NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti: Upsetting The $250 Market
by Ryan Smith on January 25, 2011 9:00 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead, still one of the toughest game in our benchmark suite. Even 2 years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” While we’re closer than ever, full Enthusiast settings at a playable framerate is still beyond the grasp of a single card.
While we throw in our 2560x1600 charts for good measure, the real chart to keep an eye on is at 1920x1200, the kind of resolution cards around this price range are targeted at. With that in mind, our first game – and often a prognostic of overall performance – is not in NVIDIA’s favor. The 6950 does quite well here, leaving the GTX 560 down by well more than the 4% price difference between the cards. Overall we’re looking at performance fairly close to the older 5870 in Crysis.
Amidst NVIDIA’s own stable of products, what becomes clear is that the GTX 560 has a close peer in the soon to be phased out GTX 470. At 1920 and 1680 the GTX 560 is always faster than the GTX 470, but never immensely so; and at higher resolutions the GTX 470 still has an advantage. Meanwhile the GTX 460 1GB is outclassed by a consistent 28%. It’s not bad for what’s technically the same GPU, eh?
The story of minimums is even a bit more lopsided against NVIDIA here. The lower the resolution the more it falls behind the 6950 1GB, by 15% at 1920 and 25% at 1680. However on a positive note, on an absolute basis the 560 is doing pretty well here; at 29.5fps minimum at 1920, it’s basically never falling below 30fps, meaning not only can it play Crysis but that it can do so smoothly. It is quite interesting to note though that the 560’s minimums are almost identical at 1920 and 1680, indicating a non-resolution dependent bottleneck. ROPs and/or memory bandwidth look to be the culprit here, particularly with the GTX 460 1GB coming so close at 1680.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
87 Comments
View All Comments
ggathagan - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
I believe you mean "Apparently Anandtech's efforts to find good writers were in vain."phoible4 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
The GTX560 looks interesting. However, prices for 768MB 460s are hitting rock bottom. I just paid $90 for one from TigerDirect (after rebates), and it looks like there are a few under $130 on Newegg. It seems like it would cost about the same to run SLI 460s and 1 560 (assuming your case can handle it), and I can guess that the SLI config would be faster in most games.I actually kind of expected NVidia to release a dual-chip 460 as their next-gen 580, and take a page out of AMD's playbook (wonder how hot/loud that would be).
Belard - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
The GF 460-768mb are slow compared to their 1Gb versions. They run out of memory way too quick. But for $90... that would be a great deal that is worthwhile. Newegg is showing $150 on avg for the 768mb 460s. Which is about $25 less than a newer 6850 card which is easily faster. Its even faster than the 1GB 460 and cost less.mosox - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
[quoteAMD’s scramble to launch the Radeon HD 6950 1GB has produced a card with similar levels of performance and pricing as the GTX 560 Ti, making it impossible to just blindly recommend the GTX 560 Ti.[/quote]What? The 6950 2GB is faster than the 560 and the The 6950 2GB is FASTER than the 6950 2GB at every resolution except the highest ones like 2560x1600.
This is from Tom's:
mosox - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Read that as The 6950 1GB is FASTER than the 6950 2GB, sorry.Visual - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
you read that right - "tighter memory timings"ritalinkid18 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
I would just like to say, very nice article... well written and informative. I've been a fan of anandtech for many years and the GPU articles never disappoint.Is it just me or does anyone else find reading about Nvidia's architecture a lot more interesting?
Also, I really hate that the comments are filled with people that say you are bias towards NVIDIA. To all those people, PLEASE go read the some other reviews. A majority of them praise the 560. This article is more critical of the 560 value than most.
jonks - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
"The GTX 560 is always faster than the GTX 470, but never immensely so; and at higher resolutions the GTX 470 still has an advantage."So the 560 is always faster than the 470 except when it's not. :)
poohbear - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
wow the gpu market is definitely intense! nvidia and AMD are neck & neck now, very nice time to buy a vid card!7Enigma - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Thanks again Ryan and Anandtech for keeping the 4870 in your charts for 1920X1200 res. I've always read the new gpu reviews and been saddened that although the new cards are fast they were still not approaching 2X the performance of my 4870. With the constant name change with the same parts, or slightly faster parts, it's taken until just about now to have a card worth the upgrade.Now my question is will I see the performance improvement in GAMES using my C2D 8500 (OC'd to 3.8GHz), or do I need to rebuild the system with Sandy Bridge to actually see the 2X GPU performance?