like a
little noise when you're playing games it's just stupid I hate it so any MSI
cards that I've used that feature military class components I have not
once witnessed coil wine on them which is terrific also you have V checkpoints
this is shown up on quite a few MSI motherboards and they're little built-in
points where you can uh uh connect your multimeter and you can monitor the
voltages of the GPU memory and PLL using an actual multimeter instead of relying
on only software now it does feature a twin frozer 2 thermal design so it means
you got dual 80 mm pwm fans you have a nickel plated copper cooler it uses heat
pipe direct touch multiple heat pipes and a highdensity heat sink MSI claims
up to 18° cooler and 8.1 DB quieter than
the reference cooler and that's all while still achieving these outstanding
overclocks and uh all of these extra
voltage modification features it's just uh this is this is a
pretty cool skew I've been really waiting for this one so here we go the
hawk itself it is overclock Factory
overclocked although that's not really even all that relevant for something
like this it comes with a couple of Molex to six pin PCI Express adapters
here are the little V check adapters so you plug those into the uh into the card
and then you plug your multimeter into this so you got three of those included
I guess they're going to go ahead and assume if you're buying a hawk Edition card you've got a uh uh a DVI oh okay
don't look at that that's apparently a little note to thank me for evaluating
it it has past uh related testing issues
oh okay huh neat I've never seen one of these before okay um accessories I found
more accessories they're hiding there we are so it has adapters okay we have a uh
DVI to VGA adapter we have an uh mini HDMI to HDMI
adapter we have a driver DVD or CD throw it away uh download the latest off the
NVIDIA website we have a little uh Hawk series brochure showing you how to use
uh MSI live update showing you where all your V checkpoints are uh showing you
the actual layout of the bare PCB card that's kind of neat I've never seen that
before included with a video card a little quick installation guide all good
things must come to an end including that manual okay and then we have a
quick user guide here as well now let's look at the card itself because this is
the moment we have truly all been waiting for I did mention it comes
Factory overclock it comes at 780 MHz
although that is not even close to what
MSI claims right on the box you ought to be able to achieve with this particular
card it has uh I think I mentioned already it has one gig of memory okay
and let's just take off the little plastic covers that come on all the
connectors so that we can take a closer look at the card itself so in terms of
layout you know what I wish I had a regular GTX 460 to compare it against
right off the bat here because I it does look a little bit longer to me but I
can't actually tell without having a direct comparison you can see on the
back of the PCB this is a blackish PCB card it's got a little bit of brownness
to it but that doesn't really matter it has an SLI connector up here on the top
it's got a PCI Express 16x connector
down here at the bottom the heat sink attaches via four screws so it looks
like it would be quite easy to remove if you did feel like putting on a um uh a
GPU water block or anything like that uh let me see what this is so this is the
GPU D switch pwm clock tuner you know
what they don't mention that but yeah those could be pretty cool buttons
depending what they do all right let's move around to the front of the card so
you can see the dual 80mm fan twin frozer cooler this is the same cooler
except with uh with nickel plated copper heat pipes and Bas and aluminum fins
that we saw on the MSI GeForce GTX 465
golden edition so it's that same twin frozer design but this one is copper and
aluminum so that means you see the same Innovations carried over the heat pipes
that move further away from the GPU are actually thicker so that they can carry
heat more efficiently so that means that you're able to make full use of the
entire cooler surface with these two fans and I'm going to look for those V
checkpoints here they are so you've got two PCIe six pin connectors here and
there are your three uh V checkpoints where you can monitor the voltage of
your uh GPU memory and uh hold on help
me and PLL using an actual multimeter here on
the back of the card you've got vents in the back so okay here here's how this
Heat sink's going to work some of the air from this fan is going to be
exhausted directly out of the case but quite a bit of it is going to be
exhausted in your case so if you want to get the best GPU temperatures possible
you want to make sure you have good air flow throughout your case okay so then
we've got two DVI connectors and One Mini HDMI connector remember you can
only use two of these at once and in order to get uh surround uh
surround support you have to have two of these bad boys so then you'd plug in uh
two monitors here and then one on the third card now it does support Cuda 3D
Vision uh as I mentioned GeForce surround if you have two cards it's
supports two-way SLI and all the other
usual NVIDIA features physx there's another one and thank you for checking
out my unboxing and first look at the GeForce GTX 460 Haw from MSI