NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti w/448 Cores: GTX 570 On A Budget
by Ryan Smith on November 29, 2011 9:00 AM ESTMeet The Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition
There will be a number of GTX 560-448 cards launching today; most of NVIDIA’s partners will be involved, including Asus, EVGA, Gainward, Gigabyte, Inno3D, Palit, MSI and Zotac. Given that these will be custom designs no two cards will be alike, and while performance should be similar (accounting for clock differences), thermals and noise are going to vary with the design.
The card we’ve been sampled with is Zotac’s entry, the Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition. Zotac’s design is based on their existing GTX 570 design, which is an open-air cooler with copper heatpipes running up from the GPU to the heatsink. It’s effectively a bigger, more capable version of the GTX 560 Ti reference cooler, which means it shares the temperature and noise benefits of that design at a cost of dumping most of the heat produced inside your computer case.
While this isn’t an AMP product – AMP being Zotac’s factory overclock brand – Zotac is still goosing their GTX 560-448 by a bit. It will ship at 765MHz core instead of 732MHz (a 4% boost), while memory speeds are unchanged. It’s a bigger factory overclock than we’ve seen in some other cards, but 4% won’t make a huge difference in performance most of the time.
Breaking down the card it’s quite similar to other single-fan open-air coolers we’ve seen such as the reference GTX 560 Ti. Airflow is provided by a center fan with heatsinks covering the most important bits. The 2 6pin PCIe power sockets are placed at the rear of the card, which is not ideal but not a huge problem as the card is not particularly long.
For display connectivity Zotac is once again using their expanded offering. Along with the 2 DVI ports common on high-end NVIDIA cards, Zotac is also offering a full size HDMI port, and rare for an NVIDIA based card, a full size DisplayPort. Zotac achieves this by moving one of the DVI ports to the 2nd slot on the card’s bracket, which is a convenient location but further restricts the amount of air the card can eject outside of a computer case.
Along with the card, Zotac is continuing their tradition of bundling a game with their high-end cards. This time Zotac's North Amerian office is partnering with Electronic Arts, and they will be including a voucher for Battlefield 3 with their GTX 560-448 in North America. We’ve always been big fans of video cards including good games, so we’re glad to see Zotac continuing this tradition.
Rounding out the rest of the package is the typical collection of odds & ends: PCIe power adaptors, a multi-lingual quickstart guide, Zotac’s collection of OEM trialware, and a DVI to VGA dongle.
Between the overclock and the inclusion of Battlefield 3, it should come as no surprise that Zotac is charging above NVIDIA’s MSRP for the card. Zotac will be charging $299, $10 over MSRP – the overclock isn’t particularly impressive, but if you're in a territory that gets BF3, $10 for BF3 is a good deal any day of the week.
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Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
I can get a 6950 for $200 AR right now. The 560-448 is going in the low $300 range right now.Unless it gets 50% more frames/performance it is not better than a 6950.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Finally - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
For several months now the 2 leading cards in any P/P comparison have been the HD6870 and its HD6850 twin. I just picked one up this month and I'm delighted. As long as consoles won't learn how to upgrade their GPUs, I don't see a necessity for anything above that range of graphics power...Of course, this is an *throws up* enthusiast website, so anyone who's not willing to build a system with at least 2 GPUs, a 1200W power supply and a triple monitor setup, leave the room, we are not interested in you.
Leyawiin - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
The cheapest 1GB HD 6950 on Newegg (who is generally the lowest price on video cards) is $240. The cheapest HD 6950 2GB is $255. You pay that upfront - rebates (if they go well) are months down the road. The GTX 560 448 is about 10% faster. Yes, its the better card.Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
The cheapest 560-448 I have seen so far is in the low $300 range. I can get a 6950 in the low $200 range.10% more performance for 50% more price is not better.
Ushio01 - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
The image of the GF110 on the first page is wrong it shows 3 deactivated SM units which would make this card a 416 shader part. It should show 2 deactivated SM units for a 448 shader part.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
Thanks. You are correct. That will be fixed later today.Per Hansson - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
Hi, what about overclocking?Is this GPU poor at it since it's been binned so hard or is it just that another SM unit where bad while not hindering the clockspeed of the chip?
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
I did not have a chance to test overclocking (I only had a single day to test the card). However since NVIDIA is binning chips based on defective SMs, I have no reason to believe that overclocking should be significantly different from the 570.MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
"NVIDIA is purposely introducing namespace collisions, and while they have their reasons I don’t believe them to be good enough."That nails it. Not sure if I should laugh or cry about the current name. They introduced a 3-letter prefix and 3-digit numbers to get rid of the obscure subscripts.. only to reintroduce the "Ti" (why was that one not the GTX565?!) and now this addition to "Ti". Hilarious, if this were a commedy show.
And remind you, just because nVidia did much worse in the past doesn't make this any better...
MrS
Belard - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link
That is why I DO NOT BUY or SELL nvidia products. This new name proves they are getting dumber by the month. This should be a 570-LE, simple .All these names are stupid since the end of the GeForce 9000 series. While AMD has been mostly good with their names... Mostly. AMD HD 6870, easy.
Gtx vs gt is stupid since they don't make a 550 gt and 550 gtx. TI = totally worthless for a name. If this only atttracts dumb customers, they can keep them.