Gadgetory

MSI GTX 460 1-gig hawk this is a card that there's been quite a lot of buzz about because of some screenshots that have surfaced over the last few weeks showing this GTX 460 running at 1 gigahertz 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 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 over voltage support so you can adjust the voltage of the GPU memory and PLL just using MSI's outstanding afterburner software next it has a seven plus one phase pwm design so that means it's capable of providing loads more current up to 120 amps of current then the reference GTX 460 which uses a 4 + 1 @ phase PWM alright 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 also it features emphasize military class components I mean there's a 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 whine coil whine 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 whine on them which is terrific also you have V checkpoints this is shown up on quite a few MSI motherboards and their little built-in points where you can 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 twin froze or two thermal design so means you got dual eighty millimeter PWM fans you have a nickel plated copper cooler it uses heat pipe direct touch multiple heat pipes and a high-density heatsink and the Cyclones up to 18 degrees cooler and 8.1 decibels quieter than the reference cooler and that's all while still achieving these outstanding over clocks and all of these extra voltage modification features it's just this is this is a pretty cool ski I've been really waiting for this one so here we go the hawk itself it is over factory overclocked although that's not really even all that relevant for something like this it comes with a couple of molex to 6-pin PCI Express adapters here are the little v check adapters so you plug those into the into the card and then you plug your multimeter into this so you got three of those included I guess they're gonna go ahead and assume if you're buying a hawk Edition card you've got a a DVI oh okay don't look at that that's apparently a little note to thank me for evaluating it it has passed related testing okay Oh neat I've never seen one of these before okay accessories I found more accessories there hiding there we are so it has adapters okay we have a DVI to VGA adapter we have an mini HDMI to HDMI adapter we have a driver DVD or CD throw it away download the latest off the Nvidia website we have a little Hawk series brochure showing you how to use MSI Live Update showing you where all your V check points are 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's 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 overclocked it comes at 780 megahertz 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 I think I mentioned already it has one gig of memory ok 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 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 black ish 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 heatsink attaches via four screws so it looks like it would be quite easy to remove if you did feel like putting on a a GPU water block or anything like that let me see what this is so this is the GPU V switch PWM clock tuner you know what they don't mention that but those could be pretty cool buttons depending what they do alright let's move around to the front of the part so you can see the dual eighty millimeter fan Twin Frozr cooler this is the same cooler except with with nickel plated copper heat pipes and bass 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 or 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 gonna look for those V checkpoints here they are so you've got two PCIe six pin connectors here and there are your three v checkpoints where you can monitor the voltage of your GPU memory and 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 heating is gonna 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 temperature as possible you want to make sure you have good airflow 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 surround surround support you have to have two of these bad boys so then you'd plug in two monitors here and then one on the third card now does support CUDA 3d vision as I mentioned GeForce surround if you have two cards its supports 2-way SLI and all the other usual Nvidia features physics there's another one and thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the GeForce GTX 460 Hawk from MSI