Conclusion
Sparkle’s Calibre X560 was the fastest card in today’s roundup at 1000 MHz GPU and GDDR5-4800, and deserves some recognition for that effort. It leads most of our performance charts, edging out the 1000 MHz GDDR5-4580 model from Gigabyte by around 1%.
However, Gigabyte deserves similar credit for packaging its 1000 MHz GPU under a more elegant two-slot cooler, allowing this model to fit more motherboards in single- or dual-card configurations. A 1% performance penalty that saves one slot sounds like a good trade-off to us.
Update (2/23/2011): It's worth noting that these Web-based prices are in a constant state of flux. Since publication, MSI's card has dropped $5, Palit's is down $10, and Sparkle is committing to selling the X560 for $10 less (though it still isn't available). Of course, we're fans of price movements in that direction!
Asus was the only company to offer an overclocked card at the reference card’s price today. The only seller who could match that price with MSI’s card was unfortunately out of stock, and the next-lowest price was $5 higher. Asus also clocks its card higher than MSI for better performance. Anyone looking for an even more aggressive price will likely find “instant rebates” on standard-speed cards, such as Sparkle’s SX560T1024D5MH, though the cost/performance ratio must then be re-evaluated.
Thus, an 8% increase in performance translates directly into an 8% increase in value for Asus’ GTX560 Ti DirectCU II TOP 1GB GDDR5. That kind of value leadership deserves an award, in spite of the product’s unwieldy name.
Gigabyte is the value runner-up, despite its higher price, all because if its 10% performance lead over Asus. Yet, we don’t expect Gigabyte’s runner-up status to last long, since Sparkle’s aggressive pricing policy often fosters unscheduled discounts. Either of these cards might have qualified for our most prestigious "Best Of" award, had Asus not shown up with its better overall value.
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- Five Overclocked GeForce GTX 560 Cards, Rounded-Up
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Please add in the results idle noise level. For me, noise is one of the most important thing when considering a graphics card. I bought a Galaxy GTX 460 last year with the funny cooler and it sounded like a jet engine even when idle. I ended up replacing it with a Thermalright Shaman cooler, the 140mm fan is much more pleasant to the ears.
Thanks for the review, any news on any *new* 2GB models of the GTX 560 ? The only one currently available is the Palit version, which shares the same design as the Palit sonic edition card that was reviewed. Would love to see a Gigabyte SOC 2GB card...
These are some pretty sweet cards. Could you put up the numbers for a reference spec GTX 470. That would be interesting to see how they compare performance wise. The OC'ed cards have pretty similar bandwith to the 470. The big powerful 320 bit card vs the smaller more efficient 256 bit card.
There should have been a please in the previous post, and a question mark. -1 for bad grammar. -1 for bad manners.
I am not sure that even dual GTX 580s qualify as a status symbol. They sit in your computer and no one ever sees them.
I am not sure that even dual GTX 580s qualify as a status symbol. They sit in your computer and no one ever sees them.
you don't need to see it...you only need to feel it...wait, it's still in the case...lol
Well, one still need to overclock to play Crysis. But who cares, when Crysis 2 is in the wild?
Why dont your roundups ever contain reference to other cards???? Please, reference to other cards. If the most overclocked card costs nearly as much as a gtx570, you need to show the speed difference of similarly priced cards
Why dont your roundups ever contain reference to other cards???? Please, reference to other cards. If the most overclocked card costs nearly as much as a gtx570, you need to show the speed difference of similarly priced cards
This was not the intent of the article. This article was intended to see which 560Ti was the best bang for your buck. I am sure there will be future articles that compare different cards and their price points.
Well, one still need to overclock to play Crysis. But who cares, when Crysis 2 is in the wild?
Even a 8800GT can play Crysis 2.We have to change our spam to " can it play Crysis 1 ? "
just a question, where the HELL could you find the overclocked Asus GTX 560 TOP?
every retailer only has the standard asus version as the time of this post.
Good article but I cant see the Asus card costing the same as their slower clocked card when available in retail.
msi and asus cost same at retail
Hey guys, read about the upcoming z68 & x68 chipsets!
http://vr-zone.com/articles/additi [...] 11294.html
Well I understand the point of this article is to compare the different 560 versions, but it would be really great if there was a chart to compare against similar GPUs from Nvidia and ATI just to kind of show where they all fit in the grand hierarchy.
That looks like more confirmation that LGA1365 was scrapped and LGA2011 is what we'll see replacing LGA1366.
You'd think they would have made 6 and 8 pin PCI-E connectors at 90 degree angles by now...
Why dont your roundups ever contain reference to other cards???? Please, reference to other cards. If the most overclocked card costs nearly as much as a gtx570, you need to show the speed difference of similarly priced cards
It was covered almost a month ago:
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2845.html
Both articles have a reference card, you can compare percent differences for overclocked cards (this article) to percent differences for the GTX 570 (the past article, linked).
What is your favorite graphics card utility, exactly? I got a recertified PNY RVCG98GTEE1XXB GeForce 9800 GT 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 off of Newegg and I'd like something to control the fan speeds. It tries to stay around 60 celsius, which I think is a tad warm.