NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti w/448 Cores: GTX 570 On A Budget
by Ryan Smith on November 29, 2011 9:00 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
When we were first informed about the GeForce GTX 560 Ti With 448 Cores, I approached the matter with a great deal of skepticism. 3rd tier products have not been impressive in quite some time, and NVIDIA’s previous effort with the GTX 465 is a very good example of this. So imagine my surprise once we had a card in hand and benchmark results to work with. NVIDIA has both impressed me and disappointed me at the same time.
The hardware is impressive enough. GTX 570 is a good base to work off of both with respect to performance and operational characteristics – it’s well balanced and the GTX 560-448 directly inherits this. Perhaps most importantly NVIDIA didn’t make their 3rd tier product significantly worse than their 2nd tier in terms of its performance targets, and that makes a world of difference. As a result the GTX 560-448 is what we’d happily call a GTX 570 LE or GTX 565 in any other universe, because it’s certainly not as slow as a GTX 560 Ti.
On a larger scale, once we factor in AMD’s products things get a bit more murky. The GTX 560-448 is definitely faster on average, but as with every other GF100 card, this is heavily dependent on the game being tested. Throwing out CivV – a game where NVIDIA has a distinct advantage due to driver features – leaves things much closer between the GTX 560-448 and the Radeon HD 6950. The 6950 is on average $40 cheaper, and this cannot be ignored. As fast as the GTX 560-448 is, unless you’re specifically using it for games NVIDIA has an advantage in or need their ecosystem for, it’s just not $40 faster. AMD has made the 6950 a good value, and this can’t be ignored.
So if we’re generally impressed with the performance, what are we disappointed about? As you can probably expect however, the disappointing aspect is the name. Even if performance really was close to a GTX 560 Ti it still wouldn’t excuse the poor name. GF110 isn’t GF114, the SM layout and superscalar execution features make these distinctly different GPUs whose differences cannot be reconciled. This is particularly evident when it comes to things such as FP64 performance where the GTX 560-448 is going to be much, much faster; or in cases where the architecture differences mean that the GTX 560-448 isn’t going to pull well ahead of the GTX 560 Ti.
NVIDIA is purposely introducing namespace collisions, and while they have their reasons I don’t believe them to be good enough. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti With 448 Cores is not a GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Most of the time it’s much faster, and this is a good thing. But it also requires more power and generates more heat, and this is a bad thing. My greatest concern is that someone is going to build a system around the operational attributes of a GTX 560 Ti, an then pick up one of these cards, ending up with a system that can’t handle the extra load. This is one of the many benefits of a clear, concise, non-conflicting namespace. And it only gets worse once you see the GTX 560 Ti OEM, a much lower-performing GF100 part that nevertheless shares the GTX 560 Ti name. NVIDIA can and should do better by their customers.
Ultimately NVIDIA has thrown us an interesting curveball for the holidays. We have a GTX 560 Ti that isn’t really a GTX 560 Ti but rather is a card trying hard to be a GTX 570. At the same time it’s a 3rd tier product but unlike other 3rd tier products it’s actually quite good. Finally as good as it is it will only be available for a limited time. It’s a lot to take into consideration, and a name alone doesn’t do the situation justice. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti With 448 Cores isn’t going to significantly shake-up NVIDIA’s product lines – it’s not meant to – but for the budget-minded among us it’s a chance to get performance near a GTX 570 for just a bit less for Christmas, and that’s as good a reason as any to exist.
Finally, to wrap things up we have the matter of Zotac’s GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition. If the regular GTX 560-448 is nearly a GTX 570, then Zotac’s card is a GTX 570’s fraternal twin. It’s close enough in performance that the differences in performance cease to matter, and the power consumption doesn’t suffer for the factory overclock. At $299 there’s a greater risk of running into the actual GTX 570, which is what makes the Zotac card a GTX 570 substitute rather than something immediately more or less desirable than the GTX 570. On the plus side if you're in North America and don’t yet have Battlefield 3, the choice becomes much clearer.
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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"?