Exclusive: MSI R6870 Hawk - The Eagle Has Landed
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Conclusion
Unlocking Hidden Potential
Judging from our results, the MSI R6870 Hawk is not a card that you should use as provided out of the box. Allow us to explain.
In stock form, we found that it was only marginally quicker than a reference card, which is not surprisingly considering it only received an almost negligible 30MHz bump in core clock speeds, while memory clock speeds were completely untouched. This is disappointing because as a “Hawk” card and as the company’s flagship, we expected it to be substantially faster right out of the box.
However, the R6870 Hawk did reasonably well in our overclocking test as it managed to run stably at 1020MHz at the core and 4800MHz DDR - an increase of 90MHz at the core and 600MHz DDR. With these clock speeds, overall performance improved by around 7% to 10%, which is certainly significant, if not impressive.
Much of its great overclockability has to do in no small part with the assortment of components such as solid capacitors and super ferrite chokes which MSI has added to make the card run more efficiently and stably. Also, the Twin Frozr III cooler was supremely effective as we recorded a maximum temperature of only 57 degrees while the card was under heavy load (at stock clock speeds).
All in all though, the MSI R6870 Hawk is not for those who want a fast card out of the box, for there are faster alternatives. That said, the MSI R6870 Hawk does redeem itself for being massively overclockable. Bearing in mind our clock speeds were achieved using no more than the Twin Frozr III cooler that came with the card, we are confident that enthusiasts with more aggressive cooling setups will achieve even better results with the R6870 Hawk.
According to MSI, the R6870 Hawk will be priced locally at S$395, which costs about the same as the Twin Frozr II version and about S$10 to S$20 more than other regular Radeon HD 6870 cards. Whether this premium is worth it or not depends very much on the user, because as it is out of the box, the R6870 Hawk is underwhelming, but if you have the know-how and tools to push it to the limits, the R6870 Hawk will reward the user with excellent overclocking performance.
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