Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti:

description of video cards and results of synthetic tests

It makes sense to remind once again that 460/560 class cards require additional power supply, moreover, with two 6-pin connectors.

About the cooling system.

We conducted a study of the temperature regime using the MSI Afterburner utility (author A. Nikolaychuk AKA Unwinder) and obtained the following results:

Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB 256-bit GDDR5, PCI-E

Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti o/c 922/1844/4400 MHz 1024MB 256-bit GDDR5, PCI-E

We think that it makes no sense to explain why there are two monitoring schedules. Yes, we overclocked the card's operating frequencies from 822/1644 MHz in the core to 922/1844 MHz. At the same time, the card works stably, there are no problems. And the maximum heating of the core in both cases is obviously not great for such cards.

By the way, in our diagrams with the test results, we will show the performance of the card not only at nominal, but also at such elevated frequencies.

Equipment. Considering that reference samples never have a complete set, we will omit this question.

Installation and drivers

Test bench configuration:

• Computer based on CPU Intel Core i7-975 (Socket 1366)
  • processor Intel Core i7-975 (3340 MHz);
  • Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard based on Intel X58 chipset;
  • RAM 6 GB DDR3 SDRAM Corsair 1600 MHz;
  • WD Caviar SE WD1600JD 160 GB SATA hard drive;
  • power supply unit Tagan TG900-BZ 900 W.
• operating system Windows 7 64-bit; DirectX11;
• monitor Dell 3007WFP (30″);
• ATI drivers version Catalyst 10.12; Nvidia version 266.56 / 266.35.

vsync is disabled.

Synthetic tests

The synthetic test packages we use can be downloaded here:

• D3D RightMark Beta 4 (1050) with a description on the site http://3d.rightmark.org.
• D3D RightMark Pixel Shading 2 and D3D RightMark Pixel Shading 3— tests of pixel shaders versions 2.0 and 3.0 link .
• RightMark3D 2.0 with a brief description: , .

Synthetic tests were carried out on the following video cards:

• Geforce GTX 560 Ti GTX 560)
• Geforce GTX 460 with standard parameters, model with 1 GB of video memory (hereinafter GTX 460)
• Geforce GTX 570 with standard parameters (hereinafter GTX 570)
• Radeon HD 6950 with standard parameters (hereinafter HD 6950)
• Radeon HD 6870 with standard parameters (hereinafter HD 6870)

To compare the results of the new Geforce GTX 560 Ti model, we chose these video cards for the following reasons: the Radeon HD 6950 and Radeon HD 6870 are the closest solutions from a competitor in price, the Geforce GTX 460 is a video card based on a similar graphics processor of the previous generation, and the GTX 570 is this is the closest solution of the current generation based on the more powerful GF110 chip.

Direct3D 9: Pixel Filling Tests

The test determines the peak texture sampling performance (texel rate) in FFP mode for a different number of textures applied per pixel:

In this test, all video cards traditionally show figures that are far from theoretically possible values ​​(we will double-check them later in the 3DMark Vantage test). The results of this synthetic for the GTX 560 Ti are far below the peak values, it turns out that the new video card selects up to 34 texels per cycle from 32-bit textures with bilinear filtering in this test, which is significantly lower than the theoretical figure of 64 filtered texels.

This is most likely due to the performance limitation of the video memory bandwidth, since the same GTX 570 turned out to be ahead, despite the fact that, according to theoretical figures, the older solution should lose to the one announced today. However, the GTX 460 is still left behind, although not too noticeable.

But both AMD video cards are head and shoulders above the new Nvidia solution in modes with a large number of textures applied to the pixel. And in cases with a small number of textures, the bandwidth limitation affects even more and up to three textures, all video cards show similar results. In this test, the really possible indicators of the new GPU are clearly not achieved, but let's see them in the fill rate test:

In the second synthetic test, which shows the fill rate, everything is the same, but already taking into account the number of pixels written to the frame buffer. And the diagram clearly shows that the rendering speed of many solutions in simple conditions is seriously limited by the memory bandwidth.

The maximum result remains with AMD solutions, which have a significantly larger number of TMUs and are more efficient in achieving high efficiency in our synthetic test. The HD 6950 is at its peak, nearly double the GTX 560 Ti. Interestingly, even in cases with 0-4 overlay textures, the solution considered today is inferior to the rest, except for the GTX 460, although its memory bandwidth is almost the same as that of the HD 6870.

Direct3D 9: Pixel Shaders benchmarks

The first group of pixel shaders that we are considering is very simple for modern video chips; it includes various versions of pixel programs of relatively low complexity: 1.1, 1.4 and 2.0 found in old games.

Tests of pixel shaders of lower versions are very, very simple for modern GPUs, even of an average level, and cannot show all the capabilities of modern video chips. In these tests, performance is mostly limited by the speed of the texture units, taking into account the efficiency of blocks and texture data caching in real tasks, there is also an influence of video memory bandwidth.

It can be seen that the GF114 completely repeats the results of the GF104, only taking into account the larger number of ALUs and TMUs and their operation at higher frequencies in the case of the GTX 560 Ti. In the simplest shaders, the difference between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 460 was 23-28%, which is lower than the theoretical ALU and TMU power gains. It looks like the performance of the GTX 560 Ti in this test is limited by the video memory bandwidth and fill rate, since the difference between the solutions is much lower in these indicators.

More interestingly, in three simple tests, the GTX 560 Ti was able to compete even with the GTX 570. However, in the most difficult tests, the GF114 solution still lagged behind the top GF110. As for the comparison with AMD video cards, both of them overtook the GTX 560 Ti, it was able to compete only with the HD 6870, and even then only in the simplest tests. Let's look at the results of more complex pixel programs of intermediate versions:

But these tests turned out to be much more curious. We are interested in the difference in the results of the GTX 560 Ti (and the GTX 460) and the GTX 570 in these two tests. The highly texture-dependent "Water" test of procedural rendering of water uses a dependent sampling of textures with large nesting levels, and therefore maps are usually arranged in it by texturing speed. And in this test, the GTX 560 Ti shows a theoretically justified result, outperforming even the GTX 570. We didn't manage to get the best among AMD video cards, but the HD 6870 showed a similar result, which is quite consistent with the theory (the peak texturing speed of these solutions is close).

The results of the second test are quite different, in it the GTX 560 Ti already loses to everyone except for the younger sister GTX 460. This test is more computationally intensive, and it affects the mathematical performance. Therefore, the test is better suited for AMD video cards with a large number of ALUs. The difference between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 460 in these two tests was 32-37%, which is roughly in line with the theoretical figures.

Direct3D 9: Pixel Shaders 2.0 tests

These tests of DirectX 9 pixel shaders are more complex than the previous ones, they are close to what we currently see in multiplatform games, and fall into two categories. Let's start with the simpler version 2.0 shaders:

• Parallax Mapping- a method of texture mapping familiar from most modern games, described in detail in the article.
• Frozen glass— a complex procedural texture of frozen glass with controlled parameters.

There are two variants of these shaders: one that is math-oriented, and one that prefers sampling values ​​from textures. Consider mathematically intensive options that are more promising in terms of future applications:

These are universal tests that depend both on the speed of ALU units and on the speed of texturing; the overall balance of the chip is important in them. Graphics card performance in the Frozen Glass test is similar to what we saw above in Cook-Torrance, and the new GTX 560 Ti is again noticeably inferior to the GTX 570, which has a top-end GF110 GPU. Both solutions from AMD also proved to be far ahead.

In the second Parallax Mapping test, the results are also somewhat similar to the previous ones, but this time both Radeons are not so far ahead of Nvidia video cards. Solutions based on GF114 and GF104 chips are once again behind everyone, and the GTX 560 Ti is ahead of the GTX 460 in these tests by 24-28%, which again indicates that the potential of the new GPU is insufficiently unlocked, caused by a not too large increase in the frequency of video memory and fillrate, compared with GTX 460 1 GB.

Let's consider the same tests in a modification with a preference for samples from textures to mathematical calculations, where the new solution should show a stronger result:

As in the case of the GTX 460, the position of the new solution regarding the GTX 570 from the top series has improved somewhat. True, Nvidia video cards have become even more inferior to both the HD 6870 and HD 6950, which have many texture units. But now the new GTX 560 Ti even beats the GTX 570 in the Frozen Glass test, which is more dependent on TMU performance. And in the second test, the results of the GTX 560 and GTX 570 were close. The difference between video cards based on GF104 and GF114 turned out to be 30-32%, which is closer to 38% of the theoretical difference in texturing speed.

These were all legacy tasks, mostly focusing on texturing or fillrate, not particularly difficult. Next, we will look at the results of two more pixel shader tests - version 3.0, the most difficult of our pixel shader tests for the Direct3D 9 API, which is much more revealing in terms of modern PC games. These tests differ in that they load both ALUs and texture units more, both shader programs are complex and long, include a large number of branches:

• Steep Parallax Mapping- a much more "heavy" version of the parallax mapping technique, also described in the article.
• Fur- a procedural shader that renders fur.

It seems that everything is fine with the tests of pixel shaders version 3.0 for the new Nvidia solution. Both PS 3.0 tests are quite complex, they are almost independent of memory bandwidth and texturing and are purely mathematical, but with a lot of transitions and branches, which the new Nvidia architecture does well.

In the most difficult Direct3D 9 tests, the GTX 560 Ti presented today shows a result significantly higher than the HD 6870, and in one of the tests it outperforms the HD 6950. Compared to the GTX 570, the video cards are close in the Fur test, but in the advanced parallax mapping test, a new solution Nvidia is inferior to its older brother GTX 570, and quite strongly. It seems that the test results are strongly affected by the lack of memory bandwidth and the lower efficiency of GF114/GF104 compared to GF110/GF100 in this test (the increased number of ALUs in each multiprocessor affects). Although the result for the GTX 560 Ti is still excellent - it is close to the more expensive HD 6950 from a competitor.

Direct3D 10: PS 4.0 pixel shader tests (texturing, looping)

The second version of RightMark3D includes two familiar PS 3.0 tests for Direct3D 9, which were rewritten for DirectX 10, as well as two more new tests. The first pair added the ability to enable self-shadowing and shader supersampling, which additionally increases the load on video chips.

These tests measure the performance of pixel shaders with cycles, with a large number of texture fetches (in the heaviest mode, up to several hundred fetches per pixel) and a relatively small ALU load. In other words, they measure the speed of texture fetches and the efficiency of branching in the pixel shader.

