MSI GeForce GTX 760 HAWK review - Article

MSI GeForce GTX 760 HAWK Edition Armed With TwinFrozr IV Cooler

This review will demonstrate the awesomeness that is the MSI GeForce GTX 760 HAWK. The TwiNFrozr IV cooling solution based product is VERY silent but more overly, it is the fastest factory clocked GTX 760 we have seen to date. And that shows in sheer performance. Being a HAWK however also guarantees nice overclock experiences and obviously great build quelity. Join us in this article, where we'll take the product close to 1400 MHz, which is a pretty impressive clock frequency. Let's see if the HAWK model will be worth it for you.

The GeForce GTX 760 is a re-spin product, meaning NVIDIA took an older GPU, rebadged it, tweaked some parameters and injects it back into the market at a better price-point. You might like that, or not. But the fact remains that the GeForce GTX 760 is to be considered a mainstream to high-end product, yet comes at a competitive price with the very same chip used in the GeForce GTX 670 and GTX 680. And that a year ago, where the second and top high-end graphics cards. As such the card remains very interesting in terms of performance though. See the GK104 GPU itself being used will have two shader cluster disabled. This gives the GK104 GPU 1152 CUDA cores to work with, with in total, 96 texture and 32 raster operating units. The GPU being used is actually tagged as GK104-225 A2. The graphics card also has slightly slower clock frequencies than big daddy GTX 680. However the GTX 760 comes with a Boost clock which is set at 1033 MHz. The core clock frequency (for the reference products) is 980 MHz with the 256-bit DDR5 memory clocking in at 6008 MHz.

With a TDP at roughly 170 Watts, the card won't draw too much power either, but it surely packs power, it is silent and the GPU core temperatures remain completely under control. Board partners will be free to launch their own SKUs, all pimped and beefed up, and that's where we start the next chapter.

Meet the HAWK, the black and yellow colored speed demon from MSI. That yellow stripe my friends is brought back on the M and XPower motherboards so you can actually match the colors and your overall PC build for that refined and complete look. The card comes with an all customized PCB, TwinFrozr IV cooler, military class components and to top it off, a very high factory overclock that places this product smack down in the middle of GeForce GTX 760 and 770 performance. The HAWK edition also comes with the V-Check points that allow voltage measurement points for enthusiasts wanting accurate voltage readings via multi-meter and even an LN2 secondary BIOS. This all makes it a good chunk faster opposed to the competition, alongside a clock frequency increase it will be priced aggressively as it will not be that far off from the regular GTX 760 cards. This is the 2GB edition that comes factory clocked for you at whopping 1111 MHz with a Boost clock of 1150 MHz. The GTX 760 series memory clock has been set at an effective data-rate of 6008 MHz. We test the product with the hottest games like Metro: Last Light, Battlefield 3, Company of Heroes 2, Far Cry 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter, Hitman Absolution and many more. Have a peek at the most silent yet best cooled product right we have tested, and then next page please.