Video Card

Having a look at the card, you might notice the cooler that MSI has opted for is similar to what we've seen before. This isn't the first time we have seen the TwinFrozrII cooler; mind you, we tend to see it on higher end models.

The cooler is quite large and takes up the majority of the card. We've got two fans that sit over the top and a bunch of heat pipes across the bottom. We can see the brand in the middle of the cooler and the cooler name on the left.

At the back of the card we have a single 6-Pin PCI Express power connector that's needed to power the card. Closer to the front we have a single CrossFire connector which is a bit weird. I actually spoke to MSI quickly about this; the single CrossFire connector still supports two cards without an issue. The lack of an extra connector also frees up a bit of PCB space, giving MSI more room to play with.

In the I/O department we've got three connections. Starting from the left, we have DisplayPort, HDMI and Dual-Link DVI. These three connections will give us the ability to run EyeFinity.

Specifications

Out of the box the HAWK HD 5770 only offers us a 25MHz overclock coming in at 875MHz. As for the 1GB of GDDR5, that remains at the stock 4800MHz QDR clock. This didn't really interest us, though. What we wanted to know was what we could achieve if we moved the core voltage from 1.15v to 1.35v.

It gave us so much of an overclock, it wasn't even funny. We moved from 875MHz to 1045MHz on the core and the RAM went from the above mentioned 4800MHz QDR to a blistering fast 5552MHz QDR.