NVIDIA Readies GeForce GTX 560 to Counter Radeon HD 6950

[btarunr]

NVIDIA is readying a new GPU to counter the Radeon HD 6950. Released earlier this month, reviews suggest that the HD 6950 managed to slip into a sweet-spot between GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 570/Radeon HD 5970, giving buyers an option for around $300. NVIDIA's counter to this is named GeForce GTX 560, it is based on the new 40 nm silicon. While specifications-wise, this GPU is identical to the GF104, it is redesigned to allow high-clock speeds with lower power draw, the same secret-sauce that went into making GF110 is applied here.

The GeForce GTX 560 features 384 CUDA cores, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide memory interface that connects to 1 GB of memory. The new GPU has bolstered high GPU clock speeds, with 820 MHz core, 1640 MHz CUDA cores, and 4000 MHz (GDDR5 effective) memory, churning out 128 GB/s memory bandwidth. NVIDIA however, isn't in a hurry with its release, it has the GTX 560 slated for some time in January, 2011.



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[Lionheart]

Looks interesting, might need abit more memory bandwidth

 

[Over_Lord]

yeah i see this as eating up HD6950

 

[SeanG]

Why they got the driver covered up?Is that the driver we been waiting for 2 months now?

And that 560 only has 8 more gb of bandwith than my 460?And same clocks?And why does it say PCI-E x16@x4?

 

[wolf]

bout time we saw a funny enabled GF104 chip, however it would seem it's yet another redesign like GF100 -> 110, which imo is fantastic, this baby should hit 1ghz core 2ghz shaders.

GTX460's are already legendary overclockers, interesting to see this come out with a good 20% clock speed improvement, and more shaders too.

this could well be the a chip that ends up being a dual GPU high end card from nvidia, especially if its targeting the 6950 and a 6990 is likely 6950 cf performance or thereabouts.

 

[Jamborhgini313]

Prob around 5870 Performance

 

[20mmrain]

yeah i see this as eating up HD6950

If it comes out at the right price.... Otherwise we will see the 6950 just lower it's pricing and kill this card in terms of price per performance.

If Nvidia is willing to go to war in price battling.... with this card I think it will easily be the new SLI setup in my system for sure!!!

 

[T3RM1N4L D0GM4]

And now waiting for sub-150€ card (1x6pin pci-x connector) !!

 

[HalfAHertz]

We all knew that this was coming I hope this is as great as the 460 and prices drop fast.

 

[Rule-R]

I am more interested how it compares to the 570 in performance vs. price ratio.

 

[Benetanegia]

If it comes out at the right price.... Otherwise we will see the 6950 just lower it's pricing and kill this card in terms of price per performance.

If Nvidia is willing to go to war in price battling.... with this card I think it will easily be the new SLI setup in my system for sure!!!

Nvidia will surely price this one right. Nvidia has been at a perf/mm^2 disadvantage for the last couple years and they did battle in price. This chip will be smaller than Cayman (320-340 mm^2 vs 389 mm^2) and if the card itself is anything like the GTX460, the board itself is going to be much cheaper, plus the low speed ram is much cheaper than the one on Cayman. For the first time in a couple years Nvidia will have an advantage on perf/mm^2 (not to mention perf/transistor) over AMD, and a card much cheaper to produce, do you think they will choose not to fight this time around**?

I would put a big question mark on the overclocking headroom of this card though*, but then again Cayman does not OC well either.

*IMO the card has clearly been clocked to catch the HD6950 no matter what. I don't think OC headroom will be huge and I don't expect power consumption to be very low either.

**You can also look at it this way, GTX560 will cost the same to produce as the GTX460 so if really required Nvidia will most probably sell it for the same price as the GTX460 is selling right now. Realistically that will not happen though, because I don't think AMD can afford to sell HD6950 for less than $200 or it would have to sell the HD6970 for "little" more ($250 max) due to the small difference in performance, so bye bye profits. Nvidia on the other hand would not be pressured to lower the price of the GTX570 to the same price as HD6970, because it would still hold value due to much higher tesselation and CUDA performance for those willing to pay and for those not willing to pay that much Nvidia would have the GTX560 with just 10% lower performance (HD69xx cards are also at 10% difference between each other, but the HD6970 does not have any advantage, GTX570 does have). I think that in that situation the HD6970 would become pointless, being in the middle of sub-$200 cards like GTX560 or HD6950 that are close to it performance wise and a card that while being as pointless as the HD6970 in that situation from a gneral performance point of view, it still has a huge advantage in tesselation and CUDA.

