MSI GeForce GTX 460 HAWK review - Introduction

The hottest GeForce GTX 460 of them all ? 

The GeForce GTX 460 comes in many forms, shapes and sizes, but pretty much all of the cards out there are based on the NVIDIA reference design. That by itself is a rock solid design with no compromises at all. However we are gurus and we like to see things with a little niche and that x-factor. As such it's always with the greatest pleasure that we review the more customized products.

Today the turn goes to MSI, they've just released their HAWK edition GeForce GTX 460 graphics card and well, the only thing left original is the actual GPU as everything else was changed.

We see a custom PCB with phase LEDs, voltage monitoring points, military class components and to put some icing on the cake ... the new TwinFrz II heatpipe cooler that will hopefully bring good temperatures versus low noise levels.

It doesn't end there though, MSI is pre-overclocking this 1024MB HAWK model towards 780 MHz. And then there's the overclock potential ... a new voltage regulation circuitry was embedded, allowing not only to play and tweak around with GPU voltages, nope ... they added voltage control for the memory and Auxilary/PLL voltage as well. As a result this board can get easily overclocked to 900 ~ 950 MHz, and if you are lucky maybe even 1 GHz. All in all definitely something you want to check out.

Have a peek and then let's head into the review .... next page please.