MSI GTX 460 Hawk 1GB Overclocking Optimized Graphics Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,390 words · ~6 min read
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MSI GTX 460 1 gig Hawk this is a card
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that there's been quite a lot of Buzz about because of uh some screenshots
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that have surfaced over the last few weeks showing this GTX 460 running at 1
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GHz on air with stock cooling stable so
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there's been just a ton of Buzz about
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what makes this card so special that it is able to achieve that kind of
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overclock without any liquid cooling or
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any uh any you know voltage mods or
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other tricks so let's have a look at what MSI has to say for themselves on
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the inside of the Box first of all you've got triple overvoltage support so
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you can adjust the voltage of the GPU memory and PLL just using MSI's
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outstanding afterburner software next it
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has a 7 plus 1phase pwm design so that
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means it's capable of providing uh loads
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more current up to 120 amps of current
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than the reference GTX 460 which uses a
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4+1 phase pwm all right so there's a
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couple things it has going for it so obviously it uses a custom PCB that's
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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
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features MSI's military class components I mean there's a whole whole bunch of
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stuff in here that has to do with it's cooler and more reliable but to me the
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biggest advantage of military class components is the fact that you don't
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get coil wine coil wine sucks it's loud
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so even if you have a quiet fan it's like a
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little noise when you're playing games it's just stupid I hate it so any MSI
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cards that I've used that feature military class components I have not
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once witnessed coil wine on them which is terrific also you have V checkpoints
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this is shown up on quite a few MSI motherboards and they're little built-in
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points where you can uh uh connect your multimeter and you can monitor the
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voltages of the GPU memory and PLL using an actual multimeter instead of relying
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on only software now it does feature a twin frozer 2 thermal design so it means
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you got dual 80 mm pwm fans you have a nickel plated copper cooler it uses heat
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pipe direct touch multiple heat pipes and a highdensity heat sink MSI claims
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up to 18° cooler and 8.1 DB quieter than
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the reference cooler and that's all while still achieving these outstanding
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overclocks and uh all of these extra
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voltage modification features it's just uh this is this is a
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pretty cool skew I've been really waiting for this one so here we go the
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hawk itself it is overclock Factory
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overclocked although that's not really even all that relevant for something
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like this it comes with a couple of Molex to six pin PCI Express adapters
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here are the little V check adapters so you plug those into the uh into the card
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and then you plug your multimeter into this so you got three of those included
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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
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don't look at that that's apparently a little note to thank me for evaluating
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it it has past uh related testing issues
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oh okay huh neat I've never seen one of these before okay um accessories I found
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more accessories they're hiding there we are so it has adapters okay we have a uh
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DVI to VGA adapter we have an uh mini HDMI to HDMI
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adapter we have a driver DVD or CD throw it away uh download the latest off the
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NVIDIA website we have a little uh Hawk series brochure showing you how to use
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uh MSI live update showing you where all your V checkpoints are uh showing you
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the actual layout of the bare PCB card that's kind of neat I've never seen that
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before included with a video card a little quick installation guide all good
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things must come to an end including that manual okay and then we have a
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quick user guide here as well now let's look at the card itself because this is
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the moment we have truly all been waiting for I did mention it comes
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Factory overclock it comes at 780 MHz
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although that is not even close to what
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MSI claims right on the box you ought to be able to achieve with this particular
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card it has uh I think I mentioned already it has one gig of memory okay
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and let's just take off the little plastic covers that come on all the
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connectors so that we can take a closer look at the card itself so in terms of
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layout you know what I wish I had a regular GTX 460 to compare it against
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right off the bat here because I it does look a little bit longer to me but I
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can't actually tell without having a direct comparison you can see on the
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back of the PCB this is a blackish PCB card it's got a little bit of brownness
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to it but that doesn't really matter it has an SLI connector up here on the top
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it's got a PCI Express 16x connector
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down here at the bottom the heat sink attaches via four screws so it looks
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like it would be quite easy to remove if you did feel like putting on a um uh a
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GPU water block or anything like that uh let me see what this is so this is the
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GPU D switch pwm clock tuner you know
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what they don't mention that but yeah those could be pretty cool buttons
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depending what they do all right let's move around to the front of the card so
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you can see the dual 80mm fan twin frozer cooler this is the same cooler
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except with uh with nickel plated copper heat pipes and Bas and aluminum fins
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that we saw on the MSI GeForce GTX 465
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golden edition so it's that same twin frozer design but this one is copper and
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aluminum so that means you see the same Innovations carried over the heat pipes
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that move further away from the GPU are actually thicker so that they can carry
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heat more efficiently so that means that you're able to make full use of the
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entire cooler surface with these two fans and I'm going to look for those V
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checkpoints here they are so you've got two PCIe six pin connectors here and
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there are your three uh V checkpoints where you can monitor the voltage of
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your uh GPU memory and uh hold on help
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me and PLL using an actual multimeter here on
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the back of the card you've got vents in the back so okay here here's how this
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Heat sink's going to work some of the air from this fan is going to be
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exhausted directly out of the case but quite a bit of it is going to be
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exhausted in your case so if you want to get the best GPU temperatures possible
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you want to make sure you have good air flow throughout your case okay so then
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we've got two DVI connectors and One Mini HDMI connector remember you can
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only use two of these at once and in order to get uh surround uh
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surround support you have to have two of these bad boys so then you'd plug in uh
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two monitors here and then one on the third card now it does support Cuda 3D
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Vision uh as I mentioned GeForce surround if you have two cards it's
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supports two-way SLI and all the other
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usual NVIDIA features physx there's another one and thank you for checking
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out my unboxing and first look at the GeForce GTX 460 Haw from MSI