The first pixel shader test will be Fur. At the lowest settings, it uses 15 to 30 texture samples from the heightmap and two samples from the main texture. The Effect detail - "High" mode increases the number of samples to 40-80, the inclusion of "shader" supersampling - up to 60-120 samples, and the "High" mode together with SSAA is characterized by the maximum "severity" - from 160 to 320 samples from the height map.

Let's first check the modes without supersampling enabled, they are relatively simple, and the ratio of results in the "Low" and "High" modes should be approximately the same.

The performance in this test depends not only on the number and efficiency of TMUs, but also on the fill rate, which is clearly seen in the close numbers of HD 6870 and HD 6950. The results in "High" are about one and a half times lower than in "Low", as and should be in theory. In Direct3D 10 procedural fur tests with lots of texture fetches, Nvidia's solutions have always been superior, but AMD's latest architecture also performs well.

So good that Nvidia's new graphics card even lags a little behind both Radeons, though not by much. And the leader of the test is the GTX 570. This again indicates some influence of the fillrate, and possibly also the memory bandwidth. Although in the case of the GTX 560 Ti and GTX 460, the difference in speed exactly corresponds to the theoretical difference in the speed of ALU and TMU - about 38%.

Let's look at the result of the same test, but with the "shader" supersampling turned on, which quadruples the work, maybe something will change in this situation, and the bandwidth with the fillrate will have less effect:

Enabling supersampling theoretically quadruples the load, and in this case, absolutely all Nvidia solutions lose ground, and both AMD video cards look even stronger in such conditions. Now both Radeons outperform even the GTX 570. But what is strange is that the HD 6870 is ahead of the HD 6950. In other words, in the case of AMD video cards, performance is limited by the ROP performance, which is higher in the HD 6870. The GTX 560 Ti still lags behind the GTX 570, but overtakes the GTX 460 by the same 39-40%, corresponding to the theoretical figures.

The second test, which measures the performance of executing complex looping pixel shaders with a large number of texture fetches, is called Steep Parallax Mapping. At low settings, it uses 10 to 50 texture samples from the heightmap and three samples from the main textures. When you turn on heavy mode with self-shadowing, the number of samples is doubled, and supersampling quadruples this number. The most complex test mode with supersampling and self-shadowing selects from 80 to 400 texture values, that is, eight times more than the simple mode. First, we check simple options without supersampling:

This test is more interesting from a practical point of view, since parallax mapping varieties have been used in games for a long time, and heavy variants, like our steep parallax mapping, are used in many projects, for example, in Crysis and Lost Planet games. In addition, in our test, in addition to supersampling, you can turn on self-shadowing, which approximately doubles the load on the video chip, this mode is called "High".

The chart is very similar to the previous one without SSAA, and the results are close even in absolute numbers. In the updated D3D10 version of the test without supersampling, the new GTX 560 Ti model copes with this task 36-37% faster than the related GTX 460 based on the GF104 chip. But they still lag behind both AMD video cards, although the leader is the GTX 570, based on the GF110. Although the top card has a clear advantage in terms of theoretical characteristics, we did not expect such a big gap.

Let's see what will change the inclusion of supersampling, it should again cause a larger drop in speed on Nvidia cards.

When supersampling and self-shadowing are enabled, the task turns out to be noticeably more difficult, the combined inclusion of two options at once increases the load on the cards by almost eight times, causing a large performance drop. The difference between the speed indicators of several video cards has changed, the inclusion of supersampling has the same effect as in the previous case - AMD cards have clearly improved their performance compared to Nvidia's solution.

And now the HD 6950 slightly outperforms the GTX 570 at low details, just as slightly behind it in more difficult conditions. And the HD 6870 isn't too far behind either. The same cannot be said about the GTX 560 Ti and GTX 460. The new Nvidia solution loses to both competitors and is only ahead of the younger GTX 460. Moreover, by exactly the same theoretically justified 38-40%.

Direct3D 10: PS 4.0 Pixel Shader Benchmarks (Computing)

The next couple of pixel shader tests contain the minimum number of texture fetches to reduce the impact of TMU performance. They use a large number of arithmetic operations, and they measure precisely the mathematical performance of video chips, the speed of execution of arithmetic instructions in the pixel shader.

The first math test is Mineral. This is a complex procedural texturing test that uses only two texture data samples and 65 sin and cos instructions.

Purely mathematical tests confirm that the GF114 GPU is architecturally the same as its GF104 predecessor, the difference between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 460 corresponds to a theoretical 38% in ALU comparative performance. And all other solutions are located approximately according to theoretical indicators.

AMD graphics cards are clearly faster in this synthetic test, as the current AMD architecture has a big advantage over competing Nvidia graphics cards in computationally demanding tasks. This time the gap between Nvidia and AMD cards remains huge, HD 6870 and HD 6950 show the same result, outperforming even the GTX 570 from the top line. Well, the difference with the GTX 560 Ti turned out to be one and a half times, which is also close to theory, taking into account the lower efficiency of AMD video chips.

In our past research, we noted that this test is not completely dependent on the speed of the ALU, and the most productive solutions are limited by the speed of the video memory. So let's look at the second test of shader calculations, which is called Fire. It is even heavier for an ALU, and there is only one texture fetch in it, and the number of sin and cos instructions has been doubled, up to 130. Let's see what has changed with increasing load:

There are very few changes, only the HD 6950 pulled even further ahead, as it should be in theory. In the second test, the rendering speed is already limited solely by the performance of the shader units, and the difference between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 460 has become even slightly more theoretical - 40%, and the new model has almost caught up with even the GTX 570. But this is still too little for a new mid-range graphics card to level caught up with competitors represented by the Radeon HD 6870 and even more so the HD 6950 in mathematical tests.

The result of mathematical calculations has not changed for several years already - AMD solutions have a clear advantage, explained by a large number of ALUs, the speed of which is not greatly spoiled even by a relatively low efficiency. Moving on to the geometry shader test results, they will be interesting because the main performance limiter in them is the speed of geometry processing, and it will be interesting to compare the GTX 560 Ti with the HD 6870 and HD 6950.

Direct3D 10: Geometry Shader Tests

There are two geometry shader speed tests in RightMark3D 2.0, the first option is called "Galaxy", the technique is similar to "point sprites" from previous versions of Direct3D. It animates a particle system on the GPU, a geometry shader from each point creates four vertices that form a particle. Similar algorithms should see widespread use in future DirectX 10 games.

Changing the balance in the geometry shader tests does not affect the final rendering result, the final image is always exactly the same, only the scene processing methods change. The "GS load" parameter determines in which shader the calculations are performed - in vertex or geometry. The number of calculations is always the same.

Let's consider the first version of the "Galaxy" test, with calculations in the vertex shader, for three levels of geometric complexity:

The ratio of speeds with different geometric complexity of the scenes is approximately the same for all solutions, the performance corresponds to the number of points, with each step the FPS drop is about two times. The task for modern video cards is not particularly difficult, performance in general is limited not only by the speed of geometry processing, but also by the memory bandwidth.

The difference between the GeForce GTX 560 Ti and GTX 460 turned out to be even higher than the theoretical one - 46%. The new video card showed a result approximately at the level of both competitors from AMD, and the leader was the Nvidia video card, based on the top-end GF110 graphics processor. The Geforce GTX 570 outperformed all other video cards in all modes, including the GTX 560 Ti. This is because the GTX 570 has more geometry processing units.

This time, AMD video cards showed a good result - the geometric block optimizations made by AMD engineers clearly affected. Their geometry shader execution speed turned out to be close to the performance of GF114, which is already quite good. Let's see if the situation changes when transferring part of the calculations to the geometry shader:

When the load changed in this test, the numbers for Nvidia solutions did not change much, and the older Radeon graphics card pulled up the results a little, and now they are both just a little bit faster than the GTX 560 Ti. In this test, Nvidia boards do not at all notice changes in the GS load parameter, which is responsible for transferring part of the calculations to the geometry shader, and show results similar to the previous diagram. Let's see what will change in the next test, which assumes a heavy load on geometry shaders.

"Hyperlight" is the second test of geometry shaders, demonstrating the use of several techniques at once: instancing, stream output, buffer load. It uses dynamic geometry creation by drawing to two buffers, as well as a new feature in Direct3D 10 - stream output. The first shader generates the direction of the rays, the speed and direction of their growth, this data is placed in a buffer, which is used by the second shader for rendering. For each point of the beam, 14 vertices are built in a circle, in total up to a million output points.

A new type of shader program is used to generate "rays", and with the "GS load" parameter set to "Heavy", they are also used to draw them. In other words, in the "Balanced" mode, geometry shaders are used only to create and "grow" rays, the output is carried out using "instancing", and in the "Heavy" mode, the geometry shader also handles the output. Let's look at the easy mode first:

Relative results in different modes again correspond to the load: in all cases, performance scales well and is close to theoretical parameters, according to which each next Polygon count level should be less than twice as slow.

It is in this test with a balanced load that the rendering speed for all solutions is less clearly limited by geometric performance. The new Geforce GTX 560 Ti this time is already less behind the GTX 570, and with the growth of geometry complexity, the lag is getting smaller. And compared to Radeon cards, the new GPU shows very close results. The difference with the GTX 460 is only about 30% this time, as opposed to 46% in the previous two diagrams, which clearly indicates an emphasis on memory bandwidth.

The numbers should change in the next diagram, in a test with more active use of geometry shaders. It will also be interesting to compare with each other the results obtained in the "Balanced" and "Heavy" modes.

Here in this test, the difference between GF114 and GF104 again returned to the theoretically justified 40%. And the GF110 is far ahead of all the others in terms of the speed of execution of geometric shaders - the presence of four rasterizers clearly affects, unlike two in GF114 and GF104. It can be clearly seen that the capabilities of the GTX 570 in terms of geometry processing and the speed of execution of geometry shaders are almost twice as high as those of the GTX 560 Ti.

But the most important thing here is the comparison with AMD video cards. Nvidia's new solution is still faster than the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6950 in this test, but only slightly. The number of rasterization units in GF114 is not as high as in GF110, so the same GTX 570, having a large number of rasterizers, shows a result 70-75% higher.

So, compared to the GF110, the rasterization speed can be a potentially weak indicator for overall performance. Although for a mid-level solution, it is already important that its results are slightly higher than those of a top competitor. In tessellation tests, the speed is no longer limited by rasterizers, but by tesselators, and in such cases, the new GPU should show even stronger results compared to competitors.