 

[DarkOCean]

Looks like an gtx 460 on steroids.High stock clocks mean low overclock and this thing only have 8 tess units vs gf110 16.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Trying to catch the 6950 at stock seems pointless. It is essentially a 6970 with a hundred less shaders and higher vid. Once we gain voltage control the sky will be the limit. Where as the 560 will likely be fairly close to it's max already, and not scale as well from voltage bumps... based on looking at every other nvidia card in the line. I guess it could some how be an exception, I just really doubt it.

 

[burtram]

I hope this makes the 460 prices drop, I could use another one for my sisters computer.

 

[Benetanegia]

Trying to catch the 6950 at stock seems pointless. It is essentially a 6970 with a hundred less shaders and higher vid. Once we gain voltage control the sky will be the limit. Where as the 560 will likely be fairly close to it's max already, and not scale as well from voltage bumps... based on looking at every other nvidia card in the line. I guess it could some how be an exception, I just really doubt it.

I don't quite understand what you mean. GTX4xx and GTX5xx cards so far overclock very well and respond very well to voltage bumps, in general. And on this I think the GTX460 was better, at least mine is really good doing 840 Mhz on stock 0.95 V and 870 with 0.975V. I just didn't want to try out more, I don't define myself as an overclocker anymore, only what I can get done in half an hour and a bunch of benchmark runs. I don't try to go further than what I know has worked 100% stable for other people in the forums either.

In any case the GTX460 has exceeded 900-950 Mhz in most reviews with voltage tunning on the cards so if GTX560 has a higher voltage, posible thanks to much lower leakeage (as is the case with GTX580 and 570) 950+ Mhz are posible.

Without voltage bumps the HD6950 is not doing any better in ANY of the reviews around the net, usually doing 860-880 Mhz (10% OC) and much worse: HD6970 is not really exceeding 940 Mhz (W1zz obatained 915 Mhz...) which does hint at the real OC potential of Cayman. GTX5xx is not doing much better, I agree on that, but the OC headroom is slightly better due to lower stock frequencies. GTX560 will be arguably more limited, but I think the playing field will be very evenly close between Cayman and GF114. Stricktly speaking, yes, with voltage tunning, HD6950 will OC better than GTX560, but like I said due to lower stock clock relative to the architecture (I'd say AMD's 850 Mhz == 800 Mhz Nvidia's). On the other hand GTX570 clearly overclocks better than HD6970 and the cut down version of GTX560 (let's call it GTX555) will most probably compete head to head with HD6870 and overclock much better. It's just due to how cards are stacked against each other, how we're pairing up a fully enabled and clocked chips to cut down chips from the other vendor.

All in all we are at the same node, so most performance improvements can only come from higher stock clocks. Since the top limit is pretty much set in stone for the 40nm node, the higher that stock clocks are the lower the OC headroom.

Just compare:

EDIT:

Cut down cards:

card | low limit | high limit| spread | spread stock
HD6850 | 940 Mhz (21% OC) @ 1.15V | 1030 Mhz (33% OC) @ 1.4V | 1030 - 940 = 90 Mhz (10%) | 1030 - 775 = 255 mhz (33%)
GTX460 SE | 823 Mhz (27% OC) @ 0.95V | 923 Mhz (42% OC) @ 1.075V | 100 Mhz (12%) | 275 mhz (42%)
GTX570 | 822 Mhz (12% OC) @ 1.025V | 912 Mhz (25% OC) @ 1.175V | 90 Mhz (11%) | 180 Mhz (25%)

Fully enabled chips:

card | low limit | high limit| spread | spread stock
HD6870 | 965 Mhz (7% OC) @ 1.175V | 1015 Mhz (13% OC) @ 1.35V | 1015 - 965 = 50 Mhz (5%) | 115 mhz (13%)
GTX580 | 835 Mhz (8% OC) @ 1.025V | 902 Mhz (17% OC) @ 1.125V | 67 Mhz (8%) | 130 mhz (17%)

As you can see, no clear cut winner.

 

[NC37]

Aye, I've been waiting for a price drop to get my 2nd 460. NV launching the 460 SE really ruined that. The moment it was announced, I saw prices go up rather than down on the high end 460. I didn't see many retailers at all running rebates or special deals.

 

[Hustler]

Hmmm...128Gb Bandwidth.

Bit dissapointed with that TBH, i was holding out for the 560 and was expecting it to be closer to 150Gb.

Still, i'll wait to see the benchmarks before deciding, if its at the same level as a 6950 (otherwise, why launch it) then i'll still go for this because of the extra features of the Nvidia cards..

