The Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Review: Take Off Your Ti

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Nvidia strips the Ti moniker and some performance from its GeForce GTX 560 Ti in order to create a new lesser-priced model. Can the company's GeForce GTX 560 stand up to AMD's popular Radeon HD 6870, or does it fall short of the value mark?

Zotac GeForce GTX 560 AMP! Edition

Zotac’s entry measures 9" x 4 ½", about three-quarters of an inch longer than a reference GeForce GTX 460. As usual, the AMP! Edition designates the company’s premium overclocked offering. This card's 950/1100 MHz core and memory clocks are 160 and 98 MHz above Nvidia's reference specifications, respectively.  

Note that both PCIe power cables face the outside edge of the card. We prefer them up the top to save space behind the board, which often interferes with installed hard drives. But because this card isn't very long, this configuration shouldn’t present any problems for most folks.

Zotac’s orange-on-black color scheme is familiar, and a dual-fan arrangement seems plenty-capable of keeping the GF114 GPU cool. Three heat pipes channel heat away from the GPU block to the fan and fins on the right side of the card.

The outputs are standard fare: two dual-DVI outputs and a single mini-HDMI option share the space. Of course, Nvidia supports a maximum of two simultaneous outputs on all of its offerings, so you can't use all three connectors at the same time.

Zotac's bundle includes a mini-HDMI-to-HDMI adapter, DVI-to-VGA adapter, two Molex-to-6-pin-PCIe power adapters, a driver disk, user manual, and Zotac boost software bundle. It’s rare to see cards come with games anymore, but Zotac includes a download voucher for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

Also included is Zotac’s Firestorm overclocking software, an easy-to-use tool for pushing the factory ovberclock even further. We’d love to see the utility incorporate a voltage control option, but as you’ll see in the overclocking section, that might not be necessary for this particular card.

Zotac plans to ask $220 for its GeForce GTX 560 AMP! Edition card.

Don Woligroski
80 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rolli59
    I am just surprised they did not call it SE!
    Reply
  • daygall
    All these naming schemes are giving me a freakin head ache stupid derp companies, why cant both of them just stick with 1 naming scheme for a while

    if its not amd mucking with my mind and HD6870
    Reply
  • daygall
    srry for the dbl post... but half my comment disapeared ....

    EDIT* if its not amd mucking with my mind and HD6870 < HD5870 = HD6970

    its Nvidia and GTX460 < GTX560Ti >
    Reply
  • kcorp2003
    so that disable part can be flash to re-enable it?
    Reply
  • NuclearShadow
    The naming is certainly for marketing purposes. People are not attracted to lower numbers even when they are more fitting when it comes to new products.
    Yes companies exploit this but on the other hand would their product sell if they didn't? At-least now as well as it would otherwise.

    Take the Xbox 360 as a example. Its predecessor was simply "Xbox"
    It's not the 3rd console of the series and certainly isn't the 360th.
    The 360 is completely meaningless in the name when it comes to the product.
    They didn't want to name it Xbox 2 for the simple reason that loss of sales may occur because of the PS3's 3. They felt that some consumers may feel that because of the higher number the PS3 is superior and should buy that instead. As silly as this may sound to everyone they very likely are correct. Hence why the Xbox 360 was named such. But can you really blame them?

    Final note: I personally find the 360's name funny as it would mean the Xbox 360 by name would be right at where the Xbox is and not of any change.
    Reply
  • geekapproved
    Stupid strategy. MOst people are buying 560ti's and 6950 1GB's. Not 6870's and surely not 560's.
    Reply
  • bobdozer
    Anybody else notice that there is always an nvidia card at the top of toms video reviews?

    Why stop at the 560 TI? You can't use price as an excuse this time around because it costs about the same as the 6950.
    Reply
  • bobdozer
    The conclusion is pretty bad.

    Newegg has a bunch of 6870's costing less than $200 (one is $173 with rebate + free Shogun total war).

    So it's slightly faster, has much better minimum framerates, consumes much less power and is cheaper. I don't see any compelling reason to buy this 560.
    Reply
  • hangfirew8
    Where did you get those puny memory bandwidth values from? HS has the 560TI at 128.3GB/s. You have 4GB/S. Has Nvidia started selling the Fx5200 again?
    Reply
  • elbert
    The 560GTX SLI had no crossfire setup to compare. Was this due to the 560GTX SLI only compares to a 6850CF? The 560ti SLI v/s 6870 CF is a very good compare. In the link the 560ti SLI has 2 wins, 2 losses, and one near tie with 6870 CF.
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-560-ti-gf114,2845-13.html
    Reply