• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

MSI: *Offical* N460GTX Hawk 1GB OC Edition thread

Doggie2k said:
hmmm How long is the card? I currently have a gtx260 and that just squeezes into my antec sonata case.
Click to expand...

Hi.. The card is actually slightly shorter than a GTX 260 (which is what I previously had).

The actual PCB comes in at approx. 225mm and yes the fan shroud does overhang this by approx. 15mm. Thus making the card at its longest point approx. 240mm.

Though as commented before, the power connectors are at the end of the card, rather than on the side. Which may be an issue for anyone that's a bit tight for space.

The 260 GTX comes in at approx 265mm.

So I would have thought if the 260 fits in your case, then the 460 HAWK should be OK.

Hope that helps.

There is a picture of the HAWK fitten in my Lian Li case earlier in this thread. See post no 41 page 3 of this thread.
 
And while I think about it.

Is there anyone out there running these cards in SLI? And if so, on what motherboard and have you got a picture?

It's just that I'm thinking about a P55/I5 rebuild soon (can't say I'm bothered about Sandy Bridge!) and wondering about spacing between cards. Looking about maybe getting another HAWK at some point to try SLI. I've seen a thread where someone tried ASUS TOP 460's on an X58 board and that was tight (to say the least). Think the guy was going to exchange the ASUS cards for EVGA that did exhaust.

More interested in anyone's actual experience here with these cards (or others that are double width), rather than general articles on 460 SLI (as I've already read loads).
 
mikeo said:
Hi.. The card is actually slightly shorter than a GTX 260 (which is what I previously had).

The actual PCB comes in at approx. 225mm and yes the fan shroud does overhang this by approx. 15mm. Thus making the card at its longest point approx. 240mm.

Though as commented before, the power connectors are at the end of the card, rather than on the side. Which may be an issue for anyone that's a bit tight for space.

The 260 GTX comes in at approx 265mm.

So I would have thought if the 260 fits in your case, then the 460 HAWK should be OK.

Hope that helps.

There is a picture of the HAWK fitten in my Lian Li case earlier in this thread. See post no 41 page 3 of this thread.
Click to expand...


Hi, was it a worth while upgrade from a 260gtx, iam tempting to upgrade,atm i have gtx 280, is going to a 460 worth it??
 
BISH422 said:
Hi, was it a worth while upgrade from a 260gtx, iam tempting to upgrade,atm i have gtx 280, is going to a 460 worth it??
Click to expand...

A difficult one to answer really! It was some what of an "impulse buy" for me. As to be totally honest, with the games I was currently playing... the 260 GTX was not really struggling yet. I sort of just fancied a change. Obviously the price makes it a lot more attractive now, then when I bought it on day one (usual story of paying the price for being an "early adopter".. another word would be "mug" of course).

Clocked to around 850-900 MHz you should have similar performance to a stock 470 GTX. And that's based on my own testing (not just looking at articles on the Internet... good as some of these are etc.) compared to a friends identical PC, other than a 470 GTX rather than my 460 GTX (OC to 870MHz).

The MSI HAWK should OC to around 850-900MHz, then it comes down to how lucky you are with the GPU (IE. is it a good clocker) and your definition of stable. You can pretty much forget about the 1GHz, that's just an MSI pipe dream and I can't imagine any 460 hitting this and being totally stable in a closed case and usable day to day. Again being totally honest, not really better than any of the better cooled 460's. Though I think the custom PCB and better power regulators / caps and good cooling solution etc. should hopefully give a long and fruitful life.

Clocked to the level I have mine at, the highest it will run totally error free in OCCT (sorry if some think that's "anal").... I reckon it's around 60%+ better (depending on game) than my OC'd 260 GTX. Though the figure varies wildly, some DX10 games seem to get a bigger boost (EG. FarCry2 has almost doubled in performance). Obviously can't compared DX11 performance to my previous card.

The current position games wise (in my opinion) with a lot being cross console ports (EG. Assassin's Creed) I don't really think you need an Uber graphics card. Though obviously depends on resolution and I'm fully aware there are games that will benefit from SLI 480 GTX etc.

If I had stuck to my original plans (IE. wait till mid October), I would probably now go for one of the better cooled 470's (EG. Gigabyte, MSI, or Gainward). This would have not been much difference money wise to what I paid for the MSI 460 HAWK on release date. Never jumped early like this before, but that's life.

Though having said all the above, I'm quite happy with what I bought. And will probably now do a P55/I5 rebuild in November and look at going SLI on the HAWK at some point. I know some bang on a bit on the forum about micro stuttering in SLI but I quite fancy having a go. Assuming I can find a motherboard that has some decent spacing between slots of course.

Long post but thought I would try and give you as honest an opinion as I could based on the actual experience of an owner of one of these cards.

