NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 560 non-Ti sets out to fill the void in NVIDIA's lineup at $200. While GTX 560 Ti performs great around $230, its price does turn away some potential customers who will find a good alternative with AMD's $200 HD 6870. NVIDIA's new card provides a good solution, yet can not shatter existing offers in this segment. It offers decent performance for up to, including, 1680x1050 gaming, comes with improved performance and overclocking potential when compared to GeForce GTX 460 and features improved performance per Watt. AMD's HD 6870 can offer a tiny bit more performance and better efficiency, on the other hand NVIDIA's drivers seem more mature and refined.

MSI's GTX 560 Twin Frozr II OC is a solid overclocked variant of the GeForce GTX 560. It comes with a nice clock increase that helps the card gain 5% real life performance over the GTX 560 reference design. Considering that MSI's card is 5% more expensive than the reference design, the pricing seems justified. In addition to the performance improvements you'll receive MSI's TwinFrozr II cooler which does a good job at keeping the card cool. In idle the card is very quiet, under load it does get quite noisy though. Since the card runs at 72°C under load it seems that MSI has prioritized temperatures over noise in their BIOS configuration. Personally I'd rather see 80°C on a quieter card which would still be perfectly safe with tons of temperature headroom for overclocking and voltage tuning. MSI's implementation of the GTX 560 presents a decent factory-overclocked deal that propels the GTX 560 close to HD 6870 performance level, and closer to the GTX 560 Ti.