GTX 560 Ti Review Introduction

Here you are, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Making use of NVIDIA's proven second generation Fermi architecture, this GPU targets a key price point which has been NVIDIA and ATI's hunting ground since 2006. The sub-$300 segment is where customers have learned to expect high-end like performance and features at compelling prices. Price-performance ratio is the king here. The performance-price sweet spot is a virtual G-spot for GPU manufacturers. Whoever hits it right, gets loads of...sales. Veterans in this segment include the GeForce 7900 GT, Radeon X1950 Pro, GeForce 8800 GT, Radeon HD 4850, GeForce GTX 260-216, GeForce GTX 460, Radeon HD 6870, and in comes the latest contender, the GTX 560 Ti. The model name invokes some nostalgia as SKUs carrying the "Ti" marker were some of NVIDIA's first with programmable shaders. While the GTX 560 Ti isn't a "first" in anything as far as feature-set goes, I think "Ti" has more to do with shaping up the brand, telling buyers that the product has a little more to offer for its price, and that it's a step above the price point GTX 460 set for itself, while remaining to be a performance segment model.

Getting into the fine print of NVIDIA's offer, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is based on NVIDIA's new GF114 chip. As far as specifications and transistor-count go, it is identical to the GF104 on which GTX 460 was based, except that it has all 384 of the CUDA cores physically present enabled, and that it uses the same secret-sauce (read: electrical enhancements) that made GF110, an evolved clone of the GF100, totally rock with power consumption figures. 384 CUDA cores apart, there's a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 32 ROPs, branched geometry processing, and the immediate fruition of the electrical enhancements, clock speeds: 822 MHz core, 1640 MHz CUDA cores, and 1000 MHz (4.00 GHz effective) memory. As far as features go, the GTX 560 Ti doesn't come with anything we haven't seen already with the GTX 460, it's all about performance per watt/dollar in this round.

In this review, we are pairing two cards in SLI for multi-GPU performance and scaling figures. Be sure to read our single-GPU review first, to get a sense of what to expect from the GPU itself. Our single-GPU reviews today include:

• NVIDIA reference GTX 560 Ti
• ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DirectCu
• Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic
• Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Test System

Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.

• All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
• All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

• 1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
• 1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
• 1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Aliens vs. Predator

Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It was one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like Tesselation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We used the AVP benchmark utility with tesselation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.