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| Review: Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560Ti (1Gb GDDR5) |
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| Posted by Will Smith | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 13 March 2011 23:00 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Introduction Last month we reviewed a default (non-overclocked) version of the Geforce GTX 560 Ti from Zotac. It was one of the first Geforce GTX 560 Ti graphic cards to hit the market and overall, we thought it was pretty good. It sits comfortably between the older Geforce GTX 460 and the more powerful GTX 570. In terms of performance, it's definitely an improvement over the Geforce GTX 460, but falls short when compared against the GTX 570, which of course is expected. That said, I think the GTX 560 Ti is what lot of gamers have been waiting. Why? I think it's becasue the GTX 560 Ti is the enrty-point to Nvidia's Geforce GTX 500 series. Futhernore, it's attractively affordable and it can be overclocked, giving almost the same performance as a GTX 570. We've already seen what the Zotac Geforce GTX 560 Ti can do, and remember that particular version featured a standard non-overclocked GPU running at 822Mhz. Over the course of the next few months, we will be seeing many different versions of the Geforce GTX 560 Ti, mostly overclocked editions with higher clock rates and better 3rd-party or in-house designed cooling solutions. As I've predicted before, the release of Nvidia's Geforce GTX 560 Ti will mean the eventual replacement of last year's Geforce GTX 460, which has served its purpose well in bridging the performance and price gap. I've created a table below, which shows you the comparison between the GTX 570, 560 Ti and the 460. By the way, the numbers shown below are default clock speeds. There will be many Geforce models out there with pre-overclocked GPUs offering even better performance.
In this review, we'll be taking a look at the Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 Ti (1Gb GDDR5) graphics card - GV-N560OC-1GI. It utilises an overclocked GPU running at 900Mhz (default is 822Mhz) and comes with 1Gb of GDDR5 ram that's clocked at the default speed of 2000Mhz. Like all Geforce graphic cards in the 500 series, it features all of Nividia's 3D technologies, which includes CUDA, DX11, OpenGL 4.2, PhysX, Nvidia's 3D Vision, support for 2-way SLI multi-GPU, as well as HD hardware video decode acceleration. This particular model from Gigabyte is armed with 384 CUDA cores and uses a 256-bit memory interface. It's very similar to the Geforce GTX 460 we've tested in terms of specifications. The graphics card is aimed mostly at the higher-end of the mainstream market and in particular, gamers who want above average performance over the standard GTX 560 Ti. With the overclocked GPU from Gigabyte's Geforce GTX 560 Ti, they will get exactly that ... excellent performance, attractive price and great features from Gigabyte's UltraDurable VGA.
What makes Gigabyte graphic cards extremely attractive over other manufacturers, is that they have included their UltraDurable VGA technologies. So what is this? Well, it's a combination of features which include the use of Japanese-made solid capacitors, ferrite core chokes, 1st Tier memory, all of which gives the card extra stability and longevity, especially when the card is overclocked. Add to this, you also get their Wind-Force x2 anti-turbulence cooling solution, as well as their power saving technologies. All of this makes the graphic card run cooler, better and more energy efficient. And you'll be glad to know, Gigabyte have included this UltraDurable VGA technology on most of their mid-range to higher-end graphic cards. For connectivity, the card comes with one mini-HDMI port and dual DVI ports, which I suppose is suffiecient for most users. Within the package, you'll find 1 x DVI-to-VGA converter, 1 x mini-HDMI to standard size HDMI adaptor, and 2 x PCIE power cables. No DX11 games are included, which is a shame as it would add extra value to the whole package. Nonetheless, what we're more concerned about is its performance.
We're expecting the Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560Ti to produce some good results from our tests. The increased clocked speeds from the overclocked GPU should give us a performance increase, and I can see it outperform the both the GTX 40 and the standard GTX 560 Ti with no problems whatsoever. It will be interesting to see how it compares with other DX11 based graphic cards in our labs, especially the more powerful GTX 570. We'll be testing the Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 Ti (1Gb GDDR5) on our test rig, which consists of the following ... Intel Core i5 - 650 (LGA 1156), Gigabyte P55 USB3 motherboard, 4Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600, Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU cooler and a Adata HM 850W power supply. It's the same system we've been using to test all our graphics card.
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