EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win: The Raw Power Of Two GPUs
by Ryan Smith on November 4, 2011 11:00 PM ESTFinal Thoughts
If you’ve read our GPU reviews for any length of time then you’re probably familiar with our editorial stance on multi-GPU configurations: multi-GPU is nice to have, but only after you’ve exhausted single-GPU performance. Normally this is an easily defensible position, as dual-GPU cards are priced well above single-GPU cards and multi-GPU otherwise involves the hassle of dealing with multiple video cards.
EVGA’s GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win makes that a much harder position to defend. Technically speaking it’s pricier than a GTX 580, but not significantly so; it’s a GTX 580 competitor instead of something that comes after the GTX 580. Furthermore as we already know from the regular GTX 560 Ti SLI, a pair of GTX 560 Tis can beat a single GTX 580 by 30% if not more under the right circumstances. On a pure performance per dollar basis the 2Win is considerably faster than the GTX 580, and that’s a fact that’s very hard to argue with.
Ultimately the existence of the 2Win is a major vote of confidence in SLI by EVGA. If you believe as they do – that NVIDIA will continue to quickly add SLI support to games, that SLI scaling will always be strong, and that multi-GPU timing issues are easily overcome – then the 2Win makes the GeForce GTX 580 redundant at current pricing. It’s that simple.
On the other hand if you don’t share EVGA’s confidence in SLI, then very little has changed. If you believe that new games will have teething issues with SLI, that microstutter will continue to exist, and that not every game will scale well with SLI, then the 2Win is a poor choice in light of the more consistent performance of the GTX 580. Certainly the performance of the 2Win is phenomenal when SLI is working, but if SLI falters that means the performance of the 2Win is reduced to that of a $220 GTX 560 Ti. It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but it’s a real concern that must be evaluated when buying any dual-GPU card, including the 2Win. We’re going to continue to be conservative and recommend the consistency of a single-GPU card over the performance of a dual-GPU card, but for the individual buyer the 2Win’s performance makes a very good argument to throw caution into the wind.
Moving beyond the scope of SLI it’s clear that the 2Win is a solid product. EVGA’s use of an open air cooler is definitely an interesting choice. It’s not the only card using this style of a cooler – a number of overclocking focused vendor custom cards do so – but it’s more surprising to see it on a multi-GPU card. The end result is that given a suitable case this cooler allows the 2Win to dissipate as much heat as it does for relatively little noise. It’s subjectively noisier than a GTX 580, but just barely.
Wrapping things up, the only aspect I feel that EVGA has left underdeveloped on an otherwise very strong card is VRAM. As a result of SLI 2Win is a $520 card with 1GB of effective VRAM. We’ve already seen 1GB of VRAM pose limitations in a couple of our tests, and going forward it’s only going to get worse. Case in point: Battlefield 3, which we’re currently looking at. In a technical presentation DICE has stated that the combined memory consumption at 1920x1080 for the gbuffer, Z-buffer, and MSAA resolve data is 158MB; and this is before other buffers let alone textures. As a $200 card meant for 1920 and lower resolution, 1GB of VRAM makes sense for the GTX 560 Ti. But as a $500 dual-GPU card meant for higher performance, higher quality, and higher resolutions, 1GB of effective VRAM is the biggest bottleneck going forward for the 2Win. Realistically EVGA is in a hard place since using higher density GDDR5 would drive up the price of the card and make it even more expensive than the GTX 580, but at the end of the day I think the 2Win needs 2GB of effective VRAM to spread its wings through 2012.
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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.