MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti HAWK review - Introduction

The product for review today was pending in our queue for a while now, as such it is already available on the Market, yes yes. The GTX 560 Ti HAWK edition has arrived to the scene, and dang... it's really good!

After the initial launch reference reviews NVIDIA's partners released more customized solutions onto the market for the GeForce GTX 560 Ti series. The HAWK edition we test today, might as well have been called Lightning as we see a custom PCB with phase LEDs, voltage monitoring points, military class components, triple overvoltaging and to put some icing on the cake... the new TwinFrz III heatpipe cooler that will hopefully bring good temperatures versus low noise levels.

In this article we'll take the MSI GTX560 Ti HAWK edition for a test spin. In the reference review you guys learned that NVIDIA has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to the baseline performance of the GTX 560 Ti, the overclocking potential however was also really impressive.

And AIB/AIC partners will realize that very much, so you'll spot products clocked at core frequencies of 900 MHz and some of them will even brute force attack that upper threshold higher.

The MSI GTX560 Ti HAWK tested today indeed comes all customized and factory overclocked, armed with some military grade components and a robust build the dark PCB will carry a GPU clocked at 950 MHz and its memory at 4200 MHz, thus both are a decent chunk faster than the reference clock products.

To top things off, MSI put the Twin Frozr III cooler on this card and that admittedly does leave a decent impression. As a result of that excellent cooling we can actually overclock this card (without voltage tweaking whatsoever) close to 1 GHz, and that my friends means true value. Boost a little additional voltage in there... and you'll possibly pass the 1 GHz barrier, we did!

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