NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti: Upsetting The $250 Market
by Ryan Smith on January 25, 2011 9:00 AM ESTCivilization V
The other new game in our benchmark suite is Civilization 5, the latest incarnation in Firaxis Games’ series of turn-based strategy games. Civ 5 gives us an interesting look at things that not even RTSes can match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
We have always considered Civ 5 an interesting game both for its near-complete use of the DX11 feature set, and because of its interesting performance characteristics. 2 weeks ago we called it CPU limited based on the fact that once we had sufficiently powerful cards, AMD and NVIDIA results tended to clump together despite any difference in their respective cards’ speed. With the Forceware Release 265 drivers, NVIDIA has blown this assumption apart, with NVIDIA’s more powerful cards launching ahead at 1920 and lower. We appear to be quite GPU limited on the NVIDIA side all of a sudden, which is about as drastic change as we could expect. Furthermore NVIDIA is holding their cards close to their chest on this – they’ve obviously found a wonder optimization, but they aren’t ready to say what it is.
In any case while AMD has always trailed NVIDIA in single card performance in Civ 5, with these driver changes it’s quite monumental. The GTX 560 Ti is 44% faster than the 6950 at 1920, 80% faster at 1680, and even the GTX 460 768MB can edge out the 6970 at 1920. Whatever NVIDIA has done, it has made Civilization V quite a lot faster and smoother at 1920 and 1680, particularly when a large number of units are on screen.
Among NVIDIA’s own cards the lead has actually shrunk some compared to our earlier games. The GTX 470 has an edge on the GTX 560, and the 560 in turn is down to a 25%-30% lead over the GTX 460 1GB. We don’t seem to be ROP or memory bandwidth limited, so perhaps this is a case of the GF104/GF114 architecture’s shaders underperforming?
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MeanBruce - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
Wonder if you can tune the fans separately in SmartDoctor? Damn cool Asus!Burticus - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
I picked up a GTX460 768mb for $150 last summer. I assume the GTX560 will be down to that price point by this coming summer. I am very happy with the GTX460 except in Civ 5 and I think I am CPU limited there (Phenom II x3).So when this thing hits $150 I will sell my GTX460 on fleabay for $100 and upgrade, I guess. I wish I could buy one and stick it in my 360....
JimmiG - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Looks like the video card market is picking up the pace again, which is both a good thing and not. I guess my GTX460 1GB from only 6 months ago now officially sucks and is only usable as a doorstop...a crippled, half-broken, semi-functional video card such as it is.On the other hand, it's great that technology is moving so fast. It just means that instead of buying a new video card and keeping it for 1.5 - 2 years, you once again have to upgrade every couple of months if you want to stay on top.
Also, regardless of the marketing, anything below a 570 *sucks* for gaming above 1680x1050. Look at the results of Stalker, Metro 2033 and Warhead. You need to drop to 1680x1050 before the 560 Ti manager near 60 FPS which is the minimum for smooth gameplay.
Soldier1969 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Anything below $400 is a poor mans card period, I wouldnt stoop to that level of card running 2560 x 1600 display port max settings there is no substitute!omelet - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
Congratulations.silverblue - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
I'm sorry to say, but knowing the 560 Ti is going to be a weaker and hence far cheaper part than the 580, why did you give it any thought? :)otakuon - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
The GTX 460 is still the best card in nVidia's lineup with regards to price for performance. The 560 is just nVidia's standard interim update to keep itself relevent. I see no need for current GTX 460 owners to rush out and buy this card (or anyone who wants to replace a Fermi card for that matter) when the 600 series will be out this summer and will most likely have new arcitecture.DeerDance - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
6850 beats them in price/performance, they are start at $150 at neweggDeerDance - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
I was kinda surprised by final thoughtsout of 34 pictures of fps in games, 17 won 6950, 12 gtx560 and 5 were in range of 1frame from each other (4 of those are for 6950) so I wonder why the final thoughts gave edge to GTX560.
omelet - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
He may have just done an average of the percentage differences between the two.So if, for instance, the 560 won by 50% in one test and lost by 10% in each of two tests, that method would call the 560 10% faster, even though it was slower in 2/3 of the tests.Don't get me wrong, I don't think the conclusion is accurate (I think 6950 looks more powerful overall from the benchmarks), I'm just saying how I think he might have come to his conclusion.