NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti w/448 Cores: GTX 570 On A Budget
by Ryan Smith on November 29, 2011 9:00 AM ESTHAWX, Civ V, Battlefield BC2, & STALKER
HAWX is one of the oldest games in our current test suite, and as a result high framerates are a common occurrence. Even at 2560 everything can top 100fps, but there is still a clear preference in the results for NVIDIA’s cards. At 1920 the GTX 560-448 is 9% ahead of the 6970, while the fact that it has the same number of ROPS as the GTX 570 keeps it extremely close to NVIDIA’s next step up.
As AMD has still not implemented multithreaded command lists – an optional part of the DX11 API that CivV heavily uses – NVIDIA continues to do much better than AMD here. At 1920 the GTX 560-448 is ahead of the 6970 by 36%, or 16fps. Within NVIDIA’s product lineup things are rather consistent, with Zotac’s overclock closing the gap on the GTX 570.
Looking at Battlefield: Bad Company 2, BC2 continues to provide some of the most balanced results in our test suite. The GTX 560-448 beats the 6950, but only by a little over 1fps. Compared to NVIDIA’s lineup the GTX 560-448 is a few percent behind the GTX 570, with Zotac’s overclock closing the gap. Though at only 1920, any of these cards can average better than 60fps.
Meanwhile our BC2 waterfall benchmark shakes things up. Everything drops below 30fps, with the GTX 560-448 and other NVIDIA GF11o cards weathering better than AMD’s cards.
Our next benchmark is the STALKER: Call of Prypriat benchmark. On cards with 1GB of VRAM or less it can be overly taxing, but with more than 1GB of VRAM the bottleneck shifts to rendering. At this point it’s another balanced benchmark, with the GTX 560-448 placing slightly ahead of AMD’s 6950, and very close to the GTX 570. Zotac’s overclock can’t close the gap, but it’s close.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
80 Comments
View All Comments
ericore - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Its fine that they need to make money; but they insult my intellegence which is why I am putting them down.There is no justification for buying this reviewed card; any statement in contradiction to this is a folly.
It is true that Nvidia has superior drivers, and superior professional support, and superior architecture for professionals.
But most people fall out of this branch, and therefore AMD is the better contender for shear gaming performance and Eye Infinity far superior
than what Nvidia offers. AMD's control panel, can use some work; you're right about that, the total garbage aspect reveals in fact that you are
an Nvidia fanboy; you betrayed yourself. I don't care for the microstutter argument. As for the AMD has less features argument, it is absolute garbage; I gagged at your narrow-mindedness as you seem only able to present the professional perspective rather than being objective. AMD in fact, for consumers offers all relevant features that Nvidia offers plus more, minus 3D which is still irrelivant at this point; we (the ppl) don't have 3D TVs. Cuda is superior, but AMD can still rape ( you heard me right ) Nvidia in software like Elcomsoft Wireless Auditor, conversely ditto for Nvidia regarding video rendering. Ha you Nvidia fanboy, blessing and protecting each feature Nvidia has to offer; isn't that cute. Power users lol, let's get one thing straight power users does not mean Professional; only professional means that. Power Users just means users who can and do use wide variety of software, can extend beyond this software, and has knowledge of programming; check mark to all, I have. You naughty Nvidia fanboy.
cactusdog - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
Its funny when people complain about AMD drivers when its obvious they have not used them, or are very new to them.CCC isnt " Ad ridden" The AMD home page can be completely disabled (unticked) to not show any web content. Only someone who is unfamiliar with AMD software would not know that.
CCC has built in overclocking control and manual fan control and all the settings one would need. If you cant cope with them you can set CCC to Basic mode.
The only people that complain about AMD drivers are 99% of the time first time users and have little to no experience with it.
Crossfire/SLI is a different matter and both companies have issues. I've been recommending against a multi-gpu setup for years. If you choose a multi-gpu setup be prepared for driver issues, stuttering, waiting for profiles, and some games that will never have multi-gpu support.
I've used both and never had driver issues with either, but I prefer AMD image quality to Nvidia. Thats the most important thing for me. I dont use anything that can make use of Cuda, and physx is mostly a marketing ploy.
HStanford1 - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
I've got two 460's and never had to bother with botched drivers or microstuttering.Maybe I'm just lucky, but I dread the day it happens
bill4 - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
There's a lot to like about your reviews, but why the same old dated games you've been benchmarking forever? Why no BF3, Crysis 2, Witcher 2, etc benchmarks? EG, the latest and greatest most demanding games? Heck you guys even still use Hawx, I have NO idea why that game has a sequel and is 500 years old! I dont care what these video cards do on old games where they get 140 FPS, which I see in so many reviews! I look at the results in the most demanding games.Well the reason you mentioned in one review for using Hawx is, "it's the only flight game with a built in benchmark" or something like that. As if you just want to press a "benchmark" button and not do any actual work. Seems lazy, just use fraps or something for a bench and update your games, please!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
We update our benchmark suite every 6-12 months as necessary. As you've noted the current suite is rather long in the tooth and we'll be updating the benchmark suite next month (December) when we switch the testbed to SNB-E. In the meantime we're using the current suite to keep the tests consistent for this generation of cards.Alexo - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Switching to SNB-E will be a disservice to most of your readers (which don't use that platform) as it will give skewed results.carage - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Does anyone know how this card handles HDMI Audio Bitstreaming?I assume it would inherit the same half-baked feature set as the old 570.
So HTPC users should steer away unless proven otherwise.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
As HDMI audio bitstreaming is a function of the GPU (rather than drivers or otherwise), it will be the same as GTX 570/580.Per Hansson - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
carage: what's wrong with it on the 570 & 580? (I own neither)jweller - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
How is $280 considered "budget"?