EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 FTW Review
PrintThe not-quite GTX 570
When is a GTX 560 Ti not really a GTX 560 Ti? When it’s almost a GTX 570.
Nvidia’s latest GPU, the GTX 560 Ti 448 is really a GTX 580 (originally dubbed the GF110) with two functional blocks disabled, reducing its CUDA Core count from 512 to 448. The GTX 570 is a GF110 with one functional block disabled, endowing it with 480 CUDA Cores. The original GTX 560 Ti is a completely different chip, with different power requirements, but all 384 of its cores are fully functional.
Priced at $290, The 560 Ti 448 fills a price gap between the $250 GTX 560 Ti and the $350 GTX 570. Given that yields for GF110 GPUs have improved, the Ti 448 is a limited-edition version, so it’s unclear how long it will remain on the market. And since we’re approaching the end of a GPU generation, it’s likely that many of the processors around today will soon ride off into the sunset. If you really want a GTX 570, but can’t swing the price, the 560 Ti 448 might fill the bill. Like most of the retail cards based on this chip, EVGA’s GTX 560 Ti 448 is factory overclocked, to 797MHz. Compare that to the typical GTX 570 design—Asus’s ENGTX570, for instance—in which the GPU runs at a stock clock of 742MHz. We also compared EVGA’s card to a couple of other factory-overclocked SKUs; namely, the Asus GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II, and the MSI Radeon HD 6950 Twin Frozr III.
The two-slot GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 FTW is outfitted with two dual-link DVIs and one each HDMI and DisplayPort on its mounting bracket.
Note: We’ve made some minor changes to both our test bed and our game benchmarks; so don’t compare these performance numbers to our earlier reviews. The GTX 570 pulls slightly ahead of the pack in apps that make heavy use of shader programs (that’s Just Cause 2 and the Unigine Heaven 2.5 synthetic benchmark in our suite). In most other benchmarks, it’s either a wash or the GTX 560 Ti 448 posts a slight lead. MSI’s implementation of AMD’s Radeon HD 6950 keeps up in some benchmarks (Shogun 2, STALKER: CoP, and Metro 2033), but it falls behind cards based on Nvidia’s GF110 in the other tests. On the other hand, the Asus GTX 560 Ti trails the field in nearly all the benchmarks, edging out the HD 6950 in just a couple (Just Cause 2 and HAWX 2).
So this card is cheaper than the GTX 570, but it still costs nearly $300. Note also that our GTX 570 isn’t a factory-overclocked version; most current versions shipping deliver higher clock speeds, so the performance gap between the EVGA GTX 560 Ti and those GTX 570 cards will likely be wider.
The GTX 560 Ti 448 is also about the same size as other GTX 560 Ti cards, which means it will fit in more compact cases. So if you’re looking for a little more performance juice in that small form factor gaming rig, EVGA’s Ti 448 FTW is definitely worth a look.
GTX 560 Ti 448 FTW
Hit Girl
Nearly as fast as a GTX 570; bigger frame buffer; tri-SLI capable
Queen Amidala
Almost $300; may have a short lifespan
8
Benchmarks
| EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 | Asus GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II | Asus GTX 570 | MSI Radeon HD 6950 Twin Frozr III | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3DMark 2011 Perf | 6,153 | 4,799 | 5,987 | 5,412 |
| 3D Mark Vantage Perf | 24,434 | 20,295 | 24,432 | 22,897 |
| Unigine Heaven 2.1 (fps) | 20 | 19 | 22 | 18 |
| Shogun 2/1080p (fps) | 45 | 37 | 44 | 48 |
| Far Cry 2 / Long (fps) | 111 | 97 | 108 | 102 |
| HAWX 2 DX11 (fps) | 155 | 127 | 152 | 101 |
| STALKER: CoP DX11 (fps) | 37 | 31 | 37 | 36 |
| Just Cause 2 (fps) | 51 | 46 | 52 | 43 |
| Batman: Arkham City (fps) | 47 | 34 | 46 | 43 |
| Metro 2033 (fps) | 22 | 16 | 22 | 22 |
| System power @ idle (w) | 133 | 125 | 130 | 126 |
| System power @ full throttle (w) | 361 | 270 | 304 | 273 |
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition in an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with 6GB of DDR3/1333 and an 850TX Corsair PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 1920x1200 with 4x AA.
