MSI GeForce GTX 760 HAWK review - Product Showcase

This GeForce GTX 760 HAWK might have a maximum power design of 160~170 Watts, but they are made to overclock as well. As such you will see two 150 W 8-pin PEG (PCI EXpress Graphics) a connectors. Another 75 to 150 Watts is delivered though the PCI slot and thus motherboard. This should be plenty for a decent overclocking session.

In the top side next to the two SLI connectors you will find a small switch. This is the LN2 BIOS. If you are savvy with the standard factory clock frequencies (which really is already terrific) then leave it at standard. Switching to LN2 mode however will open up two important functions, the over current protection gets disabled as well as active phase switching. This in combination with MSI AfterBurner will give you much more headroom to overclock. 

We do expect an MSI AfterBurner update soon what will allow a little more boom-boom-pow. But even with the current revision, we got this card in the 1370~1400 MHz range.

If you like to go a little freaky then be sure to use the supplied voltage cables so you can monitor GPU, Memory and PLL voltages. 

Honestly, very simply stuff, the cables are supplied, you insert them. 

And then with a DMM you can read out the GPU voltage. And as you can see, MSI applies a little higher then the normal voltage to the GPU. Which explains the higher factory overclock and our overclocking results. But we'll show you all that in a jiffy.