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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martixy - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Looks quite good.Would get it for the GP compute power just as much as the pixel-pushing power.
I just question the end price in my little corner of the world. :) Most likely it will be double that($249). 250 I can do, 500 - nah... Go figure.
tonyblair - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
Ah, do my eyes decieve me or has good old Anandtech gone back to using bog standard reference GTX460's for Nvidia launches? Haha.mapesdhs - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
Yeah, it's kinda lame, given nobody in their right mind would buy a stock 460
anymore. Many places don't even sell them now, and a highly oc'd 460 is
easily $50 to $60 less than a 560, so a proper comparison would be useful.
Alas, they succumbed to the moaning minnies.
If anyone's interested, I can run the downloadable Stalker COP benchmark
using this review's settings (my own 460 FTW tests have been using 1920x1080,
Extreme detail, SSAO = Default/High, Enhanced Full Dynamic Lighting, so not
directly comparable).
I can't test 2560x1600, but I can test 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, also with
FTW SLI.
Ryan, what full settings did you use for the Stalker test? ie. the SSAO (or
other) mode, etc.?
Ian.
JimmiG - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
I agree.. GTX460 cards are available at speeds up to 850MHz or perhaps even more, a huge difference from the 675MHz that the card supposedly launched at (though even at launch, cards running at anything under 7xx MHz was pretty rare).Parhel - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
Ha! I just bought a stock 460 1GB two weeks ago. Terribly cheap cooler, so the thing only OC's to about 750Mhz before it throttles and I have to reboot. But I only paid $130, so I'm thrilled with the card. I'm on 2560x1600 screen, otherwise the 768MB card would have been the better value.overzealot - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
I remember the Geforce 2 Ti, back in 2001.It wasn't the highest end offering then, either - but it sure was a great cost/performance offer.
It's so bad!
Belard - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
The GF2ti was really a die-shrink GF2Pro at 50Mhz faster GPU clock, nothing more. In the real world, it was cheaper than the GF2Pro and was a new CHIP process/series they used for the GF3-TI series. Still, the GF2ti was a pretty good deal in its day at about $125 or so... far cheaper than the $300 GT2-Ultra which just lost its crown to the GF3 series.A little history lesson.
All GF400mx /4000mx series are GF2 technology built on a smaller process, nothing more. Sadily, even now, you can STILL buy NEW GF2mx and GF4000MX cards. The 4000MX is a Frankenstein card. Nvidia took a very slow GF2mx GPU and stuck in DX8...
Check out the stats on Wikipedia - (Basic mid-range cards $200~250)
GF2ti (2001 - 10 years ago) = Fillrate = 00.2 GT/s Bandwidth = 006.4 GB/s DX7
GF4 4200 TI (2002 favorite) = Fillrate = 00.2 GT/s Bandwidth = 008.0 GB/s DX8
GF 6600GT (2004 favorite) = Fillrate = 04.0 GT/s Bandwidth = 014.0 GB/s DX9
GF GTX 260 (2008 favorite) = Fillrate = 41.4 GT/s Bandwidth = 112.0 GB/s DX10
GF GTX 560 (2011 Today) = Fillrate = 52.6 GT/s Bandwidth = 128.2 GB/s DX11
*While the fillrate of GF2 & GF4 are the same, GF2 is a DX7 card, so the GF4 might do the DX7 benchmark at 0.3~.4.
Wow, bandwidth wise, the 560 is 20x faster than the old GF2. Graphic Texture Fillrate is way beyond what those old GF2~4 cards could handle.
Hence, playing Crysis on 560 in 1280x1024 could be around 65fps, on a GF6600, it would be under 10fps with LOW details and maybe 1 frame every 6~10 seconds on the GF2... :)
Lepton87 - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
This card hardly even caught up to my over-a-year-old Radeon 5870. I don't know why this card looks comparatively slow in anandtech's reviews whilst on other tech sites it is about on par with 6950 and thus ever-so-slightly faster then 560Ti.http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...
so far I find those charts the most informative when it comes to relative performance between cards. It looks like anandtech's blend of games somewhat favor NV hardware.
SolMiester - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
This is a mid range card that in some benchies surpasses your high previous generation card, at a cheaper price, is quieter and smaller to boot. What more do you want?MeanBruce - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 - link
The Asus 560 looks really amazing, guess it's faster than my brand new Asus 6870 directcu, but that's ok I knew the 560 was coming out, and wanted the Asus 6870 for it's beautiful triple heatpipe and gorgeous backplate heatsink the way it looks thru the window of the Corsair Obsidian 650D. Yup it's not out yet, April but man thru that window with my new Corsair AX850! I'm just buying parts for a window! Oh man the sweetness, that view while I work with Microsoft Word. The 6870 came with dual full sized DisplayPorts fantastic, but the Asus 560 comes with just a mini-HDMI. What is that all about? I didn't even know they came in mini. Maybe AMD will release the 7000 series early this year die shrink and all, 7870 for Christmas ahhh life is good.