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33
Comments
r1davis74
January 22, 2012 at 2:49pm
"If you really want a GTX 570, but can’t swing the price, the 560 Ti 448 might fill the bill"
....should say " If you really want a GTX 570, but want to spend less money for similar (slightly better on these benchmarks) performance, the 560 Ti 448 might fill the bill.....
digitalninja126
January 09, 2012 at 9:45pm
Should have used the classified version, Overclocked it can whip a gtx 570.
Markitzero
January 09, 2012 at 1:22am
I have the Regular GTX 560 Ti and I like it without the 448 CUDA Cores.
tekknyne
January 08, 2012 at 7:44am
I agree with dgmouse. This card looks interesting, but I can't justify spending $300 for about 25% more performance and trashing my gtx 460. About the most I'm willing to do at this point is casually browse ebay for another GTX 460 and put them in SLI. My friend just bought a GTX 580 for almost $500 going from a radeon 5770. I spent $200 on my gtx 460 and at most want to spend $100 on another. That's a total of $300 that stacks up nicely to his $500 card, and he had to spend the past 2 years on a radeon 5770 to save up for it.
It's good to start seeing some price points/circumstances where SLI and crossfire make sense. 2 years ago I would have never said that- just get the big single card.
kiaghi7
January 06, 2012 at 7:41pm
As I always tell anyone looking to upgrade a component when they have some money...
WAIT THREE MONTHS!!!
Every quarter there is some pulse of something, which off-hand sounds obvious and trite, but it's said that way because not everything pulses at the same time...
Right now, the pulse of hard-drives is likely high priced, so hold off on it, and give it either three or six months to start coming back. Meanwhile, in three months or so, new GPU's will be coming along that will obliterate today's standard and do two things, provide either a far more powerful card than the one you're considering now, OR make the one you're considering now far cheaper and still just as good as it was before the "new thing" came out.
Granted, you can't always wait, and waiting stinks... Frankly I'm waiting for my freakin' holodeck to arrive! Lousy subspace ordering... Got some lazy exo-comp on the line, even in the future you never get to talk to a live human(oid)! [a cookie for you if you caught the Trek references!]
But I digress...
It's a good card, and even more so if you just gotta have a card that isn't going to disappoint for the vast majority of apps, and can't rationalize diving in for a top-of-the-line card.
dgrmouse
January 06, 2012 at 4:39pm
Since I obviously have your attention, let me make a prediction: AMD/ATI is enjoying their last throes of contention in the mainstream gaming market. They will soon (2020 or sooner) be relegated to markets that do not closely resemble the AMD that we knew over the last decade. NVidia will either: 1) follow suit, albeit on a marginally longer time-table, 2) absolutely trounce AMD in the game they currently both play (the same way Intel is trouncing AMD in the CPU market at present), or 3) do both (1) and (2). With their success in the incipient phone and tablet markets and HPC at the other end of the spectrum, it may simply be time for the megawatt home PC market to die.
Woden501
January 06, 2012 at 3:50pm
Well I'm certainly glad I didn't wait up for this. I was tempted to hold off on getting my upgraded GPU until this came out, but decided to go with a pair of 5870's for $150 each instead. So now for the same cost I've got slightly better to way better performance. I wanted to go Nvidia this time in case I ever decided I wanted/needed to work with CUDA, but there's really no reason to pay that much extra...
carage
January 06, 2012 at 2:59pm
I assume by utilizing a 570 core means they screwed up HDMI bitstreaming again...
warlok180
January 06, 2012 at 2:01pm
I currently have an Radeon 5850 and am thinking to upgrade it. However, I'm torn between moving up to another AMD card or an Nvidia 570. The 5850's been great and have not had any problems with drivers or gameplay.
Any suggestions?
DU00
January 06, 2012 at 2:30pm
I wanted to do the same thing but decided against it, because I need 2 cards to replace my xfire setup. Wait for Kepler like blkpanthr said.
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 2:05pm
wait for the 7950, or kepler...
the 5850 stil does extremely well. The only bad thing about the 5800 seriers is the tesselator stinks.
