Review: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Nvidia stormed the mainstream video card marketplace last summer when it released the GeForce GTX 460, a surprisingly potent performer with a lean $200 price. But whenever you redefine normal, what do you do the subsequent time around? That is the trap into which Nvidia has fallen with its new GTX 560 Ti. This $249 (list) gaming card competes extremely nicely with AMD’s own similarly priced offerings, in terms of both gaming performance and energy use, but is really a less-compelling value than the still-available GTX 460. If it is been a few years because you upgraded, the GTX 560 Ti is great sufficient to become worth a appear, but you shouldn’t think about this the initial must-have video clip card of 2011.
For most intents and purposes, the GTX 560 Ti is a down-the-line update of the GTX 460 and GTX 465 low-end-enthusiast cards, along the lines of your romantic relationship between the GTX 580 and the GTX 570 and their predecessors: fairly small technology tweaks instead of full-scale rethinkings. The GTX 560 Ti sports activities a GF114 GPU, an updated version of the GF104 style used in the GTX 460, with the exact same two Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs) and Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), but with 384 CUDA cores rather than 336 and 64 Texture Units rather than 56. (The variety of ROP Models has remained unchanged, at 32.) The graphics clock, processor clock, and memory clock have all received boosts also: respectively from 675 MHz to 822 MHz, from one,350 MHz to one,644 MHz, and from 3,600 MHz to four,008 MHz. Like the larger version of the GTX 460, the GTX 560 Ti is loaded with 1GB of GDDR5 memory; the memory interface is the exact same width (256-bit).
Also like final generation’s midrange cards, the GTX 560 Ti is only nine inches long, which indicates it’ll have the ability to fit in almost every gaming case on the market; and has the usual specifications of two expansion slots (one PCI Express x16 to plug the card into, and an adjacent slot to accommodate the heat sink assembly) and two six-pin power connectors. (Nvidia recommends a power provide of at least 500 watts for use with the GTX 560 Ti; the card has a TDP of 170 watts.) Like other current Nvidia cards, it has three output ports: two dual-link DVI and 1 mini HDMI.
As being a member of Nvidia’s 500 series, the GTX 560 Ti boasts new a new style with several types of transistors that use power much more efficiently; an enhanced cooling system, although as opposed to the GTX 580 and 570′s vapor chamber, this 1 uses a base plate for that graphics memory, an additional copper heat pipe, and a bigger heat sink and cooling fan; and onboard energy monitoring that ratchets down the quality on applications particularly created to stress the card’s thermals. (This really is an optional feature that might not appear on each and every card from each and every manufacturer.) Like all of Nvidia’s cards, the GTX 560 Ti supports CUDA parallel processing, PhysX physics processing, and 3D Vision for stereoscopic 3D gaming and video watching.
Just because the GTX 560 Ti’s features are greatest described relative to other present cards, the exact same is true of its performance. We compared our stock edition of the card in opposition to a 1GB GTX 460 from EVGA; a GTX 470 from Galaxy (somewhat overclocked to 625 MHz); and two reference models of AMD’s first 6000-series cards, the “Barts”-class Radeon HD 6870 and the Radeon HD 6950 “Cayman” card (which costs about $50 more, but Nvidia suggested for comparison testing), and found that though the GTX 560 Ti can maintain its own, it ultimately does not stand out a lot in the crowd.
The exceptions are within the seven exams on which the GTX 560 Ti beat the 6950-no little achievement. But in 4 of these cases (Far Cry 2 and H.A.W.X. two, at each one,680 by one,050 and one,920 by 1,200), the frame charges had been so higher for both cards that the differences were largely academic; and in 1 case (Heaven Benchmark two.one at one,680 by 1,050) the GTX 560 Ti just barely eked out a win (25.one frames per second, or fps, versus 24.five fps). Within the Lost Planet two system-pushing check (Check B), the GTX 560 Ti came out well ahead in both resolutions (40.5 versus 30.9 and 35.four versus 28.two), and would deliver a much more playable expertise with all the details maxed out.