Direct3D 10: texture fetch rate from vertex shaders

The "Vertex Texture Fetch" tests measure the speed of a large number of texture fetches from a vertex shader. The tests are similar in essence and the ratio between the results of the cards in the "Earth" and "Waves" tests should be approximately the same. Both tests are based on texture sampling data, the only significant difference is that the "Waves" test uses conditional jumps, while the "Earth" test does not.

Consider the first test "Earth", first in "Effect detail Low" mode:

Previous studies have shown that both texturing speed and memory bandwidth affect the results of this test. The difference between all the solutions is not very big, only the GTX 460 shows a little strange results, being the slowest. The newly announced GTX 560 Ti outperforms the old solution in simple modes by 30-40%, and in complex modes by only 10%. Probably, a different balance was made for these video cards in different driver versions.

The GTX 560 Ti slightly outperforms both of AMD's competitors in medium and hard mode, hitting something (BPS again?) in easy mode. Nvidia cards seem to have a little easier time with these tasks. Let's look at the performance in the same test with an increased number of texture fetches:

The relative position of the cards on the diagram has not changed too much. Now, in the lightest mode, all video cards based on Nvidia chips run into something unknown in general, and the HD 6950 becomes the leader in it. But in the heavy mode, the GTX 560 Ti almost caught up with the GTX 570 and noticeably outperforms the HD 6870 and HD 6950 competitors. The difference between the GTX 560 Ti and GTX 460 ranged from 10% (heavy mode) to 50% (light mode)! There is clearly something wrong with the driver for the old model ...

Let's consider the results of the second test of texture fetches from vertex shaders. The Waves test has fewer samples, but it uses conditional jumps. The number of bilinear texture samples in this case is up to 14 ("Effect detail Low") or up to 24 ("Effect detail High") per vertex. The complexity of the geometry changes similarly to the previous test.

The results in the "Waves" test are not like what we saw in the previous charts. In it, under different conditions, we already see a slight advantage of AMD products, although in general all solutions, except for the GTX 460, go smoothly. Our current hero, the GTX 560 Ti, performs only slightly better than the HD 6870 and HD 6950 in this test, and even lags behind the GTX 570 in light mode. But the new card is faster than the GTX 460 by up to 37%. Consider the second version of the same test:

Again, there are very few changes with increasing complexity of the conditions, they are almost absent. The relative results of the GF114 GPU in the second vertex sampling test at high detail are slightly better, with the new GTX 560 Ti now outperforming both Radeons in heavy mode, while continuing to lag slightly behind in easy conditions. The difference between video cards based on GF114 and GF104 was 36-39%, which corresponds to the theoretical difference in texturing speed.

3DMark Vantage: Feature tests

Synthetic tests from the 3DMark Vantage package are not new, but they support D3D10 and are interesting because they differ from ours. When analyzing the results of Nvidia's new solution in this package, we will be able to draw some new and useful conclusions that have eluded us in the tests of the RightMark family. This is especially true for the TMU speed test, because our analogue shows strange results.

The first test is the texture fetch speed test. It uses filling a rectangle with values ​​read from a small texture using multiple texture coordinates that change every frame.

In the texture performance test from the Vantage package, the results are completely different than in our RightMark. These figures are more like the true state of affairs, and closer to theory. In 3DMark texture synthetics, Nvidia cards make more efficient use of available texture units, and the GTX 560 Ti performs on par with the Radeon HD 6870, which is close to the theoretical difference. Naturally, the HD 6950 remains far ahead, as it has a large number of TMUs.

As for the comparison with Nvidia video cards, here we see the correct result - the GTX 560 Ti overtakes the GTX 570, in full accordance with the theory. And the difference between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 460 was 39%, which is also equal to the theoretical difference in texture fetching performance. In general, the new video card based on the GF114 chip shows a very good result, and among all the presented Nvidia video cards, it becomes the leader in texturing.

Fill rate test. It uses a very simple pixel shader that does not limit performance. The interpolated color value is written to an offscreen buffer (render target) using alpha blending. It uses a 16-bit FP16 off-screen buffer, the most commonly used in games that use HDR rendering, so this test is quite timely.

The performance indicators in this test correspond to the theoretical figures of the fillrate (performance of ROP units), without taking into account the influence of the video memory bandwidth. They are not like ours because we use an integer buffer with 8-bits per component, and in the Vantage test - 16-bit floating point. And the 3DMark Vantage numbers show exactly the performance of the ROP units, and not the amount of memory bandwidth.

The test results roughly correspond to theoretical figures, and most of all depend on the number of ROPs and their frequency. There is an influence of the PSP, but it is small. The new GTX 560 Ti model shows a good result, almost catching up with the younger competitor from AMD, which has about the same theoretical fill rate. But the new Nvidia board is unable to catch up with the HD 6950. The new mid-range solution lags behind the GTX 570 for the same reason - even the inferior GF110 in theory has higher ROP performance. But compared to the GTX 460, the new model was noticeably faster.

Feature Test 3: Parallax Occlusion Mapping

One of the most interesting feature tests, since this technique is already used in games. It draws one quadrilateral (more precisely, two triangles), using the special Parallax Occlusion Mapping technique, which imitates complex geometry. Rather resource-intensive ray tracing operations and a high-resolution depth map are used. This surface is also shaded using the heavy Strauss algorithm. This is a test of a very complex and heavy pixel shader for a video chip, containing numerous texture fetches during ray tracing, dynamic branching, and complex Strauss lighting calculations.

The test differs from other similar ones in that the results in it depend not only on the speed of mathematical calculations or the efficiency of executing branches or the speed of texture fetches, but on a little bit of everything. And to achieve high speed, a good balance of GPU units and video memory bandwidth is important. Significantly affects the speed and efficiency of branching in shaders.

Unfortunately, the GF104 and GF114 do not show very good results in this test, the GTX 460 has become the slowest card in general and is more than twice behind the fastest HD 6950! Well, the video card presented today, designed for the middle price range, does not reach the youngest of the presented AMD cards and the older sister GTX 570. However, it can be a weak consolation that the previous generation model is ahead by as much as 41%.

We have previously written that it is difficult to say which parameters most affect the results of this test. Probably, the reduced efficiency of executing shader programs with branches in GF104 and GF114, compared to GF110 and GF100, is to blame. In past studies, GF104 has redeemed itself in physics simulation tests, and we hope that GF114 will not fail there.

Feature Test 4: GPU Cloth

The test is interesting in that it calculates physical interactions (cloth imitation) using a video chip. Vertex simulation is used, using the combined operation of the vertex and geometry shaders, with several passes. Use stream out to transfer vertices from one simulation pass to another. Thus, the performance of the execution of vertex and geometry shaders and the stream out speed are tested.

It appears that the rendering speed in this test is also affected by several different parameters at once. Most likely, the overall speed depends on the performance of geometry processing and the efficiency of the execution of geometry shaders. In this test, even the GTX 460 performs well, only slightly behind the HD 6950, the fastest AMD card in our review. It is clearly seen that in this test, all Nvidia cards show much better results when executing complex shaders.

The GTX 560 Ti in this test clearly has an advantage over both competing solutions in the form of the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6950. With the execution of geometry shaders, the speed of processing geometry and the efficiency of executing complex programs, the GF114 is clearly all right, like all other chips from the company. The new model lags behind the top GTX 570, which is consistent with the theoretical characteristics.

Feature Test 5: GPU Particles

A test for physical simulation of effects based on particle systems calculated using a video chip. Vertex simulation is also used, each vertex represents a single particle. Stream out is used for the same purpose as in the previous test. Several hundred thousand particles are calculated, all are animated separately, their collisions with the height map are also calculated.

Similar to one of our RightMark3D 2.0 tests, the particles are drawn using a geometry shader that creates four vertices from each point to form the particle. But the test loads shader blocks with vertex calculations most of all, stream out is also tested.

The results for this test are very similar to what we saw in the previous chart, but the GTX 460 is now even better than both Radeon boards. Not to mention the rest of the Nvidia graphics cards. The difference between the GTX 560 Ti and GTX 460 this time was just over 30%.

In the synthetic cloth and particle simulation tests of this test suite, which use geometry shaders, the new GPU performed well, well ahead of competing AMD GPUs. And the junior top-end solution based on the GF110 chip simply has a significantly larger number of geometry processing units, which is why it has become the comparison leader in these tasks.

Feature Test 6: Perlin Noise

The last feature test of the Vantage package is a mathematically intensive test of the video chip, it calculates several octaves of the Perlin noise algorithm in the pixel shader. Each color channel uses its own noise function to increase the load on the video chip. Perlin noise is a standard algorithm often used in procedural texturing and uses a lot of math.

This test from the 3DMark Vantage package measures the peak mathematical performance of video chips in extreme tasks. The speed of all solutions shown in it approximately corresponds to what should be obtained according to the theory, and is very close to the picture that we saw earlier in our mathematical tests from the RightMark 2.0 package (at least in the second one).

Of course, AMD video cards outperform competitors from Nvidia this time as well. Simple but intensive math is performed much faster on Radeon graphics cards, as we have seen more than once. Although in other computational tests with more complex programs, such as physics calculations, Nvidia's solutions look quite good, including the GTX 560 Ti.

In the same mathematical test, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, based on the new GF114 chip, shows a slightly lower speed than the GTX 570, as it should be in theory (although the difference should be slightly less than it turned out). But the new model is 44% faster than the GTX 460, which is even more than the theoretical difference. However, both Radeon video cards are far behind, and the HD 6950 is the leader of the comparison, as in the rest of the extreme mathematical tests.

Conclusions on synthetic tests

Based on the results of our synthetic tests of the new Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti model based on the GF114 GPU, as well as the results of other video card models from both video chip manufacturers, we can conclude that Nvidia turned out to be an excellent replacement for the GTX 470. In many synthetic tests Nvidia's new chip performed very well, sometimes catching up with the Radeon HD 6950 and approaching the GTX 570 in some cases.

The new GPU differs from the GF104 in an increased number of execution units and an increased clock speed, which led to a significantly increased performance (about 30-40% in most cases), and the video card based on it presented today looks very attractive. Let's especially note the speed of texture fetches - according to this parameter, the GTX 560 Ti is far ahead of even the GTX 570 based on the GF110! We also note that the number of active tessellators has increased in GF114, which made it possible to further increase the performance of geometric processing.

