The Geforce GTX 560 TI is out, opinions?

[Pob255]

Well as the title says.

Hexus review here http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=28597&page=1
Bit-Tech http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/gra...i-1gb-review/1
HardwareCanucks http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...gb-review.html
Tech power up http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/N...ce_GTX_560_Ti/

Thoughts people?

[Singh400]

Argggh, we already have a million threads (ok like 6) on this GFX card. General consensus is that it is awesome. And priced really well.

I'm very tempted to upgrade. But with ATi dropping their prices soon, I'm gonna wait and see if nVidia responds by doing the same.

[Professor Frink]

Think I will be getting on mid to end of Feb. Upgrading from a 260.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD6950 1GB is the competitor to the GTX560TI 1GB. Pixmania are already selling it for around £200:

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/8776...VQBiwSR3NZVw==

It will be interesting to see if the new HD6900 series drivers being released today will improve performance or not.

There are comparisons of the GTX560TI with the HD6950 1GB in these reviews too.

Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4135/n...e-250-market/1

Hardware Canucks:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...gb-review.html

PC Perspective:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=1067&type=expert

The Tech Report:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20293/1

The last review is interestng since it compares the GTX560 1GB with a 1GHZ core with an HD6950 1GB using 11.1a drivers.

Overall,the HD6950 1GB seems to be slightly ahead in some reviews. The GTX560 1GB is meant to be a better overclocker but at the expense of increased power consumption. However,many of HD6950 1GB reviews use CCC and not tools like MSI Afterburner for overclocking which means lower clockspeeds.

[Pob255]

Actually we don't, mainly that one started out but CAT's posting of the (fake) gigabyte gtx560 pictures.
And the hexus review thread.


I'm still reserving judgement on this one.

Yes on paper it looks like the gxt480 vs gtx580 did, ie nvidia finally fixed the issues with the 40mn die process
But I am wondering how much of the performance is down to the far higher stock clocks?
Granted the max clocks are also higher.
However with the 6850 and 6870 looks like ati is going to be stitching up the £100-£200 area

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Like I said in post 4 the HD6950 1GB has been released to counter the GTX560TI 1GB.

[Pob255]

Ummm I didn't dispute it CAT.

But with the gtx560 and 6950 coming in at the £200+ mark sub£200 cards it's still the gtx460 vs 6850 & 6870 both of which seem better cards.
However at the same time some of the highly factory OC gtx460 (eg EGVA FWT edition) actually overtake the 6870 and draws level with the gtx470

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The thing is that more overclocked and non-reference HD6850 and HD6870 cards are also being released too. Many of the early reviews used CCC which has very conservative overclocking limits.

For instance this HD6850 1GB can be overclocked to over 1GHZ for the core:

http://forums.hexus.net/graphics-car...-x-review.html

This card only uses a single PCI-E power connector too.

In this thread HD6870 1GB cards are hitting 1GHZ+ for the core:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=261317

[Domestic_Ginger]

The 6850 is a decent card however I would not overclock it to 1ghz due to cooler limitations; unless of course the ice-q is a beast. People were doing this with the 5850 and vrms hit about 150C!

Back on topic; 560 is avery nice card. Is it all that? At that price no, no suprises it appears as expected. People went mad over the 460; a good card but coming after fermi almost anything would look like progress wrt its physical properties.

Luckily we have cacophony of cards to choose from at all price points. Unfortunately they will stagnate until next gen.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 6850 is a decent card however I would not overclock it to 1ghz due to cooler limitations; unless of course the ice-q is a beast. People were doing this with the 5850 and vrms hit about 150C!

The HD6850 1GB consumes far less power than an HD5850 1GB so it will not have as many limitations when overclocking.

The HD6850 1GB cards generally have a single PCI-E power connector meaning that they will consume no more than 150W at most. According to Anandtech an HD6850 1GB overclocked to 960MHZ for the core consumes around the same power as GTX460 1GB at stock clockspeeds.

[Domestic_Ginger]

The problem is the 460 has two power plugs; you start drawing over the 150w theoretical and its going to pull from the PCIe port.