However the 6950 took the prize around the more relevant tests: the demanding 3DMark 11 benchmark (at both the Performance and Intense presets); Heaven Benchmark at one,920 by 1,200 (though only slightly-22.three fps as opposed to 21.eight fps); and Aliens vs. Predator, Just Cause two, Metro 2033, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, all at each above-named resolutions. The GTX 560 Ti’s most immediate AMD competitors, the 6870 (priced at about $220), won the 3DMark 11 and Just Cause two tests, but otherwise lagged behind the new Nvidia card by greater amounts.
What was most interesting was how the GTX 560 Ti compared to the GTX 460, a card that is now accessible from numerous manufacturers for under $200. The cards’ outcomes were frequently very close, with only a little handful of frames separating them in each and every test. Though the 460 is priced about 79 percent of your GTX 560 Ti, it routinely turned in upwards of 90 % the efficiency in our tests. The ratios are noticeably better using the GTX 470, the card Nvidia says the GTX 560 Ti will officially substitute, and their results vary only by a couple of percentage points on their own. In neither situation can you detect substantial leaps.
The major region by which the GTX 560 Ti really does excel is power use. Our total test system’s energy consumption when idling was 120 watts, the lowest of any card we tested (the original GTX 460 was 2nd, at 123 watts, and the GTX 470 required probably the most, at 143 watts); and its 283-watt power usage under load was second only to the AMD Radeon HD 6870′s 257 watts (the GTX 470 and GTX 460 had been worst and second worst respectively, with their methods utilizing 331 and 300 watts beneath load). Nvidia’s attempts to treatment its last-generation cards’ power-hungry tendencies are really paying off.
Even so, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti inside a difficult place, and makes it challenging to suggest to anybody who does not desperately wish to squeeze each and every final frame out of his or her game. Is it a step up from the GTX 460 and 470 in terms of performance? Yes-but barely, although factoring in energy usage tends to make it a bit more appealing, if still a little tough to justify at very this price. It is possible that when Nvidia’s add-in partners start overclocking and including much more memory to the GTX 560 Ti, they’ll make a much better argument for this card’s capabilities and the hardness its moniker implies (Ti, the chemical symbol for titanium, appeared within the names of some Nvidia cards several generations in the past). Until that occurs, the GTX 460 remains a brighter example of efficiency and cost superbly matched.
Nvidia stormed the mainstream video card marketplace last summer when it released the GeForce GTX 460, a surprisingly potent performer with a lean $200 price. But whenever you redefine normal, what do you do the subsequent time around? That is the trap into which Nvidia has fallen with its new GTX 560 Ti. This $249 (list) gaming card competes extremely nicely with AMD’s own similarly priced offerings, in terms of both gaming performance and energy use, but is really a less-compelling value than the still-available GTX 460. If it is been a few years because you upgraded, the GTX 560 Ti is great sufficient to become worth a appear, but you shouldn’t think about this the initial must-have video clip card of 2011.
For most intents and purposes, the GTX 560 Ti is a down-the-line update of the GTX 460 and GTX 465 low-end-enthusiast cards, along the lines of your romantic relationship between the GTX 580 and the GTX 570 and their predecessors: fairly small technology tweaks instead of full-scale rethinkings. The GTX 560 Ti sports activities a GF114 GPU, an updated version of the GF104 style used in the GTX 460, with the exact same two Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs) and Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), but with 384 CUDA cores rather than 336 and 64 Texture Units rather than 56. (The variety of ROP Models has remained unchanged, at 32.) The graphics clock, processor clock, and memory clock have all received boosts also: respectively from 675 MHz to 822 MHz, from one,350 MHz to one,644 MHz, and from 3,600 MHz to four,008 MHz. Like the larger version of the GTX 460, the GTX 560 Ti is loaded with 1GB of GDDR5 memory; the memory interface is the exact same width (256-bit).
Also like final generation’s midrange cards, the GTX 560 Ti is only nine inches long, which indicates it’ll have the ability to fit in almost every gaming case on the market; and has the usual specifications of two expansion slots (one PCI Express x16 to plug the card into, and an adjacent slot to accommodate the heat sink assembly) and two six-pin power connectors. (Nvidia recommends a power provide of at least 500 watts for use with the GTX 560 Ti; the card has a TDP of 170 watts.) Like other current Nvidia cards, it has three output ports: two dual-link DVI and 1 mini HDMI.