Among the shortcomings, let's highlight the fact that architectural changes in GF114 and GF104 led to a slight decrease in the efficiency of some shader programs. And the second potential disadvantage may be the relatively low memory bandwidth compared to higher-end solutions. It is the insufficient memory bandwidth that often limits the performance of the GTX 560 Ti, and this can even more affect in the case of overclocked card options, since this GPU is able to operate at significantly higher frequencies, while the GDDR5 memory used cannot.

It can be assumed that the generally quite good results of the Geforce GTX 560 Ti in synthetic tests will be confirmed by positive results in the next part of our material devoted to testing in gaming applications. The new Nvidia solution should show very good results on the level of previous solutions like the Geforce GTX 470, and will be somewhat slower than the Geforce GTX 570, its older brother based on the GF110 chip, which is quite logical.

But what happens in games compared to competitors is difficult to say at once for several reasons. The price-competing Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6950 from AMD are too different even from each other, having different strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time the GTX 560 Ti should outperform the HD 6870, but it should still be slower than the HD 6950. Although it will outperform both competitors in some tests, it may fall behind them in others.

In games, the situation is always more complicated than in synthetics, the rendering speed there often depends on several characteristics at once. And very often it depends on the fillrate and texturing, which is the strength of AMD solutions. In addition, you need to take into account the slightly overpriced (for the Russian market) for the new GTX 560 Ti. It looks like it will have to contend with the cheaper Radeon HD 6950 1 GB, and this comparison may turn out to be less rosy for the new Nvidia video card.

In January 2011, nVidia pleased all its admirers with the release of the fifth generation GeForce GTX 560 video card, which replaced the older brother GTX 460, borrowing the GF104 graphics core from it, which was slightly optimized and called GF114, in connection with which they received a performance increase. The video card is ideal for games even in 2015 at medium and minimum settings. However, is the power of the GTX 560 compared to the 460 model so high that you pay more for it? This and more will be discussed below.

Main characteristics

• Manufacturing process: 40 nm
• Video Card Core: GF114
• Number of execution processors (SPUs): 336
• SPU frequency: 1620 MHz
• Video memory core frequency: 810 MHz
• Video memory frequency: 2004 MHz
• Memory type: GDDR5
• Video memory: 1 GB
• Bus width: 256 bits
• Number of texture processors: 56
• Number of ROPs: 32
• Power Consumption: 170 Watts

Video card manufacturer and various configurations from other companies

The main manufacturer of the video card is, of course, nVidia. It is worth saying that the company released three modifications of the video card, the original went on sale in 3 types: the usual, overclocked GTX 560 with the “TI” postfix and the stripped-down version of the 560 SE, and the GTX 560M video card for mobile laptops was also released. Many will wonder why, in fact, it was necessary to cut the video card. The answer is clear: the fact is that the nominal performance of the GTX 560 was an order of magnitude higher than that of the GTX 460, and the price did not rise much. And in order not to incur losses from the production of this video adapter, it was decided to block some of the shader units, as a result, instead of the announced 336 unified processors, a video card with 288 universal pipelines with a reduced SPU frequency, core frequency, with fewer texture and pixel blocks and, most importantly, a smaller memory bus. And an improved version of the video card was presented in the form of a modification of the GTX 560 TI, the cost of which is about 40% or about 4,000 rubles higher than that of the GTX 560 SE. Thus, the performance of the stripped-down version of the video card turned out to be exactly the same as that of the GTX 460. From this we can conclude that it is not worth overpaying for a fresh name, and if we take the GTX 560, then only in the “TI” version, which is much more productive than the GTX 560 SE and even more so GTX 460.

There are other configurations of the GTX 560, for example, from well-known companies Manli and Gigabyte:

Manli GeForce GTX 560 TI does not differ from the original in principle, except for the higher SPU frequency by as much as 4 megahertz. Irony, but there is no other way to react here.

But GigaByte took a more responsible approach to the production of its modification of this video adapter, improving gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 the frequency of the video processor from 810 to 830 MHz, which, by the way, is even higher than that of the GTX 560 TI with its 822 MHz. The frequency of unified computing processors has also been increased from 1620 to 1660 MHz. All this greatly improved the performance of the video adapter compared to the original GTX 560 from NVIDIA, while the price of the video card increased only slightly, which allows you to give preference to GigaByte when buying this video adapter.

nVidia GeForce GTX 560 vs AMD Radeon HD 6950 1 GB – Machine Battle

As soon as nVidia released a 5th generation graphics card with improved performance, AMD immediately gave its answer - the Radeon HD 6950 1 GB. If we compare the power consumption and temperature of video cards, then the answer, I think, will be obvious: the GeForce GTX 560 significantly outperforms the enemy. Despite the fact that the power consumption of the nVidia video adapter is 15 watts higher in load, its idle temperature is 29 degrees versus 42 for the Radeon, and under load 68 degrees versus 79 for the Radeon HD 6950, therefore, the risk of overheating the GTX 560 is much lower than with a competitive Radeon video card. At the same time, the level of fan noise emitted in the load of the GTX 560 is 5 decibels less than that of the opponent from AMD, this difference noticeably smoothes out the discomfort experienced by the user due to the noise of PC coolers.

It's time to compare their performance in independent testing of these video cards and finally find out which is more powerful - the silent and safe NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or the less voracious, but more "chugging" AMD Radeon HD 6950.

During testing, the following hardware configuration was used:

• MP - eVGA X58 Classified
• Processor - Intel Core I7 965, 3.7 GHz
• Video Adapters - GeForce GTX 560 TI and Radeon HD 6950 1 GB
• RAM – Corsair 6144MB (3x 2048MB) DDR3 1500MHz
• Power supply - 1.2 Kilowatt
• OS: Windows 7 64 bit with support for DX9 - DX11

Games and benchmarks in which testing was carried out:

1. Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 - max settings, resolution 1920 x 1200
2. Far Cry 2 - high settings, 1920 x 1200 resolution
3. Anno 1404 - max settings, resolution 1920 x 1200
4. Crysis WARHEAD - high settings, 1920 x 1200 resolution
5. Metro 2033 - max settings, resolution 1920 x 1200
6. Battlefield Bad Company 2 - max settings, resolution 1920 x 1200
7. Colin MC Rae Dirt 2 - max settings, 1920 x 1200 resolution
8. 3D Mark Vantage
9. 3D Mark 11

What conclusion can be drawn from the table above? The Radeon HD 6950 is well ahead of the GTX 560 TI in terms of processing power and frame rate. This is achieved primarily due to the larger number of texture units in the Radeon card (88 versus 64 for the GTX 560 TI), it is worth noting the larger number of unified execution processors (1408 for the Radeon HD 6950 versus 384 for the GTX 560 TI), but this is not greatly affects the performance, since the Cayman Pro core, on the basis of which the Radeon HD 6950 is based, will slightly outperform the GF114 in performance.

Despite the difference in benchmarks, in games, the Radeon card is not much better than the geforce. This becomes clear as a result of comparing fps in games when two video adapters are running, therefore, given their temperatures under load, I would still recommend the nVidia GeForce GTX 560 TI, because the risk of overheating is much lower for the geoforce than for the opponent from AMD.

Overclocking nVidia GeForce GTX 560

For overclocking, the same test equipment was used as when comparing the GTX 560 with the Radeon HD 6950. The GTX 560 TI was increased the core frequency from 822 to 950 MHz, the number of shader processors was increased from 1644 to 1900, and the video memory frequency was increased from 4008 to 4800 MHz.

Overclocking was carried out by the Afterburner utility, while the voltage did not change, as did the operation of the coolers.

Settings in games were set high, resolution 1920 x 1200

Overclocking results:

As can be seen from the overclocking results, it will be fully justified, since fps increases noticeably, as does the processing power when working in professional programs, such as Sony Vegas. But do not forget to monitor the temperature regimes, because despite all the measures taken by NVIDIA to improve the reliability of their video cards, the risk of overheating during overclocking remains no matter what.

For dessert:

The results of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 in some games in 2015-2016:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) – medium settings. One of the most gluttonous modern games. Attention! 35fps! An amazing result for a 2011 graphics card, isn't it?

CS: GO- maximum settings. 200fps!

GTA 5 (2015) - High settings, 1360 x 768 resolution, 50% V-sync. 30fps!

Thus, this video card is ideal for both applied and gaming solutions and will handle the vast majority of power-hungry games at medium settings. And this is taking into account its cost of 4000-5000 rubles today! And modifications, for example, from Gigabyte are even cooler. My rating for the video card: 8 out of 10, minus for the cut-down modifications of the GeForce GTX 560 SE, although nVidia can be understood in this regard - the company cares not only about users, but also about the profitability of the business, this is quite natural.

Regular readers can immediately ask the author a question: was there already an article in his blog, the title and title photo of which would contain a similar metaphor? Yes indeed, . However, if metaphors and allusions remain unchanged, then the situation on the video card market has noticeably changed.

If last time the Nvidia card turned out to be catching up, and in order to fully compete with the Radeon R9 280, the author needed to take the GeForce GTX 760 version, which has almost the best overclocking capabilities, now AMD has to catch up.

And after all, where to catch up - in the segment of budget gaming solutions, where Nvidia products have been afraid to stick their nose in for generations. After the cards based on the G92 chip (GeForce 8800 GT, 9800 GT, GTS 250, etc.), if not legendary, then certainly remembered by users, the company with the green logo took too long a break, concentrating all its forces in the top segment.

Video cards designed for economical buyers, with rare exceptions (for example, the GTX 650 Ti boost), had very controversial advantages - and that's putting it mildly! The same GTX 550 Ti, for example, only a very rare fan of the brand will remember with sincere warmth.

However, in the end, Nvidia turned its attention to this segment as well. First, it came out, which, at the price of a frankly disastrous GTX 750 Ti, offered significantly more performance and still defeated the Radeon R7 370 (R7 265, HD7850), and after it -, albeit not setting a new performance bar, but still developing the success of its predecessor.

AMD, after selling the last stocks of the R7 370, has only the Radeon RX 460 in its assets - the solution itself is not bad, capable of the competing GTX 750 Ti ... but alas, according to the price tag, it falls into the segment of the same GTX 950 and GTX 1050. But there was nothing to oppose them. Even the disabled shader unit did not help: they did increase the performance of the RX 460, but not by much, and in addition, the unlocked RX 460 was not officially supported in the new drivers - again, a patch created by enthusiasts was required.

