MSI N460GTX HAWK – Multiplied Overclocking Potential with Triple Over Voltage

Among NVIDIA’s current lineups, the GeForce GTX 460 is perhaps one of the most phenomenal. For its price point, this GPU offers remarkable performance. Graphics card vendors have also been employing creative efforts to make it even more interesting, including MSI who came up with the N460 GTX HAWK, based on the 1 GB variant of NVIDA’s GeForce GTX 460. Designed with overclocking in mind, it features MSI’s brand new Triple Overclocking technology as well as some other nice additions.

Specification

	MSI N460GTX HAWK	NVIDIA GTX 460 1GB
Codename	GF104	GF104
Fabrication Process	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	1.95 Billion	1.95 Billion
Die Size	320 mm²	320 mm²
Core Clock	780 MHz	675 MHz
Stream Processors	336	336
Shader Clock	1560 MHz	1350 MHz
Texture Units	56	56
ROPs	32	32
Memory Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory Size	1GB	1GB
Memory Clock (effective)	3600 MHz	3600 MHz
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	11	11
Shader Model	5	5
Power Connectors	2x 6-pin	2x 6-pin
Min Recommended Power Supply	450 Watt	450 Watt
Bus Support	PCIe 2.1 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16

From the above table you can compare HAWK’s technical specification to NVIDIA’s reference standard. MSI increased the core and shader frequencies by 105 MHz and 210 MHz, respectively. The memory, on the other hand, stays at default speed, which is rather unfortunate for this type of card.

Sales Package and Contents

This is how the box looks like. A rather large image of a stealth fighter plane, which MSI had apparently associated with its HAWK series of graphics card, is located on the front side.

“The Triple Over Voltage”, a new overclocking feature from MSI.

An internal Styrofoam packaging keeps the graphics card in a fixed position and protects it from impacts.

On the bottom of the box, we found a User’s Guide, a manual book, a driver disc, and three V-Check Point cables along with a DVI to D-Sub and a mini HDMI to HDMI converters.