If they begin releasing factory OC cards at these speeds I'll stand corrected.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The problem is the 460 has two power plugs; you start drawing over the 150w theoretical and its going to pull from the PCIe port.

If they begin releasing factory OC cards at these speeds I'll stand corrected.

An overclocked HD6850 draws less power than an HD5850 which is a 151W part:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4002/a...asus-xfx-msi/7

Also,AMD does not need to release HD6800 series parts with massive factory overclocks ATM. The HD6850 1GB trades blows with the standard clocked GTX460 1GB cards and the standard clocked HD6870 1GB trades blows with the overclocked GTX460 1GB cards.

Even a GTX550 would probably be equivalent to a highly overclocked GTX460.

The HD6850 1GB overclocked nearly matches an HD6870 1GB which has exactly the same GPU.

It was the same situation with the HD4830 which when overclocked could match an HD4850 in many instances. Even the HD5850 when overclocked could match an HD5870. All of these shared the same GPU. However,it was rare to see any of the lower end parts having massive factory overclocks since it would compete with the higher end parts.

The HD4830,HD5850 and HD6850 were underclocked when compared to the higher end parts which shared the same GPU.

The reason that Nvidia does not mind allowing massively overclocked versions of the GTX560TI is since the GF116 is probably more profitable for them than the GTX570. The GF114 is 367MM2 whereas the GF110 is 520MM2 and the latter probably requires a more expensive PCB and cooler.

[]EGG[]

Oh dear, after reading through all the reviews on some of those sites I'd forgotten how biased some of those websites were with regard to their clear favouritsm to one particular GPU manufacturer, that being Nvidia. It was sad reading through one well established site again to see that this was clearly still the case as about 90% of websites have said that the ATI 6950 was marginally the better of the two cards overall and yet the site I am referring to said something along the lines of the GTX 560 Ti has the edge as it’s a lot faster and quieter too which is bull****.

I'm still sticking with the ATI Radeon HD 6950 (1 or 2GB) depending on the new prices and also out of principle, especially as I think the naming of the "GTX 560 ti" sounds both crap and also confusing to the public - Nvidia's marketing dept need to sort this but I'm guessing the billions Intel are pumping in to them they won't give a crap.

Rant over

[scaryjim]

Hmmm, at 1080p the 6950 takes 5 of Hexus' gaming tests, vs 2 for the GTX560. Looks like an out and out win for AMD.

But then there's the Gigabyte SOC, which hammers the 6950 at 1080p and mixes it handily with the 6970.

Pricewise a bone stock 6950 2GB is ~ £30 more expensive than a GTX560. The 1GB version will help to address some of that and should provide similar performance up to 1080p, but as far as I can see I can't buy a 1GB 6950 in the UK today - and until they become available at retail the 6950 1GB is irrelevant.

Add to that that there are factory overclocked GTX560s in the shops now priced at the same level or lower than a 6950 2GB, whereas the only factory overclocked 6950 available is an ASUS with a whopping 10MHz core overclock It won't take much of a core overclock to put the GTX560 uniformly ahead of a 6950, and Scan have OCed cards from MSI (880MHz) and Gigabyte (900MHz) at < £210 which would probably do the trick.

So tbh it's not as clear cut a win for AMD as it might look on the surface. The 6950 still retains the bang-for-watt advantage that AMD have had for generations, and does have a performance advantage at stock clocks, but the GTX560 is cheaper, quieter, and is close enough in performance terms that overclocked versions, which are already readily available, can make up the stock performance difference.

[DanceswithUnix]

Interesting bit to me is the 1GB vs 2GB 6950 though. I actually went back and re-read a review of the old 8800 GTS 320MB and the conclusion was that unless you are using a 30" monitor then 320MB is enough and you don't really need 640MB. History repeating itself? Perhaps 1GB is the new 320MB

[Bhavv]

I was going to wait for some price cuts before getting these, but the MSI ones at Scan for £203 are already a great deal:










Also, note that while the MSI and Gigabyte versions are using some great coolers, the Asus which is priced approx £30 higher at £229 is rather lame in comparison: