NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti w/448 Cores: GTX 570 On A Budget
by Ryan Smith on November 29, 2011 9:00 AM ESTMeet The Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition
There will be a number of GTX 560-448 cards launching today; most of NVIDIA’s partners will be involved, including Asus, EVGA, Gainward, Gigabyte, Inno3D, Palit, MSI and Zotac. Given that these will be custom designs no two cards will be alike, and while performance should be similar (accounting for clock differences), thermals and noise are going to vary with the design.
The card we’ve been sampled with is Zotac’s entry, the Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition. Zotac’s design is based on their existing GTX 570 design, which is an open-air cooler with copper heatpipes running up from the GPU to the heatsink. It’s effectively a bigger, more capable version of the GTX 560 Ti reference cooler, which means it shares the temperature and noise benefits of that design at a cost of dumping most of the heat produced inside your computer case.
While this isn’t an AMP product – AMP being Zotac’s factory overclock brand – Zotac is still goosing their GTX 560-448 by a bit. It will ship at 765MHz core instead of 732MHz (a 4% boost), while memory speeds are unchanged. It’s a bigger factory overclock than we’ve seen in some other cards, but 4% won’t make a huge difference in performance most of the time.
Breaking down the card it’s quite similar to other single-fan open-air coolers we’ve seen such as the reference GTX 560 Ti. Airflow is provided by a center fan with heatsinks covering the most important bits. The 2 6pin PCIe power sockets are placed at the rear of the card, which is not ideal but not a huge problem as the card is not particularly long.
For display connectivity Zotac is once again using their expanded offering. Along with the 2 DVI ports common on high-end NVIDIA cards, Zotac is also offering a full size HDMI port, and rare for an NVIDIA based card, a full size DisplayPort. Zotac achieves this by moving one of the DVI ports to the 2nd slot on the card’s bracket, which is a convenient location but further restricts the amount of air the card can eject outside of a computer case.
Along with the card, Zotac is continuing their tradition of bundling a game with their high-end cards. This time Zotac's North Amerian office is partnering with Electronic Arts, and they will be including a voucher for Battlefield 3 with their GTX 560-448 in North America. We’ve always been big fans of video cards including good games, so we’re glad to see Zotac continuing this tradition.
Rounding out the rest of the package is the typical collection of odds & ends: PCIe power adaptors, a multi-lingual quickstart guide, Zotac’s collection of OEM trialware, and a DVI to VGA dongle.
Between the overclock and the inclusion of Battlefield 3, it should come as no surprise that Zotac is charging above NVIDIA’s MSRP for the card. Zotac will be charging $299, $10 over MSRP – the overclock isn’t particularly impressive, but if you're in a territory that gets BF3, $10 for BF3 is a good deal any day of the week.
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ericore - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Its fine that they need to make money; but they insult my intellegence which is why I am putting them down.There is no justification for buying this reviewed card; any statement in contradiction to this is a folly.
It is true that Nvidia has superior drivers, and superior professional support, and superior architecture for professionals.
But most people fall out of this branch, and therefore AMD is the better contender for shear gaming performance and Eye Infinity far superior
than what Nvidia offers. AMD's control panel, can use some work; you're right about that, the total garbage aspect reveals in fact that you are
an Nvidia fanboy; you betrayed yourself. I don't care for the microstutter argument. As for the AMD has less features argument, it is absolute garbage; I gagged at your narrow-mindedness as you seem only able to present the professional perspective rather than being objective. AMD in fact, for consumers offers all relevant features that Nvidia offers plus more, minus 3D which is still irrelivant at this point; we (the ppl) don't have 3D TVs. Cuda is superior, but AMD can still rape ( you heard me right ) Nvidia in software like Elcomsoft Wireless Auditor, conversely ditto for Nvidia regarding video rendering. Ha you Nvidia fanboy, blessing and protecting each feature Nvidia has to offer; isn't that cute. Power users lol, let's get one thing straight power users does not mean Professional; only professional means that. Power Users just means users who can and do use wide variety of software, can extend beyond this software, and has knowledge of programming; check mark to all, I have. You naughty Nvidia fanboy.
cactusdog - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
Its funny when people complain about AMD drivers when its obvious they have not used them, or are very new to them.CCC isnt " Ad ridden" The AMD home page can be completely disabled (unticked) to not show any web content. Only someone who is unfamiliar with AMD software would not know that.
CCC has built in overclocking control and manual fan control and all the settings one would need. If you cant cope with them you can set CCC to Basic mode.
The only people that complain about AMD drivers are 99% of the time first time users and have little to no experience with it.
Crossfire/SLI is a different matter and both companies have issues. I've been recommending against a multi-gpu setup for years. If you choose a multi-gpu setup be prepared for driver issues, stuttering, waiting for profiles, and some games that will never have multi-gpu support.
I've used both and never had driver issues with either, but I prefer AMD image quality to Nvidia. Thats the most important thing for me. I dont use anything that can make use of Cuda, and physx is mostly a marketing ploy.
HStanford1 - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
I've got two 460's and never had to bother with botched drivers or microstuttering.Maybe I'm just lucky, but I dread the day it happens
bill4 - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
There's a lot to like about your reviews, but why the same old dated games you've been benchmarking forever? Why no BF3, Crysis 2, Witcher 2, etc benchmarks? EG, the latest and greatest most demanding games? Heck you guys even still use Hawx, I have NO idea why that game has a sequel and is 500 years old! I dont care what these video cards do on old games where they get 140 FPS, which I see in so many reviews! I look at the results in the most demanding games.Well the reason you mentioned in one review for using Hawx is, "it's the only flight game with a built in benchmark" or something like that. As if you just want to press a "benchmark" button and not do any actual work. Seems lazy, just use fraps or something for a bench and update your games, please!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
We update our benchmark suite every 6-12 months as necessary. As you've noted the current suite is rather long in the tooth and we'll be updating the benchmark suite next month (December) when we switch the testbed to SNB-E. In the meantime we're using the current suite to keep the tests consistent for this generation of cards.Alexo - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Switching to SNB-E will be a disservice to most of your readers (which don't use that platform) as it will give skewed results.carage - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Does anyone know how this card handles HDMI Audio Bitstreaming?I assume it would inherit the same half-baked feature set as the old 570.
So HTPC users should steer away unless proven otherwise.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
As HDMI audio bitstreaming is a function of the GPU (rather than drivers or otherwise), it will be the same as GTX 570/580.Per Hansson - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
carage: what's wrong with it on the 570 & 580? (I own neither)jweller - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
How is $280 considered "budget"?