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- Date:
- Monday , September 20, 2010
- Author:
- Mark Warner
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
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MSI N460GTX Hawk Edition Video Card Review
MSI's N460GTX Hawk Edition has landed in its place atop the totem pole of factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 460 video cards. It has some unique new features that should definitely pique the interest of many budget-minded hardware enthusiasts.
Introduction
Microstar International (MSI) is a Taiwan-based computer hardware manufacturer founded in 1986. Primarily a designer and manufacturer of PC motherboards, MSI has expanded its business into barebones PCs, servers and workstations, communications devices, consumer electronics, Notebooks, Netbooks, graphics cards, and other various electronic products. Its company motto, "Quality Products Create Faithful Customer," belies its underlying corporate strategy of designing and manufacturing quality devices for various markets and letting its high-quality reputation earn it the trust and respect of electronics consumers worldwide.
On the test bench today is MSI’s N460GTX Hawk Edition video card. This video card features NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460 GPU, paired with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.
NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460 GPU
NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 460 GPU (also known as GF104) on July 12, 2010. The new Fermi GPU was well-received thanks to its high performance, low price, and excellent overclockability. The GF104 silicon packs 336 CUDA cores and 7 tessellation engines. It has 56 texture mapping units, uses about 160W of power at full load, and launched at a price envelope of $199 to $229 USD.
NVIDIA’s reference design calls for the GPU to be clocked at 675MHz, with the memory clocked at 3.6GHz. The CUDA core clock rate is locked to the GPU core click rate with a ration of 2:1. So, since the GPU comes out at 675MHz, the reference specification for the CUDA core clock is 1.35GHz.
The GeForce GTX 460’s closest competitor is the ATI Radeon HD 5830, which costs between $190 and $270 USD. In our launch review of the GeForce GTX 460, we found that it consistently gave us a better experience than the Radeon HD 5830.
MSI N460GTX Hawk Edition
The MSI N460GTX Hawk Edition (press release) is a video card with decidedly high-end aspirations in spite of its status as a mid-level graphics card. It has a lot in common with MSI’s Lightning series, from which we have recently reviewed the R5870 Lightning. It features military grade components, an improved PCB design, a custom "Twin Frozr II" cooling device, and advanced power management technology. MSI’s primary bullet points for this special piece of hardware are as follows:
- World’s First Triple Over Voltage largely increase the overclocking potential. (First GTX 460 reaches to 1GHz of GPU clock under air cooling!)
- 7+1 Phase PWM Design increases extra 30A current output to GPU for better power supply.
- Twin Frozr II Thermal Design provides 18℃ Cooler and 8.1dB quieter compared to reference Design!
- Military Class Components have longer lifespan and better stability.
- APS (Active Phase Switch) helps save power usage by controlling PWM automatically.
- V-Check Points allow users to read voltage directly by multi-meter.
The Triple Over Voltage feature means that there are overvoltage sliders for the GPU, the memory, and the PLL (Phase Lock Loop) in the Afterburner overclocking software. Other overclocking utilities, if those even support GPU voltage modification, don’t support memory and PLL overvoltage. PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) is a power delivery technology that automatically varies the duty cycle of a high-speed switching power-supply to more efficiently deliver power with less loss than "traditional" power supplies.
The Twin Frozr II cooling device is a large heat-sink with two 8cm fans to cool the GPU, memory, and power circuitry. Please note, however, that the heat-sink base makes contact ONLY with the GPU. Thus, the memory and other circuits are cooled only by air-flow without the aid of a heat-sink.
"Military class components" refers to the use of solid-state Hi-C and tantalum capacitors and solid-state (or sealed) Super-Ferrite chokes (SFC). The primary reason for using solid capacitors is the longer lifespan, and the Hi-C tantalum capacitors improve operating efficiency. According to MSI, the use of Super-Ferrite Chokes increased current capacity of the power management system by 30% and improves efficiency by 10%.
The MSI N460GTX Hawk Edition’s active phase switch helps to save power by intelligently regulating power flow to the GPU to help reduce wasted power. "V-check" points allow gamers to check three voltage ratings with a multi-meter on three parts of the video card: GPU, PLL, and Memory.
The MSI N460GTX Hawk Edition comes out of the box with the GPU clocked at 780MHz, which is a 105MHz increase over NVIDIA’s reference specification. That means that the N460GTX Hawk Edition comes with the CUDA cores clocked to 1.56GHz, which is 210MHz faster than NVIDIA’s specification. The memory on this video card comes out of the box running at 3.6GHz, which is the clock rate that NVIDIA recommends for this GPU.
The MSI N460GTX Hawk Edition’s outer box features a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter jet, from which it appears this video card gets its name. The front of the box is home to advertisements for various features, such as the "World’s First" Triple Over Voltage feature. The back of the box is typical for MSI, showing a detailed features list, system requirements, and a brief features list in 29 different languages. The inside flap of the box’s front cover shows detailed information about the special features, such as Hi-c capacitors, solid capacitors, sealed chokes, the 7+1 Phase PWM, and the voltage check points.
The software bundle with this video card features a CD-ROM containing the Afterburner overclocking software, a product manual, and an installation guide. Interestingly, the CD-ROM disc instructs the customer to download the latest version of the Afterburner software from MSI. In addition, we received an email from MSI with the latest version attached, which stated that the bundled software did not support PLL voltage modification. The final version of the working software apparently was not built in time for its pre-release retail date that we received the card.
The accessory bundle includes two Molex to 6-pin auxiliary power adaptors, a DVI to VGA adaptor, a mini-HDMI to HDMI adaptor, and three small V-check dongles.
This video card features the now familiar Twin Frozr II cooling device, which is similar to the cooler found on the MSI R5870 Lightning, though this version is smaller. It features a large aluminum heat-sink with many thin fins bonded to a heavy heat-plate. There are also 4 large heat-pipes to help evenly disperse heat from the GPU hotplate to the outer edges of the heat-sink. The cooler is covered by an aluminum shroud with a pair of 80mm fans for airflow. This video card is 9.375" long, 4.375" tall, and 1.5" thick. The cooling shroud overhangs the end of the PCB by about half an inch.
This video card sports two 6-pin auxiliary power connectors on the back edge of the PCB. Next to those power connectors are found the three V-check ports. If you want to check PLL, GPU, or Memory voltage with your multi-meter, simply plug the bundled V-check dongles into these small white ports and connect your meter. For output, the MSI N460GTX Hawk Edition features two dual-link DVI ports and a mini-HDMI port. The back of this video card is typical with a healthy layer of small surface-mounted components, four steel spring-loaded screws to hold the heat-sink on, and a few stickers.