It will be my first Nvidia card in 5yrs so quite looking forward to it.

 

[yogurt_21]

jeez, we've been waiting for this one for a while. seems nv is holding onto their goodies until amd responds these days. should be a nice performer while being cool and havign low power requirments.

 

[TAViX]

To many cards already....(

 

[Benetanegia]

I've decided to put up this comparative table so that everybody can make up their mind on what to expect from this and future Nvdia cards.

Card | Clock | SP | Gflops | Relative Gflops | ROP | Gpixel/s | Relative fillrate | Mem. clk | Bus width | Mem. Bandwidth | Relative Mem BW | Texture units | GTexel/s | Relative text. fillrate
GTS450 | 783 | 192 | 601.34 | 47.74 | 16 | 12.53 | 47.74 | 3608 | 128 | 57.73 | 45.10 | 32 | 25.06 | 47.74
GTX465 | 607 | 352 | 854.66 | 67.86 | 32 | 19.42 | 74.02 | 3206 | 256 | 102.59 | 80.15 | 44 | 26.71 | 50.89
GTX460 1GB | 675 | 336 | 907.20 | 72.03 | 32 | 21.60 | 82.32 | 3600 | 256 | 115.20 | 90.00 | 56 | 37.80 | 72.03
GTX470 | 607 | 448 | 1,087.74 | 86.36 | 40 | 24.28 | 92.53 | 3348 | 320 | 133.92 | 104.63 | 56 | 33.99 | 64.77
GTX560 | 820 | 384 | 1,259.52 | 100.00 | 32 | 26.24 | 100.00 | 4000 | 256 | 128.00 | 100.00 | 64 | 52.48 | 100.00
GTX570 | 732 | 480 | 1,405.44 | 111.59 | 40 | 29.28 | 111.59 | 3800 | 320 | 152.00 | 118.75 | 60 | 43.92 | 83.69
GTX480 | 701 | 480 | 1,345.92 | 106.86 | 48 | 33.65 | 128.23 | 3696 | 384 | 177.41 | 138.60 | 60 | 42.06 | 80.14
GTX580 | 772 | 512 | 1,581.06 | 125.53 | 48 | 37.06 | 141.22 | 4008 | 384 | 192.38 | 150.30 | 64 | 49.41 | 94.15

The most important thing to take into account when comparing Fermi based cards is how nicely they scale based on their ALU capabilities, and how little the rest of specs matter, as you can see here:

Card | Actual perf. | Relative Gflops
GTS450 | 46 | 47.74
GTX465 | 72 | 67.86
GTX460 | 73 | 72.03
GTX470 | 89 | 86.36
GTX560 | ? (HD6950 = 100) | 100.00
GTX570 | 109 | 111.59
GTX480 | 108 | 106.86
GTX580 | 125 | 125.53

*Actual performance numbers have been taken from W1zzard's HD6950 review (relative performance 1920x1200), which IMO is fortunare since this card is to compete with HD6950. Looking at how the actual numbers and theoretical numbers are so similar, it seems it will compete very nicely isn't it? Don't worry about memory bandwidth, it won't make a huge difference, if at all.

 

[assaulter_99]

Crowded gpu market = Price wars! Mooot! At least each company is fielding ammo, unlike last year.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

If it comes out at the right price.... Otherwise we will see the 6950 just lower it's pricing and kill this card in terms of price per performance.

If Nvidia is willing to go to war in price battling.... with this card I think it will easily be the new SLI setup in my system for sure!!!

It's very likely that will happen. Another concern will be yields as well as cost for the 560. Further more, those who just purchased a 460 a few weeks back may start having buyer's remorse.

Looks like an gtx 460 on steroids.High stock clocks mean low overclock and this thing only have 8 tess units vs gf110 16.

It probably is. But we will see soon enough though.

 

[assaulter_99]

Further more, those who just purchased a 460 a few weeks back may start having buyer's remorse.

Seriously east, everything we buy ends up giving us buyer's remorse sooner or later! Thats the sad reality.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Seriously east, everything we buy ends up giving us buyer's remorse sooner or later! Thats the sad reality.

Nope, I consider buyer's remorse as a time frame. For some they may have just purchased a 460 then hear news of a 560 for example.

 

[inferKNOX]

I was crying because of the supposed price jump to $330 of the 6950 after the holidays, which is probably only when I'll be able to trully be able to set my sites on it.
Now... nVidia to the rescue!!
I love the GPU Wars!