MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti HAWK review - Final words and conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Oh man -- Feisty -- the MSI GTX560 Ti HAWK as  tested today is an impressive card. It is the successor to the traditional Twin Frozer II series build and that means customized PCB with quality components, a nice aesthetic design. Then there is that factory clocked higher core frequency at an amazing 950 MHz and then the Twin Frozer III cooler does its enchantment alright. At factory clocks when we stress the card with a hefty game, the temperatures did not rise over 65 Degrees C, and that's testimony of a good and proper cooled product alright.

With the HAWK also come extra's like voltage monitor points, the "backbone" PCB bracket  as I like to call it and even the extra's in Afterburner like VRM temperature monitoring and triple Voltage overclocking. It's tweaking madness, really cool stuff.

With that level of game rendering performance you can address any modern game up-to say a monitor resolution of 1920x1200 combined with 4x Antialiasing and 16x Anisotropic filtering. Power consumption isn't really an issue either either consuming roughly 200 Watt when it's stressed badly in a game. Mind you these are peak levels, the average power consumption will tell another story.

Noise then -- the factory overclock required more voltage, so it produces more heat and the cooler has to work harder. But you'll balance at 65 Degrees C under game load with the noise level is defenitely higher than average but remains acceptable under the condition that you have a properly ventilated chassis. It's by all means not a silent card though.

Overall you'll notice that the GTX 560 Ti series really offer a lot. Performance wise you can't complain either; about anything here as all modern DX11 and lower games will play absolutely fine on the MSI GTX560 Ti HAWK, and that's with decent image quality settings enabled at say 4xAA and 16xAF + very high in-game quality settings.

Much like all other GTX 560 Ti reviews we have written, the success of the product will depend on the pricing level. MSI definitely has a very nice product here in their hands, and they offer it at the price of roughly 225 EUR here in the Netherlands. Compare that to GeForce GTX 570 cards and your choice can become golden; because remember, with a a little tweak you'll lift it close to GTX 570 performance.

As such the product is most definitely recommend and is an incredible fun card to not just play games with, but to fool around and tweak with a little as well. The HAWK series is factory overclocked at a really interesting level offering you the best performance in the GTX 560 Ti range. We are confident this product will not disappoint you.

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