At this, AMD already took a break in the struggle in the mass segment: there was no news about the further development of the video card line, the appearance of new models, or at least a change in pricing policy until the release of the updated Polaris family, which received the digital index RX 500.

Radeon RX 560. Who is he and what can he give to the world?

In the updated Polaris RX 560 family, as you might guess, it takes the place of the RX 460:

However, if the RX 580 and RX 570 are only getting cosmetic changes to the frequency model, then the budget Polaris 11 is finally getting an official unlock. Now we have not 896 shader processors, but 1024, the number of texture units also increases from 56 to 64. In addition, the frequencies also increase. If the base frequency of the RX 460 was 1090 MHz, and in boost it could rise to 1200, then the RX 560 already has 1175 MHz in the “base”, and under load it can accelerate to 1275.

Passport power consumption at the same time increases to 80 watts - therefore, the RX 560 will already lack the power provided by the PCI-e x16 interface, and an additional connector will be required. However, this is not a disadvantage, but rather an advantage: a video card powered directly from the PSU, and not from the motherboard, should stop the debate on the topic "will / will not work in PCI-e 2.0".

The recommended price of the RX 560 has dropped to $99. Potentially, this should have made the new product more attractive against the backdrop of the GTX 1050, however, the peculiarities of Russian retail and the mining fever that happened at the wrong time made their own adjustments.

So, at the time of the appearance in the CSN catalog, the RX 560 cost exactly the same as they asked for the GTX 1050:

This, of course, is also not bad, since Gigabyte Gaming is something like a top line that stands a step above the Windforce series, but already at the time of publication of this material, prices have changed as follows:

In this case, the purchase of the RX 560 provides less obvious advantages, although in general the balance is maintained. Again, there are more budget versions of the RX 560 (google, for example, Sapphire Pulse RX 560 2GD5 or Asus RX560-2G), as well as the more expensive variants of the GTX 1050, but if we compare the products of one vendor, we can say that at the moment there is parity between the RX 560 and the GTX 1050.

Anyway, price parity. But what about performance? This article is the answer to this question.

Gigabyte GV-RX560GAMING OC-2GD

As it was clear from the screenshots above, the test sample in today's review is a video card manufactured by Gigabyte. This was done for a simple reason: the RX 560 Gaming was the first to go on sale in the DNS of St. Petersburg, and besides, at the time of publication of the article, it remains the only representative of this model. Of course, there is also an option from MSI - however, it is completely devoid of an additional power connector, and therefore is of little interest.

Packaging and equipment

The video card comes in a compact box, similar in size and shape to the packaging of all other budget models from this vendor. Only the color scheme has changed, and the name of the model is slightly different, but otherwise there are no cardinal differences.

Perhaps that is why the packaging with the RX 560 Gaming cannot be called recognizable. Informative - yes. But eye-catching or eye-catching - not at all. However, this can also be called a virtue: the new packaging design, most likely, would only increase the final price of the device.

The box is in perfect order with informational content: here is a detailed description of the proprietary cooling system, and a list of interfaces, which is important in the light of ongoing speculation on the VGA topic on the Internet, and the necessary minimum of marketing information.

The bundle is expectedly spartan: only a disk with drivers and installation instructions. However, you should not demand anything else from a budget product: an affordable video card should first of all be cheap, and only then - differ in all other characteristics.

The lack of a VGA adapter in the kit is explained simply and obviously: neither the RX 560, nor the GTX 1050, nor any other modern video card from the AMD and Nvidia assortment support an analog interface. Moreover, it is already excluded at the chip level, so even the vendor cannot solder the corresponding connector on the board. To connect, you will need an active signal converter ... or a new monitor, which will cost the same money on the secondary (taking into account the sale of the old monitor in the same place).

The lack of an adapter for additional power is, on the one hand, a minus. On the other hand, the RX 560 Gaming uses a standard 6-pin connector, which is present today even on the most budgetary power supplies.

Appearance and design

The novelty repeats almost all the canons of the G1 Gaming line - two multidirectional turntables with 11 blades, a rather large heatsink with direct contact, a massive plastic casing. With the only exception that all these elements are greatly reduced in size.

So, the length of the card itself from the back plate to the edge of the casing is only 190 mm. This is significantly less than the width of a standard motherboard, so you definitely shouldn't worry about size compatibility.

The fan blade span is 72 mm - in fact, like other 80x80 mm fans. The use of fans of this size in this case allows you to focus the airflow on the radiator, and not drive air past it. So that can also be called a plus.

The only thing that has not lost in size is the heat pipe. She is here alone, has an S-shape and competently removes heat to the zone of maximum air flow from the fans. But at the same time it has a diameter of not 6, but 8 mm. For a small Polaris 11 chip, this is a very big plus - in this case, the surface of the tube is in contact with almost the entire chip, and not with part of it.

The back side of the video card is devoid of any thrust plates or stiffeners - with such dimensions, this is absolutely not necessary. But you can pay attention to the following design features:

1) The heatsink extends beyond the PCB. This can slightly improve cooling when blown by standard fans, and already more noticeably increase the efficiency of the radiator in passive mode. In both cases, not all hot air will accumulate under the video card.

2) The heat pipe does not just penetrate the radiator fins, but is soldered to them - in this case, heat transfer should be more efficient, even though the tube does not contact the fins with its entire surface.

3) There are no warranty seals on the cooling system fastening screws - you don't have to take the card to a service center to clean it from dust or replace thermal paste to keep the warranty.

4) The power subsystem is made according to the "4 + 1 phase" scheme. For Polaris 11, this is even redundant, but it allows us to hope for effective overclocking.

5) The elements of the power system are cooled by a radiator with a separate screw mount - this contributes to a strong and uniform pressure.

Moreover, speaking of the power system, it should be mentioned that, like in other devices from the G1 Gaming line, the power section is cooled by the main radiator. This decision, again, is not necessary for the RX 560, but it has already proved its effectiveness on cards with much higher power requirements, and therefore it should be attributed to the pluses of the card in question.

Finally, what makes the RX 560 different from the RX 460 that preceded it:

The novelty is powered directly from a 6-pin connector. It would seem an insignificant difference ... but no! Go to the DNS catalog, open the product card of any Radeon RX 460 that does not have such a connector - and read a bunch of heartbreaking stories about how the card refused to work in an old motherboard with PCI-e version 2.0.

The scale of the problem is in fact greatly exaggerated in order to more effectively advertise the GTX 1050, but nevertheless, the problem takes place. The point, of course, is not in the version of the connector, but in the fact that video cards simply do not have enough power. Firstly, the RX 460 eats about 70 watts, which is already close to the limits of the PCI-e x16 interface, and secondly, most video cards of this model do not use all the connector pins, but only half - which also does not contribute to efficient connection.

RX 560, on the other hand, receiving the power it needs directly from the unit, should not cause such inconvenience in principle. As, in fact, the RX 460 with 6-pin connectors, which did not cause any problems for the owners (not to be confused with Internet commentators!)

The set of connectors for image output, on the contrary, is completely standard and corresponds to the RX 460. DVI-D (digital connection only!) HDMI and Display Port - this is enough to connect any modern peripherals. But for older monitors with a VGA interface, an active signal converter is required.

In the system unit, the RX 560 Gaming takes up very little space - in length it does not go beyond the boundaries of even a truncated ATX motherboard, and therefore will be compatible with any case that will fit the motherboard.

Gigabyte GV-N1050WF2OC-2GD

As a rival to the video card discussed above, the GeForce GTX 1050 produced by the same vendor was chosen. This is far from the top, but not the most budget solution, whose price tag allows you to compare video cards directly, without any discounts, reservations or concessions.

Packaging and equipment

The package dimensions are, again, identical to the RX 560 Gaming and other budget Gigabyte models. The design is also not very expressive, although it looks more harmonious than the novelty.

You can’t complain about the information content here - the asset has the same set as the RX 560. All the information the buyer needs is given in an accessible and visual form.

The package bundle is similar to the RX 560, and there are no complaints here either. A cheap video card must be cheap first of all, and the extra tinsel in the package only hinders this.

Appearance and design

The video card is slightly larger than the RX 560 - it reaches 225 mm in length, which is also not enough for compatibility problems.

The fans are used here of the same size - 72 mm, but the radiator is somewhat simpler than in the RX 560. Instead of a set of thin plates strung on heat pipes, there is a single aluminum part with milled ribs. Such a design should have a higher thermal capacity (which is a plus when operating in passive mode!), but somewhat worse thermal conductivity. However, given that the GTX 1050 itself is more economical than the RX 560, this cannot be called a minus.

The design under consideration has only two real drawbacks: the VRM is cooled here by a separate small radiator, the air to which still has to squeeze through narrow slots in the main radiator, and the heat pipe has a diameter of 6 mm, which is not the best choice for direct contact with the chip.

Nevertheless, the GTX 1050 has a very modest power consumption and heating, so the author will not rush to write it down as a disadvantage. Let it be listed as "design features".

But the back side of the video card is already a real drawback. Of the pluses, we note free access to all mounting screws and, in fact, the presence of such screws on the VRM radiator, which does not interfere with a strong and uniform clamp.

But a one-piece plastic casing that covers the entire surface of the board and does not have ventilation slots is a fail. In addition to the graphics chip, memory chips and power circuits, there are enough heating elements on the board. They would have had enough cooling from natural convection and air driven by case fans, but covering them with an impenetrable cover is far from the best engineering idea.

Among other things, under the casing you can not determine the configuration of the video card power subsystem. Nevertheless, one should not expect any revelations here - even the older version of the G1 Gaming VRM is assembled according to the same "4 + 1 phase" scheme.

The video card is powered by a 6-pin connector, but for the GTX 1050 this does not matter as much as for the RX 560. Firstly, due to the absence of compatibility problems, and secondly, the power consumption of the card does not exceed 75 watts even during overclocking (or rather, it stops at around 65 watts with a small error).

But the set of interfaces is already more interesting. It completely repeats, again, the older version of G1 Gaming: DVI-D (only a number!), Display Port and three HDMIs at once. Of course, it's unlikely that anyone will build an Nvidia Surround system based on the GTX 1050, but the presence of ports is still better than their absence.

Temperature, noise level and overclocking

By tradition, the review will begin with a study of the heating and acoustic characteristics of the video cards under consideration - these aspects sometimes cause no less debate than gaming performance.