So... should you buy one. Emm... if it was me and I had a 280 GTX, I think I would either:
a) Wait and see what ATI's new cards look like.
b) Look at buying a decent 470 GTX with a decent cooler. The MSI one looks reasonable price.
c) Look at an ATI (sorry... AMD) 5870.

To be honest, I can't see you getting an earth shattering performance boost moving to a 460 GTX. Nice cards as they are.

Good luck whatever you decide.

PS. Please note that all the above is purely my own personal opinion based on actually owning one of these cards. And that I am neither running down any other specific card/s etc. And I also don't want to get into a discussion (as far too many seem to end up in a shouting match / hissy fit, on the forum these days) about comparative performance etc. And "yes" I can be as guilty as the next man (or woman).
 
Last edited:
well yes, that's what i'm waiting for!

Bascially id MSI drops the price of the HAWK down to 160 pounds then they would have 2 sales here instantly
 
Last edited:
Is the Pre-Order price of the Talon Attack version it's RRP, or is it due to drop anytime soon -coinciding with the second lot of recent price drops?

A certan other site is selling the HAWK's at 166.22, and they have the Talon Attack for the same Pre-Order price as OCUK, I don't wanna place a Pre-Order and then it drops after it's release, but at the same time I don't wanna miss out on it by waiting too long.

As an aside, what's the "limited" number of units, or will it remain unaccounted until they run out of stock?

I know it's due anytime soon, and I could just wait, but I like to plan thoroughly before I buy, and at the same time, I don't wanna miss on the Talon Attack version ;)
 
Last edited:
the question i'd like to ask msi-guru is that i buy a talon attack and put it in sli with my normal HAWK. and i over clock my HAWK to talon speeds. will both run a talon attack speeds? an answer would really be welcome!!
 
robgmun said:
the question i'd like to ask msi-guru is that i buy a talon attack and put it in sli with my normal HAWK. and i over clock my HAWK to talon speeds. will both run a talon attack speeds? an answer would really be welcome!!
Click to expand...

It will indeed, they're the same card (460) and that's how the SLI will read them, when you SLI it downclocks the more powerful card to the lowest-running frequencies card, then you OC them when in SLI, as OCing separately and in SLI get different yields (usually OCing isn't able to get quite as high than as single).

You could run a Cyclone 1GB with a Talon attack ;)

The only real thing to worry about is the VRAM size when it comes to SLI, I.E you could SLI a GTS 250 1GB with a GTS 250 512, and you'd lost the extra 512MB of the 1GB, so essentially have two 512MB cards running in SLI.
However, the 786MB 460 cards have less ROPs and smaller bus widths, so AFAIK it aint possible to SLI them unless you maybe flash the BIOS of the 1GB to a 786MB model to make it use less but aint really looked into that TBH and that might brick the card, and it's just stupid to boot :p

In your case, the only thing that'll differ is the manufacturer of the VRAM modules, which won't affect it.

In a nutshell, you're golden. :p
 
Last edited:
Out of interest:

As far as I am aware. The "normal" HAWK and the TALON version use identical PCB's... Only differences from what I can see is: faster memory with tighter timings, and GPU clocked slightly higher. Now whether they bin the GPU any more than they do in the normal HAWK version (IE. guaranteed to run without problem at out of the box clocked speed), is probably open to debate. I would be prepared to bet money (and I'm not normally a betting man) that the TALON version has about as much chance at reaching the magic 1GHz (totally stable in day to day use) as the HAWK version. I'm aware that KitGuru got their TALON to 1GHz but not too sure how much I trust / rate that particular site. And it does bring up the old thorny issue as to whether manufacturers send a "cherry picked card" for testing. It certainly would not be the first time it's been done!

We live in interesting times.

PS. Also interesting to see that they are using yet another beta version of Afterburner to do their overclocking at Kitguru. Though I see that there is already a beta version of 2.1 doing the rounds as well. Whether this makes any difference, who knows. Though as I've commented before, some of the reviews of the HAWk version of this card used a version of Afterburner that allowed up to +200mV to be applied, which in my opinion gave a bit of a false impression of it's overclocking potential. Though I'm also aware that some have used the official final release version of Afterburner 2.0 (IE. up to +100mV on the core) and achieved decent OCs. Also as commented ad nausea, it's pretty much luck of the draw, or should that be "luck of the core" :) . Also depends on your definition of "stable" as well (but I don't want to go there... as they say).
 