Its not worth getting a last gen card with new releases so close.
dgrmouse
January 06, 2012 at 3:12pm
It is mind-numbingly crazy that you would have to bump up to a higher price tier to upgrade a video board that you've had for years. It's true, but it's crazy. Unless you're upgrading your monitor setup to include multiple gaming displays or active 3d, I would recommend skipping ATI's 7xxx series. Unless NV's 6xx series can deliver a single-card product as fast as a pair of 460s in SLI for under $200, I'd skip it as well. The way ATI and NV are dragging their feet, I honestly hope that Intel's integrated graphics can kill off the discrete board market within a few years.
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 3:57pm
In waiting, he will also get the advantage of price drops in case he wants to stay with the current gen...
Also, the fact that he owns a 5850 and is looking to upgrade, puts him squarely in the mid-high end segment. That segment upgrades generally every 2 product cycles.
What is mind-numbingly crazy to you, is thoughtful to others.
Not everyone has the same impetus/budget/requirements..
dgrmouse
January 06, 2012 at 4:02pm
A new card that costs the same amount of money as the two year-old card he's replacing should provide significantly better performance.
DU00
January 06, 2012 at 4:12pm
Thats when it starts becoming an economics issue about supply and demand. Most people want the newer stuff so it will naturally be more expensive, even if it is worse performance wise. Not everyone is as educated in hardware performance and comparisons as the people on this site.
DU00
January 06, 2012 at 3:44pm
So you basically want them to double the performance of their chips in 1 generation? Probably not gonna happen anytime soon. Would be nice but...
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 3:48pm
hasnt happened since ATI's 9700pro and im not sure Nvidia ever has....
dgrmouse
January 06, 2012 at 3:59pm
6800gs, 8800gt
It's not asking too much, honestly. It happens so often in CPUs that it's been given a name... ever heard of Moore's Law?
dgrmouse
January 06, 2012 at 4:24pm
I gave those as independent examples of cards that significantly improved the performance of the previous generation for less money. The 8800gt was more than twice as fast as a pair of 7800gtx boards in SLI while costing significantly less money.
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 4:05pm
you misunderstand moores law.
it states: "The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years."
not performance
dgrmouse
January 06, 2012 at 4:26pm
If you can't make a higher performing part while having a budget including twice as many transistors, then you fail. You fail badly.
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 5:20pm
Clearly you dont inderstand engineering
twice as many transistors DOES NOT scale to 2x peformance
ONLY if there has been a significant increase in performance of the transistors themselves can it scale to 2x improvement...
This along with core logic efficiency upgrades are what give you massive perofmace increases.
just shrinkng themrot doubling them DOES NOT nessisarily mean increased performance of the transistor itself.
dgrmouse
January 06, 2012 at 5:20pm
Yeah, because having twice as many pixel pipelines, ROPs, SIMD processors, cores, etc. doesn't help performance at all. That's why quad-core machines suck so much more than single-core machines, and SLI is a myth perpetuated to take all your money.
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 5:39pm
those SIMD/ROPS and Pixel Pipllines are core logic upgrades, thye have nothing to do with doubling the transistor count, youve fundementially changed the core logic. As i mentioned above.
With xfire/sli, you are talking about duplicating something, not doubling the size of one item.
besides, even dualcore/SLI/Xfire rarely scales to 2x...lol
anyway you slice it, a 20-40% improvment over Cayman is a fastastic engineering feat.
You are not going to see the kind of improvements you want anytime soon without a fundemental semicontuctor technological breakthrough, as they have both a power budget, and a die real estate budget to work with.
alexw1234
January 06, 2012 at 6:46pm
What I really want is to keep the performance of my gtx 560 ti, and make the card smaller and less power hungry. Eventually I hope/ dream that kind of gaming performance will be in intergrated graphics.
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 8:33pm
that DOES happen every generation...that 560ti perforamce will slowly move down the chain...5 generations from now, that performace will be entry level discrete....
look at the 9700, that what, 9 yeas ago? Sandy bridge can beat that now...and thats integrated!!!!
The problem is, its a slippery slope...u say want to keep that performance, but games dont stand still. 5 years from now, it will require allot more power to stay cutting edge...
at some point, its going to require "realtime full reality rederers in 3d spacial displacement" to be beelding edge.....basically a Holodeck....
lol
blkpanthr
January 06, 2012 at 9:43pm
i wholehartedly agree...its just a matter of time..
you like LA Noire? think Picard and Sam Spade....lol
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