EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win: The Raw Power Of Two GPUs
by Ryan Smith on November 4, 2011 11:00 PM ESTDIRT 2, Mass Effect 2, Wolfenstein, & Compute Performance
DIRT 2 is another title modern cards can power on through. Even at 2560 the 2Win gets better than 100fps, turning in another large lead over the GTX 580.
Mass Effect 2 is a rather interesting test because it above all else appears to be texture bound rather than shader bound, which is a very fortunate scenario for the GTX 560 Ti, as it has nearly as much texture throughput as the GTX 580. As a result the 2Win with its two GPUs does exceptionally well here. At 2560 it offers 92fps, and more importantly it surpasses a GTX 580 by a hair over 50%. This is the exception rather than the rule of course, but it’s also a prime example of why dual-GPU cards can be a threat to high performance single-GPU cards like the GTX 580.
Wrapping up our gaming benchmarks is Wolfenstein multiplayer. The game is CPU limited at much beyond 120fps, and even at 2560 the 2Win nearly hits that mark.
Our final benchmark is the Civilization V leader texture compression benchmark, a compute performance benchmark measuring the ability of a DirectCompute program to decompress textures. While not a game in and of itself, it does a good job highlighting the 2Win’s biggest weakness: it’s only as good as SLI is. Texture compression isn’t something that can be split among GPUs, and as a result the 2Win is suddenly no better than a regular GTX 560 Ti. At these performance levels it isn’t an issue, but it’s not the only game using this kind of system. Rage is similar in application and in SLI limitations, which becomes an issue because Rage’s CUDA accelerated texture decoder really needs a GTX 570 or better.
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Leyawiin - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Its like putting small skinny tires on a Corvette.Leyawiin - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Such a dork..."wouldn't". There goes my funny analogy down the toilet. :(ypsylon - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
I stick with my lovely MSI TF3 580. So what it is slower than 2 560. I don't need that kind of power anyways. And just look at this EVGA monstrosity. I would take that for free even if someone paid me good money to take it. Absolute disgrace.EVGA should do the engineering part and then at least slap Arctic Cooling thingy on it. That what companies without imagination do. As for MSI or Asus. You pay a good premium on those, but my god these cards are marvels of modern engineering. Not some slap-dash services a la EVGA.
RussianSensation - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
MSI TF3 580 is a marvel of engineering? How so?At $499, it's not fast enough on its own for 2560x1600 gaming in modern games. At 1920x1200 or below, it's not providing more playability than a $300 GTX570. And the fact that you can get 2x HD6950 2GB Sapphire Dirt 3 Edition cards that have a high chance of unlocking into a 6970 makes a pretty poor value atm.
Fiah - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
- that SLI scaling will always be strong, and that multi-GPU timing issues are easily overcomeThose are rather strong assumptions. I'm particularly uncertain that the GPU guys will solve micro-stuttering. Micro-stuttering doesn't lose you any benchmarks and it's a complex problem, so I'm rather sceptical if any of the GPU bakers will spend the necessary time and moeny to solve this problem, if indeed it's solvable at all.
Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
I see SLI/CF as acceptable in the high end region (HD6950+/GTX570+), where you can't increase performance with one card only. However, even then you need at least a 2560 resolution and other stuff to make really good use of it, because of the console limiting visual performance today.Overall though, I'm not a fan of multi-GPU setups today, because of the driver issues and most importantly micro lag. I had a HD3870X2, 2 GTS8800 512MB and recently gamed on a friends 2*470GTX and the experience was never smooth enough to justify the cost and power consumption.
Isn't PCIe 3.0 supposed to bring better synchronisation to multi-GPU setups? If that happens and if games become more demanding (next console generation?) I might think about SLI/CF again.
But a good test nonetheless. :D
Death666Angel - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
It is only below any SLI setup. It is still well above the 6950CF/6970CF setups which are better and/or cheaper.Cihao - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
Would be possible to put 2 EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win in SLI, thus fitting 4 GPUs in a dual SLI config?mfenn - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
The article specifically says that you can't do thatGrandal - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
where i've skimmed it 3 times and still missed it