Let's start with temperatures:

At idle, the RX 560 is expectedly colder. Firstly, due to the design of the heatsink, and secondly, it is not covered with blank plastic on top, which prevents cooling of the back of the card.

But under load, the results are unexpected. In games, the RX 560 is even slightly hotter than the GTX 1050, despite the high fan speeds, but under the FurMark stress test it still remains colder. The reason for this is probably both the higher fan speed and the design of the heatsink, which assumes efficient heat dissipation.

But what about the noise level?

Everything is very good here. The GTX 1050 is noticeably quieter, but in general the noise level is such that the difference can be called insignificant. In gaming mode, both cards are less noisy than Zalman R1 case fans at maximum speed.

We only note the strange algorithm for controlling the speed of the RX 560 - in the game mode the card remains quiet, but when the stress test is started, the speed (and hence the noise) starts to increase non-linearly, and the video card becomes clearly audible.

Now let's move on to overclocking:

The RX 560 is a blank slate in this regard, as there are very few reviews and statistics on the Internet. But when compared with the RX 460, the final result is rather pleased. 1400 MHz on the chip and 2100 MHz on the memory - very good, considering that the RX 460, even with the power connector, mostly froze at around 1320-1330 MHz on the chip and 1880-1900 MHz on the memory.

Of course, one card is not an indicator, but such results suggest that the RX 560 received not only frequency changes, but also a different power management scheme. However, this is just a hypothesis.

The GTX 1050, on the contrary, has been studied up and down. Nevertheless, the obtained overclocking results can also be called impressive:

An increase of 170 MHz to the chip frequency and 600 MHz to the memory frequency gave a stable output of 1924 MHz on the chip in boost mode and 8208 MHz on memory. This may not be the most outstanding result for the GTX 1050, but it certainly is not the last.

Test system configuration and testing methodology

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X;
CPU Cooling System: AMD Wraith Spire;
Thermal interface: Arctic MX-2;
Motherboard: Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3;
RAM: GEIL EvoX GEX416GB3200C16DC, 2x8gb;
Disk subsystem: SSD Western Digital WDS240G1G0A+ HDD Western Digital WD10EZRX-00A8LB0;
Frame: Zalman R1;
Power Supply: Corsair CX 750M.

All tests were carried out under Windows 10 64-bit with the latest updates on June 13, 2017. A selection of test applications included both synthetic benchmarks performed at standard settings and tests in games.

Synthetic tests were carried out with standard graphics settings, tests in games - at a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels with medium settings corresponding to standard presets. More detailed settings are described directly on the graphs.

GeForce GTX 1050 used driver version 384.76 , for Radeon RX 560 - 17.6.2 .

Synthetic tests

By tradition, a test package opens the line of synthetics 3D Mark 2013. With this version, Futuremark has followed the current trends, and from a hardcore benchmark for high-end PCs, its most famous product is gradually becoming a universal system for testing platforms of various degrees of mobility. Therefore, out of three benchmarks, we are only interested in one - Fire Strike, which is still capable of bringing even premium-segment hardware to its knees.

3Dmark shows a quite expected picture with the lag of the AMD card. But what is unexpected is the degree of lag. Thanks to new drivers and better overclocking, the RX 560 already looks much more confident than the RX 460 even when unlocked.

Next in line - benchmark Unigine Heaven, which has not received updates for a long time, but still remains quite demanding on the performance of the video card.

In this benchmark, the RX 560 looks less positive, not catching up with the GTX 1050 even after overclocking. However, one should take into account the love of Unigine benchmarks for all video cards with a green logo.

The latest development of Unigine at the moment - benchmark superposition- takes us from fantastic skies to the modest laboratory of a scientist obsessed with an idea that can turn the laws of physics upside down. But changing the scale of the scene does not mean more forgiving system requirements! Quite the contrary - the second generation Unigine engine brings modern post-processing effects and a physical model directly involved in the test scene.

But the love of the benchmark for Nvidia has not gone away even when changing the version of the engine. The results are completely similar to those obtained in Heaven, with a discount for the reduced FPS.

Tests in games

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate- a new chapter in the confrontation between the Assassins and the Templars, which had every chance of being just another conveyor stamping, coming out under the slogan "not a year without the Assassins", but for some reason turned out to be something more. Glitches and poor optimization have not gone away since the days of Unity, but an excellent storyline, colorful antagonists and a variety of gameplay are still present. Disgustingly attractive London, the face of European civilization and the locomotive of progress that grinds human lives, will kidnap you for weeks ... if, of course, you have the right hardware for this.

First game and first surprise. The RX 560, of course, does not catch up with the nominal GTX 1050, but it also lags behind it by a much smaller amount than the RX 460 in the previous test. Influence in equal measure and new drivers, and better overclocking.

Batman: Arkham Knight- the final part of the trilogy from the studio Rocksteady, which was supposed to be the most dramatic and tragic. ICHSH, became. But just not in that sense. Despite all the merits of the story and graphics, the game came out so raw and crooked that even the reviewers had to wait for heaps of patches before the results could be presented to the public.

Although this game, along with Assassin's Creed, is considered the most loyal to Nvidia products, the RX 560 looks even more confident here, and only overclocking allows the GTX 1050 to take the lead.

DOOM- a game that, if not brought up, then definitely left its mark on the heads and hearts of more than one generation of gamers. One of the pillars of the shooter genre - what's there, the PC gaming industry itself! - unexpectedly returned with the most modern graphics and the most old-school gameplay, making players and critics yell with delight.

But DOOM, alas, does not present any surprises. The RX 560 is slightly less behind than the RX 460, but the gap between it and the GTX 1050 is still huge. Obviously, overclocking played a role here, but the software part has not undergone significant changes since the previous testing.

The third part of the role-playing series from Bioware, which managed to rehabilitate the studio in many respects after the crushing file with the end of the Mass Effect trilogy - and this is already an indicator. Like Battlefield 4, the game was created on the new Frostbite engine, which replaced the Unreal Engine. This means that the graphics here are as good as they are large-scale and epic itself. Dragon Age: Inquisition.

But the Frostbite engine is in a hurry to demonstrate all the advantages of the AMD card. The GTX 1050 still outperforms the RX 560 in both modes, but the lead is extremely small. Both graphics cards in Dragon Age: Inquisition will have the same graphics settings at the same performance.

Fallout 4- the continuation of one of the most popular role-playing series in our country ... alas, again released from the pen of Bethesda Softworks. As always happens with this studio, the interactive sandbox was a success, but with the spirit of the post-nuclear wasteland, the plot and semantic content did not work out very well. However, graphically the game is more than good, and the requirements for the hardware are very high.

Along with DOOM, Fallout 4 is one of the worst performances of the RX 560. In fact, not much has changed here since testing the unlocked RX 460 - except that the gap between the cards widened when lowering the graphics settings.

Far Cry 4 makes a somersault no less abrupt than the Assassin's Creed series, sending players to a new era every year. Instead of the greenery of tropical islands and the glow of blue lagoons, there are the snow-capped caps of the Himalayas. Instead of the strange but attractive philosophy of the islanders, there are thick allusions to Tibetan culture. But the game practically did not suffer from the change of scenery - it is still a downhole and unbridled action game with a slight touch of mysticism.

But FarCry 4 is already much more supportive of the AMD card. Whether it's the new drivers or better overclocking, the gap is shrinking sharply, and the overclocked RX 560 is even ahead of the nominal GTX 1050, albeit by a ridiculous amount.

Far Cry: Primal- perhaps the most daring experiment of Ubisoft in recent times. The series, known for its shooter mechanics no less than its open world, was sent to a time when only a couple of millennia separate the main character from the nearest firearm. However, survival in the ancient world among giant predators and no less dangerous bipeds really breathed new life into the series and sharply cheered up the boring gameplay. The system requirements have also grown, both for the graphics and processor parts of the PC.

The new part of FarCry gives the RX 560 even more advantages. Even the overclocked GTX 1050 bypasses it by no longer such a significant margin.

Hitman 2016- not so much a reboot of the series as a thorough restoration of the original game mechanics that once allowed this series to create its own genre. Spacious levels with complex architecture and many ways to complete tasks are back, preparation and planning are back, and the work of artists and designers has reached a whole new level. But along with it, the system requirements of the game also jumped up.

Something similar to FarCry: Primal is happening in the new Hitman. Moreover, the advantage of the overclocked GTX 1050 is so small here that one can even talk about the approximate equality of video cards.

Mass Effect: Andromeda- "supposedly a continuation" of one of the most iconic role-playing games of recent years, which made millions of people around the world once again dream of conquering space and exploring distant worlds. In order to save money, the development of the game was entrusted by the publisher to the Bioware division, which had never dealt with AAA-class projects before, which inevitably affected the final result. However, the graphics of the game are quite good (if you don't look at the faces of the characters) and, moreover, it runs on the most current version of the Frostbite engine.

Actually, the graph needs no explanation. Mass Effect in this case acts as a "general reconciliation" benchmark.

Metro: Last Light- the continuation of one of the most successful shooters created in the post-Soviet space. In addition to highly technological graphics, the game delivers an interesting plot, post-apocalyptic landscapes, in which no-no yes, details familiar to every inhabitant of the CIS flash by, dissection of a closed subway society that embodies all modern "-isms" in the most grotesque and frightening form, and many other aspects . Unfortunately, the game is very greedy for PC resources and did not get rid of the technical problems that were typical for the engine of the first part.

Although both cards can handle the game at the selected settings, the GTX 1050 still has a significant advantage, and in both modes.

Rise of the Tomb Raider- an attempt to return the series to its roots after the conditionally realistic first part of the 2013 sample. Fantastic artifacts, liberties with history and geography and even the physical abilities of the heroine, peppy gameplay and adventures in bright scenery are included. The only thing missing is infinite ammo.

Another example of driver optimization and the impact of high frequencies: if the RX 460 was far behind the GTX 1050 here, then the RX 560 is already on par, and even overclocking does not give the Nvidia card a big advantage.

War Thunder- a project that has long been awarded the status of the spiritual heir to World of Tanks. Initially, the game was perceived as "WoT with planes", but in the end it turned into an original and original product that deserves attention without any references to the previously released project.

But in WarThunder, the GTX 1050 has an advantage, and the percentage gap of the Nvidia card has not changed since the January testing.

