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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DarkUltra - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
- "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"What? Why not check frametimes in the games you benchmarks? It is easy, just enable the option in FRAPS and import the data in a spreadsheet. If high framerate comes in lumps, there is no perceived improvement.
A focus on this will make SLI and Crossfire even better, please do that in your next review :)
For now readers can check
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516
Ryan Smith - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
At this point it's not really a concern about our existing games. All of them are well developed on the driver side. The concern is with the future: will Batman microstutter? Will Serious Sam have SLI support with good scaling the day it launches? These are questions that can't be answered in the present, which is why it's largely a question of faith in NVIDIA's capabilities.s44 - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
Is it possible to include a subjective microstutter report with these reviews?dj christian - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
Even though i am a long timereader of Anand since ten years back I really had to register to make this post..Actually Ryan i think you missed his point. Look at HardOCP:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/08/asus_rog...
With diagrams you see exactly what drops and framespikes given over a period of time. It's so much clearer than showing simple staples which actually says nothing, especially at the highest resolutions which can be a bit tricky to get a grip on.
For the next review of a graphic card i really hope you post diagrams along with the simple benchmarks which gives the reader a much bigger overview of such things.
romany8806 - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
I know the first couple of pages of the article mention the redundancy of the SLI nub and the fact that this card needs an SLI-certified mobo, but I think these points should really rate a mention in the conclusion. Vram issues aside, for me these two failings almost completely invalidate this card as a useful option.I thought the point of dual-GPU cards was to allow:
1. quad-SLI/quad-Xfire OR
2. dual-GPU performance on less accommodating/feature-rich motherboards.
The only viable application I can think of for this card (and I'm clutching at straws here) is on SLI-certified mATX boards in small enclosures where it is undesirable to use both slots for airflow reasons. Not sure I'd pay a 30% premium over 2 560 Ti boards for that.
Good article, but readers who skim to the final page might be missing out on pertinent information.
Black1969ta - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
It requires an SLI Mobo, but can't be SLI'ed to another 560Ti 2WINIt pulls more power than 560Ti's in SLI.
Excuses or not this review is pretty worthless without another 560Ti SLI boards to a dual GPU 560Ti Board.
With the SLI Mobo certification requirement, and the lack of ability to add another 2WIN to get Quad GPU's with only two PCIe slots.
And then Add in the $50+ Premium over 2 cards I fail to see the logic of this pricing and/or design.
Without test results I fail to believe that I couldn't take two 560Ti Cards and SLI them with a modest OC and not get the same or better results.
Black1969ta - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
Ok I stand corrected, on the Game graphs I see the 560Ti SLI tested, but the 2WIN isn't $50 better which I suspected.FAIL EVGA!!!!!
Gonemad - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
I've always seen these dual-gpu cards as hit or miss, or more like an enthusiast part, really.If you just ignore the heat, the noise, the power consumption, then they become appealing, or even compete with 2 sli/cf cards.
I still like powerful single-slot, single gpus cards better. No SLI issues, no CF issues, it just works, (or not). Should you ever need to upgrade, yay, you have a 2nd slot waiting, and hope you can still find your GPU for sale in compatible forms, then you go back in the SLI saddle.
These cards compromise, one thing or another. Either you risk your PSU, or the builder has to tone down each gpu.
I still would stick to a single 580, with the prospect in 1 year or 2, to buy a 2nd one, with a discount. I don't know, really.
s44 - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
Given that this is the most if not only significant PC-hardware-relevant release in years (pushes hardware while being critically popular *and* selling well), I hope you add it to the bench suite sooner rather than later.Ryan Smith - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
The whole suite is getting redone for our SNB-E testbed.