NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560: The Top To Bottom Factory Overclock
by Ryan Smith on May 17, 2011 9:00 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead, still one of the toughest games in our benchmark suite. Even three years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and for three years the answer was “no.” Dual-GPU halo cards can now play it at Enthusiast settings at high resolutions, but for mid-range cards like the GTX 560, you’re not going to get much better than 40fps at 1080P.
Historically Crysis is a good game for the 6800 series, so even with the clock boost the GTX 560 Mid can’t really keep up with AMD’s offerings. At 38.6fps the gains over the GTX 460 1GB are decent, but it’s only enough to clear the Radeon HD 6850. Clearing the 6870 requires the GTX 560 Ti, or a 950MHz GTX 560 as in the case of our overclocked ASUS card. Meanwhile clearing the 6950 simply isn’t going to happen.
It is interesting to note just how close the ASUS GTX 560 DirectCU II Top gets to the reference clocked GTX 560 Ti however; it’s still 5% behind, but it’s very close to what launched as a $250 card a few months ago. Given that the difference between the GTX 560 and GTX 560 Ti is a single SM, it should be possible for a well overclocked GTX 560 to place near the GTX 560 Ti. Not surprisingly, this is a big factor for why there are so few reference clocked GTX 560 Tis, and so many factory overclocked models.
While AMD does better on average, the minimums tilt away from AMD’s favor. The GTX 560 Mid still trails the 6870, but overall it’s much closer than the average framerate was.
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Grooveriding - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
Would be nice to see a comparison of the 560 to the 460 both at the same clockspeeds.Looking at this review, they will perform exactly the same at the same clocks. But it would be nice to see the comparison none the less.
xxtypersxx - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
I agree, it seems to be a pretty standard refresh except whereas 460's tend to top out around 850mhz, these make it much closer to 1ghz.I hope the all of the manufacturers learned their lesson from the rash of dying 460's a few months after launch and included heatsinks on the VRM's like Asus did. These GF114/GF104 cards draw too much current when overclocked for the manufacturer's to leave the mosfets naked as they did with most launch 460's.
I also liked how the clock scaling was presented in the review, this is a good way to handle the non-standardized speeds. I'm sure you'll get the standard comment whiners screaming bias, but at this point I'm convinced they will do this whenever you show an Nvidia card even power on correctly.
L. - Thursday, May 19, 2011 - link
I'm pretty sure they didn't learn too much, seeing what happened to tdp-control on the 590 ... (i.e. nerf the card else it's gonna blow up) - quite normal though, trying to put two 350 watt gpu's on the same board was a retarded idea, since it's not supposed to be a hairdryer.iGas - Sunday, July 10, 2011 - link
I agree.Would be nice to see a direct comparison clock for clock. And, perhaps a comparison with the 470, and 480 at base clock and OC.
PS. My MSI GTX 460, humming along perfectly at 940mhz (and it did broke into 1011mhz territory).
DarknRahl - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
Larger resolutions would be handy.Stuka87 - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
It would be interesting to see them tested on a 27" display, but most single card setups fall on their face at that resolution (2560 x 1440).L. - Thursday, May 19, 2011 - link
Well that's where you see AMD cards (2GB) get some more points.But as discussed .. makes more sense to have 2* 1080p instead, financially.
michaelheath - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
Why? Nvidia pretty much said last week that the target market for the GTX560 was users who want an affordable card to play games at 1080p resolution. Who would buy a $200 graphics card to play on a $1000+ 2560 x 1440/1600 display anyway? If you have that much money in your pockets for a high-quality display, why would you skimp out on the graphics card?Ushio01 - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prod...Only £440 ($660).
L. - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - link
It is clearly dumb to think resolutions will stay at the same level for eleventy beelion years.Anyone who has a good monitor wants to make use of it and might want to know how it's going to work.
Besides, your 1000 bucks figure is like 3x the price for some of the cheapest 2560* .
And, 200 bucks is not exactly "skimping out" on the gfx ...