World of Tanks- a game that has done more to develop patriotism and interest in native and world history than all the attempts of the current education system. Perhaps one of the first MMO projects that turned out to be able to satisfy the needs of users tired of the adventures of the long-eared and green-skinned. At the same time, it is highly popular among history buffs, reenactors, modellers and others involved, which only benefits the community of players, reducing the percentage of schools and just interesting characters. It is distinguished by historical accuracy, a realistic damage model, a rich fleet of vehicles, but the gameplay at the same time has a fairly low entry threshold. The first versions of the game were distinguished by modest system requirements, but as a result of recent innovations, the load on the PC hardware has increased many times over.

If WarThunder is well-known for running on anything and getting a performance boost from almost any change in PC configuration, then World of Tanks is distinguished by an enviable attachment to Nvidia video cards. However, compared to the unlocked RX 460, the gap between the RX 560 and GTX 1050 is much smaller.

conclusions

With the creation of the Radeon RX 560, AMD took the most obvious route: unlocking hidden reserves, increasing factory clock speeds and overclocking potential, and fixing previously identified problems in parallel with polishing the drivers for Polaris family cards.

Of course, this path could not give the video card too much, but what was done was done well. The video card definitely works faster than its predecessor out of the box, and it runs noticeably better, which also has a noticeable effect on performance.

Does this make the RX 560 a direct competitor to the GTX 1050? No, even though in some games they perform on an equal footing, or at least they can pull these games on the same settings. Once again, a miracle didn't happen - in the "general standings" the RX 560, albeit a little, albeit much less than the RX 460, still lags behind the Nvidia card.
But does that make the RX 560 an alternative to the GTX 1050? Yes, and how!

Why and how does this thesis relate to the previous paragraph? Very simple: everything depends on the price. For the same price, there's not much reason to prefer the RX 560 - unless you've bought an AMD Freesync-enabled monitor and really want to try the technology.

But if the RX 560 is offered for 7-8 thousand, and the GTX 1050 is sold for 10-12 - there is already a reason to stop and think about whether you need it. The difference in performance is far from 3-4 thousand rubles, and in some games this difference will not exist at all. And the amount indicated above - it either lies freely in the wallet, or is given to the store for not the most obvious gain ...

In this context, the RX 560 from Gigabyte discussed in the article is perhaps not the best choice. As a product of engineering thought, the card is certainly excellent, no complaints can be made about it. As a real product - the price is too inconsistent.

Probably the best choice would be series graphics cards Sapphire Pulse, HIS IceQ and a line that did not receive its own name Asus RX 560. Why exactly them? Because they have an additional power connector, they cost less than Gigabyte Gaming, and all other characteristics are much less significant.

P.S. In addition, do not forget that some Radeon RX 460s can be turned into similar RX 560 models without any consequences. ( Let's all stand up and congratulate the owners of Asus STRIX... but the author didn't tell you that!)

As always, Nvidia is trying to get ahead of everyone. The release of new video cards is always a big event for both the manufacturer and fans who expect something new and special. The same story happened in 2011 when the Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti hit the market. In addition, just a year later, the company introduced a twin brother for this GTX 560 model, which was slightly different from the older model.

Acquaintance

At that time, everyone was already familiar with the GF104 graphics chipset. The appearance of such a model, which would have activity in all computing units, was a matter of time. Therefore, as in the situation with the GF110, the manufacturer not only gave the buyer what he wants, but also did even more.

As a result, the novelty received a modified GPU for the Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti. The changes affected the technological process and the structure of the chip. As a result, we have a new "heart" with increased performance, high energy efficiency and some other changes.

GF114 is almost identical to GF104. The novelty only works at full strength, which means that all multiprocessors are activated in it. The total number of CUDA cores has reached 384 pieces, and texture units has become 64. Compared with the GTX 460 card, in which the GF104 chip has only 336 stream processors, and only 56 texture units.

The advantage of the novelty was the improved performance of the Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti. So the card works on cores with a frequency of 822/1644 MHz. Compared to previous models, the increase is 22%. Improved energy efficiency plays a key role. The card began to consume 170 watts. Despite the fact that this is 10 units more than in previous versions, a significant increase in frequencies significantly neutralizes this drawback.

Characteristic

Before we consider the existing modifications of this video card, we need to consider the main indicators of the technical component. So, as we said earlier, the core received an updated GF114 model. The number of transistors does not differ from the younger version, but differs markedly with respect to more expensive models - 1950 million pieces.

The core is made according to the 40 nm process technology. The area is only 332 sq. mm. As mentioned earlier, the number of stream processors has increased to 384 pieces, and texture elements - up to 64 pieces. The core frequency of the reference model was 822 MHz, the shader domain accelerated to 1644 MHz. The memory type is GDDR5 running at 4 GHz. The amount of memory is 1 GB.

Options

As always, the company presented the reference version of the Geforce GTX 560 Ti card so that other manufacturers could easily “create” their own version of it. Thus, a lot of video cards from Palit, Gigabyte, Sparkle, etc. were presented on the market.

In addition to the fact that competition was observed between Nvidia and AMD, rivalry could also be seen between modifications. Each version of the non-reference card was a competitor, and a very wide selection of good cards was available to the buyer, which differed in design, proprietary technologies, cooling systems, and even performance.

Version by Palit

It is not surprising to come across a non-reference model from Palit. received a postscript to the name - Sonic, which determined this model to the series from the manufacturer. The delivery of the novelty was quite ordinary, and to some extent even boring. The box, although it was decorated in different colors, did not carry much beauty in itself. But in front of it was displayed all the necessary information about the card.

There was even more of it on the back of the package. In addition to information about overclocking, technical capabilities, frequency indicators, proprietary technologies, and much more were indicated. The kit in the box was not very generous. The buyer could only find instructions, drivers and a power adapter.

The Palit Geforce GTX 560 Ti Sonic graphics card itself did not look like the reference model. But it was not much different from previous versions of this company. Textolite received red color. It is covered with a plastic casing with two bright orange fans. The interface panel houses standard slots: D-Sub, HDMI and a couple of DVI.

The casing is easy to remove, no special dismantling is required for this. Below it is a radiator with two sections through which three heat sink tubes are passed. They are arc-shaped and soldered to a copper base, on top of which there is thermal paste.

There is no additional heatsink for power parts on the card. Most likely, this is due to a fairly powerful cooling system. Clock rates start at 900 MHz for the core, the shader runs at 1.8 GHz. Relative to the reference model, this is a noticeable increase. The memory remained the same, but its frequencies again accelerated to 4200 MHz.

Considering that the card was improved by factory overclocking, there was no point in hoping for additional frequency acceleration. As a result, the core frequency was raised to 955 MHz. The memory has improved to 4640 MHz.

Reviews about Palit

In general, this non-reference model turned out pretty good. The Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti video card from Palit turned out to be 10% more powerful than the reference version. The cooling system performed well, which was noted by users. They praised the low heating temperature and the average noise of the fans.

Not all buyers had enough indicators after overclocking. Given that some modifications were announced with factory overclocking to 1 GHz, this card received only 922 MHz after additional overclocking. They also noted a rather meager package, which in some cases lacked additional cables and adapters.

Model from ASUS

It is probably not surprising that the modification from ASUS also appears frequently in reviews. A company that creates the most popular models of not only video cards, but also motherboards, accessories, etc., could not launch an unsuccessful version of the reference model on the market.

ASUS Geforce GTX 560 Ti also did not limit itself to such a short name and added DirectCU II TOP to it. The model was again presented as a successor to the older version. It was delivered in a box already familiar to the company with the image of a rider with wings. The basic information was listed on the front. Here we talked about factory overclocking, some proprietary technologies, the type and amount of memory, etc.

More information is provided on the back of the package. Here is already given the specification of the video card in several languages ​​at once. The tables below summarize the three main features. We are talking primarily about the DirectCU II cooling system, which, according to the manufacturer, does its job 20% better.

The model uses a special technology that affects the balanced distribution of power. Voltage regulation helps to achieve stability during overclocking.

There are more useful details inside the box than in the previous modification. So ASUS Geforce GTX 560 Ti comes with drivers and software, brief instructions, a couple of adapters for DVI, mini-HDMI and power.

The card design is attractive. Almost all of it is made in black, even the interface panel. It has two DVI-I connectors and one mini-HDMI. Such a small number of ports is compensated by adapters, so no problems should arise.

Textolite received a non-reference design, made in black. There is a lot of free space on the board. The manufacturer used ferrite cores for capacitors and chokes. The cooling system turned out to be branded. It is a feature of this model. It consists of an aluminum radiator, quite massive and divided into two sections.

Three copper heat sink tubes pass through it, and a plastic casing with two fans covers the top of the structure. For batteries, another radiator is installed, which contacts with them through a thermal interface.

Overclocking raised the core frequency to 900 MHz, and the shader runs at 1800 MHz. The number of element base has not changed. The memory is still of the GDDR5 type, has a capacity of 1 GB and is overclocked to 4.2 GHz. According to the manufacturer, it can be even faster.

Additional overclocking showed excellent results. The core accelerated to 1003 MHz, and the Geforce GTX 560 Ti memory began to operate at a frequency of 4572 MHz. On average, performance was improved by 10% compared to the already improved model.

ASUS reviews

This modification received good reviews. Buyers praised the appearance, quite stylish and concise. The proprietary cooling system coped with a bang with any complex tasks. And, of course, most often users noted the potential for overclocking.

But among the shortcomings, they noted a rather high cost, which this company always sins, and a slightly overestimated energy consumption. This modification has become for some buyers a companion for a long time. And some users still use this card for standard tasks.

Video card from Gigabyte

Another competitor for the above modifications is the Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 Ti. This option was then adopted as the senior in the series. Packaging and equipment were pretty standard, so let's immediately consider the appearance of the model.

The first thing that stands out in the appearance of new items is the cooling system. It is “anti-turbulent”, branded and has a special curved shape, which distinguishes it from many others. The interface panel does not differ from the one we saw in the previous model. The cooler is represented by a large radiator, which consists of fifty thin aluminum plates. Four copper heat sink tubes pass through it.

The base where these tubes converge is rather small. Topped with thermal paste. The chip itself is in contact not only with the copper base, but also with the aluminum plate. The heatsink also has a curved shape that completely repeats the location of the fans. The technology is quite profitable, as it allows you to efficiently cool the entire board.

The plastic casing is catchy. It has two 80mm fans built into it. The body of the Geforce GTX 560 Ti has bright streaks that resemble gaming components. Textolite received a standard blue color. The elements are located close to each other, but in general there is a lot of space on the board. The length relative to the reference version has become longer.