As being a member of Nvidia’s 500 series, the GTX 560 Ti boasts new a new style with several types of transistors that use power much more efficiently; an enhanced cooling system, although as opposed to the GTX 580 and 570′s vapor chamber, this 1 uses a base plate for that graphics memory, an additional copper heat pipe, and a bigger heat sink and cooling fan; and onboard energy monitoring that ratchets down the quality on applications particularly created to stress the card’s thermals. (This really is an optional feature that might not appear on each and every card from each and every manufacturer.) Like all of Nvidia’s cards, the GTX 560 Ti supports CUDA parallel processing, PhysX physics processing, and 3D Vision for stereoscopic 3D gaming and video watching.
Just because the GTX 560 Ti’s features are greatest described relative to other present cards, the exact same is true of its performance. We compared our stock edition of the card in opposition to a 1GB GTX 460 from EVGA; a GTX 470 from Galaxy (somewhat overclocked to 625 MHz); and two reference models of AMD’s first 6000-series cards, the “Barts”-class Radeon HD 6870 and the Radeon HD 6950 “Cayman” card (which costs about $50 more, but Nvidia suggested for comparison testing), and found that though the GTX 560 Ti can maintain its own, it ultimately does not stand out a lot in the crowd.
The exceptions are within the seven exams on which the GTX 560 Ti beat the 6950-no little achievement. But in 4 of these cases (Far Cry 2 and H.A.W.X. two, at each one,680 by one,050 and one,920 by 1,200), the frame charges had been so higher for both cards that the differences were largely academic; and in 1 case (Heaven Benchmark two.one at one,680 by 1,050) the GTX 560 Ti just barely eked out a win (25.one frames per second, or fps, versus 24.five fps). Within the Lost Planet two system-pushing check (Check B), the GTX 560 Ti came out well ahead in both resolutions (40.5 versus 30.9 and 35.four versus 28.two), and would deliver a much more playable expertise with all the details maxed out.
However the 6950 took the prize around the more relevant tests: the demanding 3DMark 11 benchmark (at both the Performance and Intense presets); Heaven Benchmark at one,920 by 1,200 (though only slightly-22.three fps as opposed to 21.eight fps); and Aliens vs. Predator, Just Cause two, Metro 2033, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, all at each above-named resolutions. The GTX 560 Ti’s most immediate AMD competitors, the 6870 (priced at about $220), won the 3DMark 11 and Just Cause two tests, but otherwise lagged behind the new Nvidia card by greater amounts.
What was most interesting was how the GTX 560 Ti compared to the GTX 460, a card that is now accessible from numerous manufacturers for under $200. The cards’ outcomes were frequently very close, with only a little handful of frames separating them in each and every test. Though the 460 is priced about 79 percent of your GTX 560 Ti, it routinely turned in upwards of 90 % the efficiency in our tests. The ratios are noticeably better using the GTX 470, the card Nvidia says the GTX 560 Ti will officially substitute, and their results vary only by a couple of percentage points on their own. In neither situation can you detect substantial leaps.
The major region by which the GTX 560 Ti really does excel is power use. Our total test system’s energy consumption when idling was 120 watts, the lowest of any card we tested (the original GTX 460 was 2nd, at 123 watts, and the GTX 470 required probably the most, at 143 watts); and its 283-watt power usage under load was second only to the AMD Radeon HD 6870′s 257 watts (the GTX 470 and GTX 460 had been worst and second worst respectively, with their methods utilizing 331 and 300 watts beneath load). Nvidia’s attempts to treatment its last-generation cards’ power-hungry tendencies are really paying off.
Even so, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti inside a difficult place, and makes it challenging to suggest to anybody who does not desperately wish to squeeze each and every final frame out of his or her game. Is it a step up from the GTX 460 and 470 in terms of performance? Yes-but barely, although factoring in energy usage tends to make it a bit more appealing, if still a little tough to justify at very this price. It is possible that when Nvidia’s add-in partners start overclocking and including much more memory to the GTX 560 Ti, they’ll make a much better argument for this card’s capabilities and the hardness its moniker implies (Ti, the chemical symbol for titanium, appeared within the names of some Nvidia cards several generations in the past). Until that occurs, the GTX 460 remains a brighter example of efficiency and cost superbly matched.
