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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Leyawiin - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Its like putting small skinny tires on a Corvette.Leyawiin - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Such a dork..."wouldn't". There goes my funny analogy down the toilet. :(ypsylon - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
I stick with my lovely MSI TF3 580. So what it is slower than 2 560. I don't need that kind of power anyways. And just look at this EVGA monstrosity. I would take that for free even if someone paid me good money to take it. Absolute disgrace.EVGA should do the engineering part and then at least slap Arctic Cooling thingy on it. That what companies without imagination do. As for MSI or Asus. You pay a good premium on those, but my god these cards are marvels of modern engineering. Not some slap-dash services a la EVGA.
RussianSensation - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
MSI TF3 580 is a marvel of engineering? How so?At $499, it's not fast enough on its own for 2560x1600 gaming in modern games. At 1920x1200 or below, it's not providing more playability than a $300 GTX570. And the fact that you can get 2x HD6950 2GB Sapphire Dirt 3 Edition cards that have a high chance of unlocking into a 6970 makes a pretty poor value atm.
Fiah - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
- that SLI scaling will always be strong, and that multi-GPU timing issues are easily overcomeThose are rather strong assumptions. I'm particularly uncertain that the GPU guys will solve micro-stuttering. Micro-stuttering doesn't lose you any benchmarks and it's a complex problem, so I'm rather sceptical if any of the GPU bakers will spend the necessary time and moeny to solve this problem, if indeed it's solvable at all.
Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
I see SLI/CF as acceptable in the high end region (HD6950+/GTX570+), where you can't increase performance with one card only. However, even then you need at least a 2560 resolution and other stuff to make really good use of it, because of the console limiting visual performance today.Overall though, I'm not a fan of multi-GPU setups today, because of the driver issues and most importantly micro lag. I had a HD3870X2, 2 GTS8800 512MB and recently gamed on a friends 2*470GTX and the experience was never smooth enough to justify the cost and power consumption.
Isn't PCIe 3.0 supposed to bring better synchronisation to multi-GPU setups? If that happens and if games become more demanding (next console generation?) I might think about SLI/CF again.
But a good test nonetheless. :D
Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
It is only below any SLI setup. It is still well above the 6950CF/6970CF setups which are better and/or cheaper.Cihao - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Would be possible to put 2 EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win in SLI, thus fitting 4 GPUs in a dual SLI config?mfenn - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
The article specifically says that you can't do thatGrandal - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
where i've skimmed it 3 times and still missed it