Regarding the technical characteristics, there are no cardinal changes. Everything is also a GF114 chip, a 1 GB GDDR5 memory type. Initially, overclocking was performed, so the card entered the market with core frequencies of 1 GHz, shader - 2 GHz, and memory - 4580 MHz. Relative to the reference model, the increase in frequencies was more than 20%

Probably, it was precisely such overclocking indicators that dictated an additional improvement in performance, which turned out to be modest. At a voltage of 1.012 V, the core frequency during stable operation reached 1015 MHz, and the shader - 2030 MHz. The memory was accelerated to 4960 MHz. Although the result is not bad, it was not easy to get to the 5 GHz declared by the manufacturer.

Gigabyte reviews

The Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 Ti video card deservedly received good reviews. Firstly, thanks to its attractive design and quality materials. Secondly, thanks to excellent overclocking, which, although it did not further improve the frequencies, showed excellent performance. Thirdly, it is impossible not to note the well-thought-out proprietary cooling system.

In 2012, the card easily coped with all the gaming innovations. If you do not manually increase the fan speed, then the cooler balancing technology helps to get rid of annoying noise. By the way, some buyers even used this model in 2015 paired with modern games and did not feel any discomfort.

The only thing that customers complained about was the rather high energy consumption. Older models of power supplies could not withstand the loads and simply burned out. Therefore, those who at that time decided to purchase this model had to buy a PSU of 600 watts or more.

Modification from Sparkle Caliber

The Geforce GTX 560 Ti video card from this company comes in a rather interesting box. It is black matte, in front there is a minimum of information - only a card model. Behind the main specifications of the model. The box included instructions, a disk with "firewood", three adapters for power and video outputs. There is a mini-HDMI/HDMI cable.

The appearance of the card is very attractive and is a complete copy of the older model. Before the buyer there is a plastic casing of the cooler with bright purple fans. The system even at first glance looks quite high quality and powerful.

It consists of a heatsink that is pierced by four copper heat sink tubes. The plates have a standard shape. The whole structure is slightly raised and occupies three slots at once. The copper base is slightly larger than the chip area. A compact radiator can also be found near power elements.

Brown textolite, identical to the reference model. Specifications are almost indistinguishable from the reference version. The novelty received factory overclocking almost the same as that of Gigabyte's viduhi. This time, the Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti graphics card left the core and shader clock characteristics unchanged - 1/2 GHz, but the memory clock speeded up to 4800 MHz. As a result, compared to the reference video card, this one became 20% more productive.

Additional overclocking did not show good results. The core frequency has risen by only 5 MHz. Shader acceleration by 10 MHz, but the memory still surpassed 5 GHz. As a result, it became clear that the developer “squeezed out” everything possible from this modification by factory overclocking, so we can’t expect anything special from it.

Now everything on the graphics card market has become much simpler and more transparent. Earlier, when the competition between AMD and NVIDIA was the toughest, the release of models caused bewilderment. The thing is that in 2010-2011 it was decided to get rid of discrete graphics in favor of single-chip solutions.

At the same time, confusion begins with the cost. Powerful video cards become unprofitable due to their unpopularity. At that time, the gaming industry was not so brightly full of various projects that would require super graphics. Therefore, it did not make sense for an ordinary user to buy an adapter for $ 500, and for its full implementation also a monitor for a thousand.

Difficult situation

Before the advent of the new GTX 560 Ti, the characteristics of which did not differ too much from the previous generation, the situation on the market for this product was rather complicated. At the beginning of the year, AMD dominated with its 5000 series. NVIDIA, no matter how hard they tried, delayed the release of video cards. After that, the GTX 460 version appeared, which, coupled with all the modifications, became a really good option.

Following were announced updated models from one and the second company. As a result, the Radeon HD 6900, GTX 580 and GTX 570 video cards came out. The first model became much more in demand, since it had no competitors at all in its price segment. The closest rivals cost $100 more.

Then several series were released again, which occupied the middle price segment. But the release of the NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti, whose characteristics did not differ much from competitors at first glance, caused bewilderment. The price was noticeably higher, but there was no difference.

Index

Before you learn about the various modifications of this version, you should get acquainted with the "Ti" index. Now he is already popular, many are familiar with him. But then such a name raised questions. The company has previously tried to use "Ti" in the fourth series of graphics cards. They showed by this that the manufacturer uses programmable shaders.

After shaders became commonplace, so that there was no confusion among users, the index was removed. The company also wanted to simplify the names of the adapters to make them more memorable.

The next difficulty arose just with the predecessor of the GTX 560 Ti. The characteristics of the new GTX 460 were almost the same in all modifications. But in order to allocate adapters with different amounts of memory, it was decided to use indexes. There was also a need to mark viduhi that have factory overclocking.

When the GTX 560 Ti card appeared, it became clear that the company plans to take the entire mid-price segment with one chip. In addition, it was necessary to create good fame for all the models that received this index.

Differences

As mentioned earlier, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti has a lot of modifications. Their characteristics are not always very different. Still, the changed design of the boards, various amounts of information, frequencies of the graphics core, etc. are noticeable.

Many modifications of this adapter are factory overclocked already in the box. In addition, some show excellent potential with additional improvement. Among the most popular cards of this model are options from Gigabyte, Sparkle, ASUS and the main one from NVIDIA.

Similar Features

Before considering and comparing the modifications of this model, you need to take a closer look at the GTX 560 Ti. The characteristics of all options are almost the same. Each is paired with a GF114 GPU. The choice of this part for adapters has become key. If the manufacturer decided to leave the previous version of the chip, then the GTX 560 Ti would not have any differences from its predecessor at all.

The number of streaming multiprocessors has also changed. They became one more - 8 pieces. Scalar processors also increased to 384 pieces. The clock frequency is 822 MHz. Traditionally, the memory type is GDDR5. The average volume is 1 GB, although there are modifications with other indicators.

ASUS version

Packed a new model from this company in a regular box. It depicts a branded knight. The model is indicated on the front, there is also information about some functions and, of course, the frequency of the graphics core is 900 MHz with factory overclocking.

There is a lot of necessary and unnecessary information on the back in 12 languages. Here is the entire specification of the video card. The special cooling system DirectCU II, which was developed by the manufacturer, is mentioned. We are talking about a high-quality element base, which increases the service life. The recommended PC system requirements are mentioned below.

Characteristic

The appearance of the ASUS GTX 560 Ti is very attractive. Characteristics practically do not differ from the initial version. The processor GF114 with a norm of 40 nm is used. Inside there are 384 shader pipelines and 32 rasterization units.

Factory overclock provides a frequency of 900 MHz. The shader unit runs at 1800 MHz and the memory runs at 4200 MHz. A 256-bit bus is responsible for data exchange. The memory consists of 8 chips of 128 MB each, totaling 1 GB.

Peculiarity

The main highlight of this model is a special cooling system. It consists of a specially designed aluminum heatsink. It is quite massive, penetrated by three heat pipes made of copper. Two fans are placed in the plastic casing, for which rotation speed control is available.

There is also an additional radiator, which was placed on the power parts of the power supply. The manufacturer, installing such a complex cooling system, immediately implies the possibility of additional overclocking.

As a result, at maximum load, the temperature rises to 83 degrees. At the same time, the fans themselves operate at half their capacity. This automatic mode allows you to remove all the unpleasant sounds of coolers. If you run the fans at 100% speed, then at maximum load the temperature will drop by 10 degrees.

Gigabyte Candidate

From Gigabyte, the GTX 560 Ti graphics card received promising characteristics. Outwardly, she looks solid. The proprietary cooling system, which has a special shape, immediately catches the eye. The cooler consists of two fans and is anti-turbulent.

The video card has three connectors: two DVI formats and one is designed for mini-HDMI. The radiator turned out to be very large, its plates are connected to copper heat sink tubes. It also has a curved shape that works on blowing the entire board structure.

Specifications

This adapter model is part of the Super Overclock series. Its distinctive feature is the presence of the GF114 graphics processor. The standard volume is 1 GB. It also consists of 8 microcircuits that operate at a frequency of 5 GHz.

The core operates at a frequency of 1000/2000 MHz. The memory also has a fairly high speed - 4580 MHz. Thanks to factory overclocking, the adapter improved its performance by 20%. The core temperature at maximum load also pleased us more than in the previous modification - only 69 degrees. The only thing I have to complain about is the noisiness of the cooler.

Product from Palit

Another video card was created by Palit. GTX 560 Ti features are similar to the initial ones. In addition, "home" overclocking did not show unprecedented results, but still confirmed user reviews.

The interface of the map has been slightly changed. In addition to two DVI-I connectors and one HDMI, there is also a VGA port. In principle, such a variety is only in the hands of users. The board is large. The cooling system here is much weaker than from Gigabyte.

The massive heatsink has only two copper heat pipes. The plastic casing is placed together with one fan. But the user can adjust it. With the fan running at 57% power, the core temperature is 80 degrees at maximum load. This figure is acceptable, but still requires additional insurance for “home” overclocking.

Characteristic Palit

This GTX 560 Ti graphics card received good performance. It is better to overclock after purchase, especially since the potential of the adapter allows you to do this. The core frequency was raised to 960 MHz. Of course, an increase of 16% is not a record, but it is also acceptable.

The memory frequency improved by 18% and amounted to 4740 MHz. Such a result is pleasant. Although it should be borne in mind that the fan must operate at full capacity. And this option will not appeal to all gamers.

conclusions

The video card from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti received good characteristics for the middle price segment. All modifications easily overtook direct competitors from AMD: Radeon HD 6950 and even more powerful Radeon HD 6970.

In the race for the championship, the modification from Sparkle won. Caliber X560 is not very different from the Gigabyte product, but still slightly outperforms it in terms of frequencies. It also wins this race due to its excellent cooling system: it is quiet and powerful at the same time.

The version from Gigabyte also does not graze the back. In addition to the original appearance, the card also received a good cooling system, which also affects performance. Inferior to the previous version only because the memory frequency is less by 220 MHz. Of course, in practice this may be noticeable, but for picky users it will be a mere trifle.

Generally speaking, at one time the GTX 560 Ti was an excellent graphics card. It has become a good replacement for its predecessor GTX 460. In general, it is quite quiet, productive and of high quality. With all the games of that time, she coped well. AMD also managed to leave competitors behind, and therefore for many it turned out to be the best option for its price.