Technical Data / Specifications

With the MSI GeForce GTX 760 HAWK you get a factory overclocked card which features a custom PCB as well as a custom cooler. The ASIC quality measured on our sample was 72.4 % which is quite low but it's good news since overclockers will have more fun feeding this baby Lightning with liquid nitrogen.
About ASIC quality:



MSI' GeForce GTX 760 HAWK is based on NVIDIA's Kepler GK104-225 A2 chip, which is manufactured by TSMC using the latest 28 nanometer process technology. With the GeForce GTX 760 you get six SMX units which results in 1'152 CUDA cores. Following the specs further, there are 96 TMUs, 32 ROPs, a 256 Bit wide memory interface and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory.
Frequency wise, since MSI didn't bother overclocking the memory, the latter stays clocked at 1'502 MHz (effective 6'008 MHz). On the GPU you find a very nice factory overclock. With a base clock of 1'111 MHz and a typical boost clock of 1'176 MHz, the HAWK is one of the fastest GTX 760 on the market. Things get even more interesting when looking at the actual working frequencies, during our tests the highest boost clock we measured was 1'241 MHz and the average boost clock was also 1'241 MHz.

The card also supports GPU Boost 2.0. The first version of GPU Boost stopped overclocking the GPU when a certain power target was hit. This new second version of GPU Boost stops overclocking the card, when a certain temperature is being reached. This makes sense since the temperature is the bigger inhibitor than the power target in most cases. In this case the temperature target is 80 degrees Celsius. In other words, as long as the GPU runs lower than 80°C it will keep overclocking until the maximum frequency has been reached. This is why in our case the average boost clock was 65 MHz higher than the typical boost clock the manufacturer advertises.

	MSI HAWK	EVGA SC ACX	ASUS DC2 OC	GeForce GTX 760
Chip	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	3.54 billion	3.54 billion	3.54 billion	3.54 billion
GPU clock	1'111 MHz	1'072 MHz	1'006 MHz	980 MHz
GPU Boost clock	1'176 MHz	1'137 MHz	1'072 MHz	1'033 MHz
Memory GDDR5	2'048 MB	2'048 MB	2'048 MB	2'048 MB
Memory clock	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz
Memory interface	256 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit
Memory bandwidth	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s
TMUs	96	96	96	96
Shader Cores	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)
ROPs	32	32	32	32
TDP	170 Watt	170 Watt	xxx Watt	170 Watt
PCB Type	Custom Design	Custom Design	Custom Design	Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)	26.5 - 26.5 cm	24.3 - 24.3 cm	17.5 - 21.7 cm	17.5 - 24.1 cm
Height (PCB - Total)	11.0 - 12.8 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm	12.1 - 12.3 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm
Slots	2	2	2	2
Cooler	Twin Frozr IV Adv.	EVGA ACX	ASUS DirectCU II	NVIDIA Reference
MSRP	$XXX	$XXX	$XXX	$249

MSI decided to equip its GeForce GTX 760 HAWK with their famous Twin Frozr IV cooler in its Advanced version. Like ASUS, MSI declines its Twin Frozr according to the graphics card. However, MSI doesn't downscale its cooler as much as ASUS does from a declination to another. In this case you get four six millimeter nickel-plated copper heatpipes with an additional eight millimeter one. The latter are in contact with the GPU through a nickel-plated copper base plate. This one doesn't have a mirror finish but the finishing has been improved compared to the 770 Lightning for example. Soldered to the heatpipes you find the fin stack which is being provided with fresh air via two 100mm PWM DC brushless two ball bearing fans. Those are manufactured by Power Logic and carry the model number PLD10010B12HH.



A closer look at the PCB shows that MSI equipped this card with a 6+2 phase power design. In this case, the GPU gets six phases, two more than on the reference model. The memory can rely on two phases and take the power from the PCI-Express.
This card features a BIOS for extreme overclockers (LN2 BIOS) that can be selected via a DIP switch, located at the top end of the card. There are also two heatsink plates that keeps the card safe and cools the memory chips as well as the MOSFETs.
Component wise, the HAWK complies with MSI's Military Class IV Components standard. It doesn't mean you will find military/NASA class components on the PCB, otherwise the card would have been so expensive you couldn't afford it. Still you find top quality components such as New SFC, All Hi-c CAPs for GPU and Dark Solid CAPs.
Apart from that the HAWK also features triple overvoltage for GPU, memory and PLL via AfterBurner and voltage read-out points for GPU, memory and PLL located at the right end of the PCB.

Checking the voltage regulation chips we find a digital multi-phase controller NCP4206 from ON Semiconductor for the GPU and an unidentified two-phase PWM controller which we believe is from Richtek marked D7=EH HOX (edit: confirmed by MSI, it's a Richtek 8807).



The memory chips used are made by Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR R0C. They are specified to run at 1'500 MHz (6'000 MHz effective).

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 12 - DIRT Showdown
Page 2 - Technical Data / Specifications	Page 13 - Far Cry 3
Page 3 - Preview & Delivery	Page 14 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 15 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 5 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 16 - Metro: Last Light
Page 6 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 17 - GTA V
Page 7 - BattleField 3	Page 18 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - Borderlands 2	Page 19 - Fan Speed / Noise Level
Page 9 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 20 - Temps - Idle / FurMark / BF3
Page 10 - Crysis 3	Page 21 - Performance/Price & Performance/Watt
Page 11 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2	Page 22 - Conclusion