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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Tchamber - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
I never understood why they advertise 2GB, but the review says 1GB of useable memory. Can some one explain that to me?Ryan Smith - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
With current multi-GPU technology (SLI and Crossfire), each GPU has its own copy of the working set of data and assets. Furthermore they can only work from their local VRAM, and they cannot (practically) work from the other GPU's VRAM.As a result you must duplicate the working set and assets across each GPU, which means you get half the effective VRAM.
At the end of the day boardmakers can advertise having 2GB because it does in fact physically have 2GB, but logically it only has 1GB to work with.
Tchamber - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
Thanks for clearing that up Ryan. So in any multil-gpu setup, the vram does not increase, unless the card itself has more of its own. Interesting limitation, so only compute power and bandwidth increase?AnnonymousCoward - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
It seems like it might make sense for nvidia to base their architecture on having 4, 8, or 16 GPU dies on every board. This would improve yield across the entire low/medium/high end due to smaller die sizes, and it would give a huge boost to the high end (assuming power limits are figured out). In today's age of supercomputers having 4000 chips per rack, it does not seem optimal to put just 1 or 2 per video card PCB.Sabresiberian - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Great job, as usual; I have to agree with the conclusions made under "Final Thoughts". The only reason I'd go this route is if I needed the connectivity in terms of monitors and only had a single PCIe x16 slot on my mainboard. That being said, a 30% performance increase in your particular favorite game is nothing to ignore.One of the things I've been hoping is that EVGA would send Anandtech or Tomshardware (preferably both) a Classified card so one of these sites could run thorough overclocking tests on it. I highly doubt that the Classified could make up the 30% difference on air, but how much better than stock it can reach will be good to know before I buy.
(It would also be interesting to know when AMD is going to release their next-gen GPU and whether or not it's going to be worth waiting a month or so for, but their recent CPU release puts them in the "I'm not holding my breath" category.)
;)
Wakanabi - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link
I went with this card and I'll tell you whyTEMPERATURE!!!
I had two 560Ti's when I first built my pc, and having the sli bridge and the cards close together on a board, one card would be up at 65 to 70celcius under full load, and the other would be at 85 to 92!
Anytime you have multiple graphics cards, the fans from the top card are pulling hot air directly from the other card's pcb backside.
I had sold one of my 560s a while back for full price ($250) so instead of buy another one now, I sold the other for $200 and bought the 2Win. Now I only get up to 78celcius total. And once I change my case next week to a higher air flow case it will be even better.
This is the best card I've ever had, better than two 6870s, a single gtx580 or even the 6990 I was using for mining. I have mine overclocked to 900Mhz and get another 10-12% increase in performance. Unbeatable as far as single cards go, especially considering the 6990 is $700 and the 590 is around that too