EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win: The Raw Power Of Two GPUs
by Ryan Smith on November 4, 2011 11:00 PM ESTCrysis: Warhead, BattleForge, & Metro 2033
As we mentioned previously, the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win is a one-off product. At $520 It doesn’t have any specific competition – at least none that’s reciprocal – but EVGA likes to call it a GTX 580 competitor it’s definitely priced close enough to the GTX 580 to make that a meaningful comparison. As a multi-GPU product it also competes with multi-GPU multi-card setups, primarily the regular GTX 560 Ti SLI and the Radeon HD 6950 CF.
Starting as always with Crysis, we get a good setup for the rest of the benchmarks to come. The 2Win is well ahead of the similarly priced GTX 580, turning in a score 30% better than the 580. At the same time its performance relative to the GTX 560 Ti SLI is almost identical, owing to the 2Win’s 3% higher core clock. At no point here will the GTX 560 Ti SLI and 2Win ever separate by an appreciable margin; it’s really only faster on paper.
Looking at raw performance, we see that the 2Win turns in a solid performance at 2560 and is well above 60fps at 1920. SLI doesn’t change the fact that AMD and NVIDIA will regularly jockey for position depending on the game, so even with a strong showing here, the 6950 CF still ends up being quite a bit faster.
The Crysis minimum framerate test is one of the handful of tests we have right now that pays much attention to more than 1GB of VRAM. The fact that the 2Win does worse than the regular GTX 560 Ti SLI is not a mistake here – it’s a telltale sign of swapping into VRAM. The 2Win is generally capable of handling 2560 in terms of rendering power, but with 1GB of effective VRAM it can run into other bottlenecks first, as we see here.
Given that it’s a good deal more powerful than the GTX 580, the 2Win has no problem breezing through Battleforge. Even at 2560 it hits 88fps, 35% better than the GTX 580.
When it comes to SLI scaling Metro has always been a challenge, and as a result the 2Win loses some of its advantage here. It’s still ahead of the GTX 580 at 2560, but only by 16%. Again we’re looking at a potential lack of VRAM, but also the result of Metro’s significant workload at 2560. This is one of the only titles we currently use that is still a struggle for every card we have, and as a result it’s one of the few titles than the 2Win just isn’t cut out for at 2560. It’s only at 1920 that the 2Win can pick up enough speed to be playable, at which point its lead over the GTX 580 grows slightly to 20%.
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Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
"But keep in mind, nVidia has been pushing SLI hard for TEN YEARS "You mean 7 years?
Revdarian - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Microstutter is a thing with BOTH companies.The stutter (real stutter, nothing micro there) experienced in that review was because of the use of Caps on top of the driver that actually already had the crossfire fix, and if they would have contacted AMD about it (bitched at them properly actually, nothing wrong in bitching a bit directly on private to the company if you are a known reviewer), they would have got that answer.
BTW microstutter depends from person to person, but you will feel it "easier" once the average fps of the dual card solution slips below 60fps.
Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Oh, and here are 2 tests that show CF to not be any worse than SLI concerning micro stutter:http://preview.tinyurl.com/6exquor
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6kuutnl
Got a spam notice and couldn't post with the normal links. I hope it works with tinyurl...
Fiah - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Micro-stuttering is very much a Nvidia problem as well, just look at the ominously green graphs here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/5I'm not convinced that either camp will solve this problem anytime soon, as it is as much a game engine problem as a problem of the drivers/GPU.
marraco - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
The article shows that Crossfire does worse than SLI.Fiah - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
Your point being?Uritziel - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
Me too! Great performance for the price. The only thing they've not quite been able to tackle is Metro 2033 in 3D at highest settings and 1920x1080 res. Not a single issue with SLI either. Who knows when I'll need to upgrade.Sabresiberian - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
If you read the article more thoroughly, you will see that it says results vary with application; microstuttering with Nvidia's SLI shows up more in other games and potentially more with different settings.Another thing I'll say is that microstuttering is one of those things that is terribly annoying to some people, and just isn't noticed at all by others. General reading though shows me it's a problem recognized by both Nvidia and AMD. Personally. I say it shows up most in multi-card solutions, but isn't entirely exclusive to them.
My experience has only been with Crossfire, and I found it very distracting.
I particularly find it annoying that someone would go to the trouble and expense of setting up a multi-card system and end up with worse performance. (We can talk about "performance" in terms of frame rates alone if and only if the quality does not deteriorate; id the quality does, then performance is worse, not better, even if the frame rate improves.) This is an issue that needs to be addressed much more aggressively by both companies, and I will say it does not impress me that it hasn't been solved by either one.
It makes me long for the days when Matrox was a player in gaming graphics.
;)
Sabresiberian - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
You have to realize that the card also includes the cost of NF200 bridge chip, which allows non-SLI capable mainboards to actually use this card.From the article:
"While there were some issues with this on the GTX 460 2WIn, this has apparently been resolved (the presence of NF200 shouldsatisfy all SLI license requirements in the first place). EVGA has said that the 2Win will work on non-SLI mobos, making it fully compatible with every motherboard."
In other words, if it's got a PCIe x16 slot in it, it will work in your mainboard. Most dual-GPU cards can't do that.
;)
keitaro - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
What's missing are performance numbers on Surround and Eyefinity resolutions. EVGA is also touting Surround 3D capability on this card and it is something to at least consider. I've seen so many single-monitor scores and these days they bore me. Get us some Surround/Eyefinity benchmark numbers so we can see how they fare when pressed with higher pixel count to render.