The Card

Looking at the card, you can be forgiven for thinking you've seen it before. The Twin FrozrII is a popular cooling solution that MSI have used a lot this year. We don't see any reason to change from it, though, because it's a great cooler and has proved itself on many models.

At the back of the card, while we've still got the same two 6-Pin PCI-E connectors, we've also got three other ones. As we mentioned just before, these are used in conjunction with the little cables in the bundle. With that and a volt meter you're able to measure the voltage of the GPU, Memory and PLL. To be honest, it's something that most people won't use. In saying that, it's these little extras that make the card a HAWK series one.

As for the rest of the card, there are no real surprises. We've got a single SLI connector at the top of the card and the I/O interface gives us two Dual-Link DVI connectors and a single mini HDMI port.

Specifications

Out of the box the MSI HD GTX 460 HAWK carries with it a 780MHz core which is way up on the standard 675MHz that NVIDIA offer. It's not the highest out of the box clock, though. as we've seen two 800MHz cards and an 810MHz one previously.

Also, MSI have chosen to ignore the memory clock and it remains at the same 3600MHz QDR as most other cards come at.