Last edited:
mikeo said:
PS. Also interesting to see that they are using yet another beta version of Afterburner to do their overclocking at Kitguru. Though I see that there is already a beta version of 2.1 doing the rounds as well. Whether this makes any difference, who knows. Though as I've commented before, some of the reviews of the HAWk version of this card used a version of Afterburner that allowed up to +200mV to be applied, which in my opinion gave a bit of a false impression of it's overclocking potential. Though I'm also aware that some have used the official final release version of Afterburner 2.0 (IE. up to +100mV on the core) and achieved decent OCs. Also as commented ad nausea, it's pretty much luck of the draw, or should that be "luck of the core" :) . Also depends on your definition of "stable" as well (but I don't want to go there... as they say).
Click to expand...

I dunno if it can be said that the +200mV is a false impression of it's overclocking potential, if the VRM's are able to handle it, I can't say that it obscures it's OCing ability at all, look at everyone who wanted Volterra regulators to get higher OC's on their GTX 2XX's, so they could up the voltage to get higher OC's off the chip.
Same principle as OCing a CPU, you need to feed more Voltage to get a higher OC.
A guy on our forums made a few BIOS' for the 460's to have their stock Voltage of 1.087 upped to 1.21 and subsequently hit the magic Gig and a Vantage GPU score of 19449 on a Cyclone.
The actual Voltage of each 460 varies ever-so-slightly anyway, as you know, so +200mV aint gonna give exactly the same Voltage output for every single card.

Someone got 1GHz on the core outta their HAWK at 1.18v, but then pushed it to [email protected] but blew a VRM clean open, lol.

Whether I get the HAWK or the Talon Attack, I'll be lavishing the VRM's with Enzotech all-copper heatsinks in the very least, I still dunno if I can justify spending the 30-odd quid extra for the Talon Attack until I start seeing some reviews of them by trusted sites and people in my regular forums, if they came with direct VRM cooling, I'd doubt I'd be hesitant, as I'll be more than happy with 950-970 on the core, I don't -need- that Gig, but I might push just for bragging rights or benching and run it lower 24/7, of course :p

Not long and we'll see I guess 8)
 
EvoBeardy

I tend to agree with pretty much what you say.

What I was actually getting at, is that the final release of AfterBurner had the max voltage increase that can be applied to the HAKW reduced to +100mv. From talking to Unwinder on the Guru3D forums, this was because MSI told him to set it to that. I suppose that they are just wanting to play it safe and trying to reduce the possible RMA's from blown regs.

I noticed that one guy on the Guru3D forum also managed to blow a reg by pushing to much voltage through it! Now I wonder if he managed to get a successful RMA on it? I might post and ask him. You've got to laugh sometimes.

I'll also be interested to see if the PCB has been changed in any way (EG. heat sinks on the VRM's... which the standard HAWK doesn't have).

Good luck what ever you decide to do and I'll be very interested to hear how things go. So keep us posted.

:)
 
555BUK said:
Just waiting for a TWO @ £150 or less:).

hint hint.
Click to expand...

Starting to make my £213.44 purchase price look expensive! That's life... I should have waited for October. No good crying over spilt milk. It's still a nice card and as you say... SLI at that price would be VERY attractive. Though think I'll get that SSD first before my SLI re-build. No end of ways to throw money away with this hobby. :D
 
mikeo said:
EvoBeardy

I tend to agree with pretty much what you say.

What I was actually getting at, is that the final release of AfterBurner had the max voltage increase that can be applied to the HAKW reduced to +100mv. From talking to Unwinder on the Guru3D forums, this was because MSI told him to set it to that. I suppose that they are just wanting to play it safe and trying to reduce the possible RMA's from blown regs.

I noticed that one guy on the Guru3D forum also managed to blow a reg by pushing to much voltage through it! Now I wonder if he managed to get a successful RMA on it? I might post and ask him. You've got to laugh sometimes.

I'll also be interested to see if the PCB has been changed in any way (EG. heat sinks on the VRM's... which the standard HAWK doesn't have).

Good luck what ever you decide to do and I'll be very interested to hear how things go. So keep us posted.

:)
Click to expand...

Ah gotcha, yeah I thought that reduction was accidental or something, been working hellishly late for the last few months, so aint really had much time to get in on the goings on with AB and Unwinder's work (I'm an avid RT fan and user)
Seems that the common and sweet spot for the VRegs are 1.14 -1.18v, and seem to get a good stable clock outta the core on that much, without blowing them.
For some reason, I have it in my head since you first stated about the differences between the two, that there's a slight difference in PCB layout (like the Vregs are situated differently), I dunno if I saw this somewhere, or if my brain is simply making it up... I just don't know anymore *sobs* Stupid mind of mine.... :'(

Seems that the 1.18v has been adopted as a safe limit by MSI then, and from what I've seen that's attained the magical Gig, or damn near close to 8)
Thanks for the info on that one, appreciate it :)

Either way, I'll be sure to post here how it goes once I grab one :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom