Introduction

It's time for another big-ticket graphics card launch by NVIDIA, presenting the GeForce GTX 560 review. Hang on, don't confuse this with GeForce GTX 560 Ti, which is a different, higher-end part, that was released way back in January. Why exactly did NVIDIA think of giving the GeForce 560 Ti a smaller sibling and this "late"? Among other things, it's because of a host of changes that took place in rival AMD's $150 to $250 lineup after the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, changes that took place over a period of time, warranting NVIDIA to respond with the new GeForce GTX 560.

First, as of January, NVIDIA may have had a healthy inventory of GTX 460 to clear, and that SKU was quite competitive at the time following some price cuts that made it a good deal against the Radeon HD 6850. AMD used a two-pronged market strategy against GTX 560 Ti by introducing a cheaper Radeon HD 6950 1 GB graphics card that ended up with high cost-performance ratio; and by slashing prices of HD 6870 and stepping up pressure on lower-end NVIDIA SKUs. Later, AMD introduced HD 6790, a sub-$200 SKU that ended up with higher performance than GTX 550 Ti.

The GTX 560 first surfaced some time last month, though it was always speculated that NVIDIA will milk the GF114 beyond just one SKU (GTX 560 Ti). Hence, the GeForce GTX 560 was born. While the name is bound to create some confusion, NVIDIA only stands to benefit from it. GTX 560 Ti earned the reputation of striking the gamer's sweet-spot, and so the GeForce GTX 560 will be perceived as a good SKU by the lesser-informed buyers.



Based on the same exact GPU as the GTX 560 Ti, the 40 nm GF114, the GTX 560 has 336 of the 384 CUDA cores enabled, the same number as on GTX 460, but leads with clock speeds without disturbing the power draw much, a characteristic of NVIDIA's second-generation Fermi GPUs. On the reference design the core is clocked at a zesty 810 MHz, CUDA cores at 1620 MHz, and memory at 1 GHz. Compare that to 675/1350/900 MHz on the GTX 460. So the GTX 560 is in essence a super overclocked GTX 460.

On the chopping block today is a custom design GeForce GTX 560 non-Ti card, the Palit GTX 560 2 GB, which is an all-out custom design graphics card by the company. It adds an extra gig of graphics memory and comes at the NVIDIA reference design clock speeds.

Packaging

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD + Documentation
• PCIe Power Cable

The Card

Palit is following their typical color scheme with a red PCB and a black high gloss cooler. The fan is a new development and uses more fan blades in an optimized shape to reduce temperatures and noise.


The card requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity is two DVI ports, one full size HDMI port and one analog VGA output. Due to NVIDIA's display output logic design you are limited to two active displays at any time. AMD GPUs have a more flexible configuration and allow up to six active outputs at the same time.

An HDMI sound device is included in the GPU, too. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes HD audio and support for Blu-ray 3D movies.


You may combine up to two GTX 560 cards from any vendor in a multi-GPU SLI configuration.


Pictured above are photos of the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.