MSI GTX 560 Ti Hawk Fermi Gaming Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,633 words · ~8 min read
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so it may seem like cameraman has pointed the camera in the wrong
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direction it may seem that way but in
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actuality he's looking for Hawks so you know scanning the sky all
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that good stuff but he would be more likely to
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find a hawk if he had a look at the box that I'm opening up right here this is
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the MSI GTX 560 TI
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Hawk yes so this has a few things going
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for it over the GTS GTX 560 twin frozer
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2 so if you remember on the 460 the hawk
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version of the card featured a twin frozer 2 cooler well the hawk version of
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the GTX 560 one-ups that and features a twin frozer 3 cooler with propeller
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blades so MSI claims up to 20% more air flow with a propeller blade versus a
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standard bladed fan we also get a copy of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
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which presumably is a Tomb Raider game I don't know I haven't even heard of this
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game before okay ready for 3D Mark 11 so that means it is direct X11 it has 1 gig
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of gddr5 it has oh nice it has Mimi HDMI
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woo mini HDMI I'm sure is what they meant to say as well as dual dual dvii
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GeForce Cuda NVIDIA SLI fizx by NVIDIA
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NVIDIA 3D Vision as well as NVIDIA surround if you install two of these bad
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boys threeyear warranty in US Canada and Mexico and opening up the box we've got
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all of those exclusive MSI features such as military Class 2 using tantalum core
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capacitors solid capacitors as well as super farite chokes all of which are
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designed to uh stabilize the GPU more make it last longer and make it run
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cooler we've also got triple over voltage by afterburner this is a hawk
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exclusive feature so you can now adjust the auxiliary voltage as well as the
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core and memory voltages in After Burner 8+ one phase pwm design which
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delivers more Peak current than the GTX 560 TI uh oh okay and definitely more
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than the reference one so I'm assuming they're talking about the uh uh 560 TI
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twin frozer 2 PS switch okay so you can switch between performance and silence
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this is kind of like the cooler that was on the uh Intel extreme Edition uh
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latest generation cooler that came out with their six cores V check points
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which we're used to seeing on Hawk edition cards so you can measure your voltages directly all right so the twin
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frozer 3 cooler is a highdensity heat sink with propeller blades uses multiple
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heat pipes a nickel plated copper base as well as a direct contact design here
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we go so they're saying it absolutely smokes the reference cooler which it
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probably does because the Twin frozer
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series of coolers has an excellent reputation for utterly demolishing any
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reference cooler that you will find on pretty much any graphics card all right
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in terms of accessories we have a couple dual Molex to six pin PCIe adapters just
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in case you need them we've got our V checkpoint cables so you can plug those
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into the board and then you can plug your multimeter in here find out what
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your voltages are running at going to lift this out have a look at what we've
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got included in terms of games you know what I actually don't have this game so
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I'm not going to give this away I'm going to try it it's a uh hopefully a
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steam download cuz if it's not it's probably too much work for me to bother
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all right next we have a quick users
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guide driver's disc which you shouldn't use uh we've got I don't know some other
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piece of paper mini H Mimi HDMI to HDMI
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adapter as well as a DVI to VGA adapter
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I'm just teasing the boys over at MSI and girls at MSI I'm sure that was a a
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very innocent typo and they don't actually think that it's spelled Mimi so
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let's go ahead open up this package here there we go there we
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go
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there's a truck going by so we're not even going to try and
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talk all right let's get this plastic off here got to love the outdoor
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unboxings I know a lot of you don't love the outdoor unboxings but frankly I
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don't really care cuz I like them chance to get out of the office for a little
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while not to mention the excellent natural light that lends itself well to
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uh video augra videography all right just going to
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finish taking off this plastic having a little little bit of trouble there
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plastic all right there we go so this is the
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twin frozer 3 so as you can see we've got the Dual 80 mm propeller blade fans
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we've got a high density heat sink fin
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Arrangement okay we've talked about that plenty before that's interesting they
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did not call out the super pipes on this card so normally they call out their
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super pipes so we got one and two um
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incredibly thick heat pipes that are designed you can see those are the ones
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that carry the heat furthest away from the GPU so they are more efficient than
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the thinner heat pipes because they have to carry the heat out away further you
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can see the PCB is stamped MSI Hawk
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version 1.2 the reason it's stamped MSI Hawk and not NVIDIA reference is that it
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is a completely custom PCB that is how MSI builds in the functionality of the
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their auxiliary over voltage their V check points as well as uh uh more P
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phases of pwm to deliver cleaner power to your GPU for better overclo
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in back here we've got our V check
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points so we've got one for the GPU one
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for the memory and one for the PLL okay
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here we've got our dual six pin PCIe power connectors and then this is
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another feature that they did not talk about at all on the packaging but this
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brace right here this prevents the GPU from flexing when you have a heavy
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cooler installed such as a twin frozer 3 cooler so what that means is that when
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you okay basically when you install your graphics card in your system it's
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supported only by these screws and the slot itself so what happens is a lot of
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the time if you put a heavy cooler on it the board will Flex down from the weight
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will this add some extra rigidity to the board because you can see it's bolted in
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right here to the screws that go into your case and gives it some more some
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more a more solid overall Mount into your chassis Okay so we've covered that
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let's have a look at the back of the PCB itself self where we are using
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spring-loaded screws to mount the twin frozer 3 cooler we've also got a
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standard PCI Express 16x interface which we're pretty much used to seeing at this
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point on graphics cards one SLI finger
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so that is two-way SLI ready but not three-way or four-way SLI ready that is
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a limitation of the GTX 560
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gf14 um whatever it's called
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thing uh gf14 GPU here we've got a bio
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switch that's kind of cool so you can switch between bioses and then I
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actually don't know what that is if you guys know what this is let me know it looks like a fan header to me but I
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could be wrong in fact I'm pretty sure I'm wrong cuz that would be only three
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pins okay hold on let me see if the PCB is labeled and I just can't see it so
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there's performance oh here we go oh no this is not a bio switch it's for
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performance silent and and one other
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mode that's not very well labeled you can see the labels are actually down
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here under the switch performance side and reserved oh okay and
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then this is something to do with the BIOS it's it's label J BIOS so guys feel
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free to leave a comment and let me know what you guys think it is here we go at
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the back you can see that there's going to be a little bit of external exhaust
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from the Twin frozer 3 but I would not I would definitely not rely on that to do
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the bulk of your cooling so you're going to be uh kicking out a fair bit of heat
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into your case that's just the reality of these high performance cool coolers
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you better have a high performance case that's prepared to move the heat out
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here's our dual dvis as well as our Mimi HDMI and I think that's pretty much
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everything I have to say about the twin frozer 3 Hawk GTX 560 TI don't forget to
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subscribe to Li techtips for more unboxings reviews and other computer
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videos and thanks to MSI for providing us with the GTX 560 TI to check out
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looks pretty sweet especially in the sun it's all shiny and
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and now we're looking for Hawks up there again we to go C