EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win: The Raw Power Of Two GPUs
by Ryan Smith on November 4, 2011 11:00 PM ESTHAWX, Civ V, Battlefield BC2, & STALKER
HAWX, in spite of its high framerates on modern cards , is still rather GPU limited. As a result of that limitation and superb SLI scaling the 2Win manages to generate 165fps even at 2560. In fact it’s second only to the GTX 570 SLI, and is a solid 30% ahead of the GTX 580.
NVIDIA has continued to work on their Civilization V performance since the last time we’ve taken a look at the high end, and as a result SLI scaling is looking really good. The 2Win nearly doubles the performance of a GTX 560 Ti, and even the GTX 580 has to take a backseat by 33%. Thanks to these further driver improvements the 2Win is capable of cracking 60fps, even at 2560.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is another title that scales well with SLI, further vaulting it over the GTX 580. At 74.5fps at 2560 it’s not only an extremely smooth experience, but 36% ahead of a GTX 580. At the same time this is another title where the Radeons give us a strong showing, leading to the 6950 CF passing the 2Win. Meanwhile our Waterfall benchmark shakes things up slightly, but not for the better for the 2Win. All of our results have a much narrower spread, and as a result the 2Win gives up much of its advantage.
STALKER is our other VRAM-hungry benchmark. The 2Win still beats a single GTX 580 by 17%, but it loses to the 6950 CF and GTX 570 by more than usual. Both of these setups have additional VRAM (2GB and 1.25GB respectively), allowing them to get the best of the 2Win.
The significance of this situation is that with the STALKER benchmark approaching 2 years old, it’s in many ways a taste of things to come. We’re not done with the subject of VRAM, but it’s clear we’re already seeing situations where the 2Win is being held back by a lack of VRAM.
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Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
"But keep in mind, nVidia has been pushing SLI hard for TEN YEARS "You mean 7 years?
Revdarian - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Microstutter is a thing with BOTH companies.The stutter (real stutter, nothing micro there) experienced in that review was because of the use of Caps on top of the driver that actually already had the crossfire fix, and if they would have contacted AMD about it (bitched at them properly actually, nothing wrong in bitching a bit directly on private to the company if you are a known reviewer), they would have got that answer.
BTW microstutter depends from person to person, but you will feel it "easier" once the average fps of the dual card solution slips below 60fps.
Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Oh, and here are 2 tests that show CF to not be any worse than SLI concerning micro stutter:http://preview.tinyurl.com/6exquor
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6kuutnl
Got a spam notice and couldn't post with the normal links. I hope it works with tinyurl...
Fiah - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Micro-stuttering is very much a Nvidia problem as well, just look at the ominously green graphs here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/5I'm not convinced that either camp will solve this problem anytime soon, as it is as much a game engine problem as a problem of the drivers/GPU.
marraco - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
The article shows that Crossfire does worse than SLI.Fiah - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
Your point being?Uritziel - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
Me too! Great performance for the price. The only thing they've not quite been able to tackle is Metro 2033 in 3D at highest settings and 1920x1080 res. Not a single issue with SLI either. Who knows when I'll need to upgrade.Sabresiberian - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
If you read the article more thoroughly, you will see that it says results vary with application; microstuttering with Nvidia's SLI shows up more in other games and potentially more with different settings.Another thing I'll say is that microstuttering is one of those things that is terribly annoying to some people, and just isn't noticed at all by others. General reading though shows me it's a problem recognized by both Nvidia and AMD. Personally. I say it shows up most in multi-card solutions, but isn't entirely exclusive to them.
My experience has only been with Crossfire, and I found it very distracting.
I particularly find it annoying that someone would go to the trouble and expense of setting up a multi-card system and end up with worse performance. (We can talk about "performance" in terms of frame rates alone if and only if the quality does not deteriorate; id the quality does, then performance is worse, not better, even if the frame rate improves.) This is an issue that needs to be addressed much more aggressively by both companies, and I will say it does not impress me that it hasn't been solved by either one.
It makes me long for the days when Matrox was a player in gaming graphics.
;)
Sabresiberian - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
You have to realize that the card also includes the cost of NF200 bridge chip, which allows non-SLI capable mainboards to actually use this card.From the article:
"While there were some issues with this on the GTX 460 2WIn, this has apparently been resolved (the presence of NF200 shouldsatisfy all SLI license requirements in the first place). EVGA has said that the 2Win will work on non-SLI mobos, making it fully compatible with every motherboard."
In other words, if it's got a PCIe x16 slot in it, it will work in your mainboard. Most dual-GPU cards can't do that.
;)
keitaro - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
What's missing are performance numbers on Surround and Eyefinity resolutions. EVGA is also touting Surround 3D capability on this card and it is something to at least consider. I've seen so many single-monitor scores and these days they bore me. Get us some Surround/Eyefinity benchmark numbers so we can see how they fare when pressed with higher pixel count to render.