NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti: Upsetting The $250 Market
by Ryan Smith on January 25, 2011 9:00 AM ESTThe Test
Launching virtually alongside the GTX 560 Ti is NVIDIA’s latest driver branch, Forceware Release 265, with the first WHQL driver being 266.58. Released in beta form earlier this month and in its WHQL form last week, 265 contains the usual mix of documented performance increases (particularly with SLI), bug fixes, and ancillary improvements such as supporting 3D Vision in windowed mode. Most important to our testing are the optimizations that NVIDIA made to their drivers for Civilization V, and their OpenCL drivers; scores in both those areas have gone way up. Elsewhere performance is largely consistent for single card setups, while SLI gains are a bit more consistent.
Please note that for the time being we’re focusing on single card performance, as we have not had the time to update all of our SLI configurations to take in to account these new drivers. We’ll be looking at GTX 560 Ti SLI performance a bit later this week once we’ve revised all of our SLI results.
For our 400 and 500 series cards we’re using the newly released 266.58 drivers, while for the GTX 560 Ti we’re using the beta 266.56 drivers – which as near as we can tell are identical save for the fact that 266.58 didn’t build in GTX 560 Ti support. Meanwhile the GTX 200 series and below continues to use 262.99.
On the AMD side of things we’re adding the newly launched Radeon HD 6950 1GB. Most of the time performance is identical to the 2GB version, but as we’ve seen in our 6950 1GB companion launch article, there is a difference at times.
Finally, for NVIDIA cards all tests were done with default driver settings unless otherwise noted. As for AMD cards, we are disabling their new AMD Optimized tessellation setting in favor of using application settings (note that this doesn’t actually have a performance impact at this time), everything else is default unless otherwise noted.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 5970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 5850 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 4870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 262.99 NVIDIA ForceWare 266.56 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 266.58 AMD Catalyst 10.10e AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hotfix |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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Nimiz99 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
One of my buddies has a C2D 8500 system OC'd to 3.5 i think. He got himself a 5870 (overclocked) to game. The problem we ran into was that the C2D is too slow to handle games like Civ5 that heavily rely on the CPU to keep up (you can still play the game, but it's literally wasting the 5870 with noticeable lag from the chip). Basically, he is upgrading now to a sandy bridge. I'd wager some of the older i7's or maybe even a Thuban (OC'd to 3.8 with a good HT overclock) could manage, but why bother when a new architecture is out form Intel (or AMD later in the year).So enjoy your new build ;),
Nimiz
Beenthere - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Over the last couple years Nvidia has really struggled and they may be on the ropes at this point. They have created a lot of their own problems with their arrogance so we'll see how it all plays out.kilkennycat - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
eVGA GTX560 Ti "Superclocked" Core: 900MHz, Shader 1800MHZ; Memory 4212MHz $279.99~ 10% factory-overclock for $20 extra, together with a lifetime warranty (if you register within 30 days) ain't too shabby....
Belard - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Sure, the name shouldn't be a big deal... but each year or worse, Nvidia comes up with a new marketing product name that is meaningless and confusing.Here is the full product name:
GeForce GTX 560 Ti But in reality, the only part that is needed or makes ANY sense is:
GeForce 560
GTX / GT / GTs are worthless. Unless there were GTX 560, GTS 560 and GT 560. Much like the older 8800 series.
TI is only added to this idiotic mess. Might as well Ultra, Pro or MX.... so perhaps Nvidia will come out with the "GT 520 mx"?
The product itself is solid, why turn it into something stupid with your marketing department?
AMD does it right (mostly), the "Radeaon 6870" that's it. DUH.
omelet - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Yeah. Not that it really matters. And while this might be what you meant by "mostly" note that AMD's naming was pretty retarded this generation with the 68xx having lower performance than 58xx.But I don't see why they readopted the Ti moniker.
Sufo - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
no, that's only a result of the 5xxx series being stupidly named. Using 5970 for a dual chip part was the error. Use an x2 suffix or smthng. AMD is back on track with the 6xxx naming convention... well, until we see what they do with the 6 series dual chip card.Belard - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
The model numbers of:x600, x800, etc have been consistent since the 3000 series.
x800 is top
x700 is high-end mid range ($200 sub)
x600 is mid-range ($150 sub)
x400~500 low-end ($50~60)
x200~300 Desktop or HTPC cards.
AMD said they changed because they didn't want to confuse people with the 5750/5770 cards with the 6000 series. Which is completely stupid... so instead they confuse everyone with all th cards.
If the 6800s were called 6700s - they would have been easily faster than any of the 5700s and at least somewhat equal to the 5800s (sometimes slower, others faster). Instead, we have "6850" that is slower than the 5850.
The prices are a bit high still, yet far cheaper than the 5800 series, in which a 5850 was $300+ or $400 for the 5870. But by all means, I'd rather spend $220 on a 6870 than $370 on todays 5870s.
Anyways, I'm still using a 4670 in my main computer. When I do my next upgrade, I'll spend about $200 at the most and want at least 6870 level of performance, which is still about 4x faster than what I have now. Noise & heat are very high on my list, my 4670 was $15 extra for the better noise & heat cooling system. Perhaps in 6 months, the AMD 7000 or GeForce 700 series will be out.
marraco - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Is the first time I see a radiator geometrically aligned to the direction of air velocity thrown by the fan.Obviously it increases the efficiency of the fan, increasing the flow of air thrown across the radiator, and reducing noise.
It’s an obvious enhancement in air cooling, that I don’t understand why CPU coolers don’t use.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
I wouldn't be surprised if in some cases the increase in fin surface area (from having a bunch of straight fins packed more closely together) produces better cooling than having a cleaner airpath.MeanBruce - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
You should check out the four Asus Direct CU II three slot radiators that came out today on the GTX 580, 570, and the HD 6970 and 6950, each using two 100mm fans, five heatpipes and three slots of pure metal, they claim you can easily fit two of them on ATX for SLI and CB?