Galaxy’s GTX 560 Ti GC – Introducing Nvidia’s Titanium Hunter
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Hardware
- Intel Core i7 920 reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.8 GHz); Turbo is off.
- Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
- 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 1800 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC 1600 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
- Galaxy GTX 560, 1 GB custom cooler and clocks, Galaxy Clocks 835/2004 MHz and overclocked to 965/2004 MHz, supplied by Galaxy under NDA.
- GeForce GTX 560, 1 GB reference design and clocks (822/2004 MHz and overclocked to 925/2004 MHz) supplied by Nvidia under NDA.
- GeForce GTX 580, 1.5 GB reference design and clocks (772/2004 MHz), supplied by Nvidia
- GeForce GTX 480, 1.5 GB reference design and clocks (700/1401 MHz), supplied by Nvidia
- GeForce GTX 570, 1.2 GB reference design and clocks (732/1900 MHz), supplied by Nvidia and further overclocked to 815/2000 MHz.
- EVGA GTX 460 FTW; 1 GB, overclocked version (850/2000 MHz) supplied by Nvidia/EVGA
- Galaxy GTX 460 SOC; 1GB overclocked version at reference clocks (675/1800 MHz), supplied by Galaxy
- Galaxy GTX 460- 768 MB overclocked version at reference clocks (675/1800 MHz), supplied by Galaxy
- BFG GTX 280 – 1GB, reference clocks (602/1107 MHz)
- ATI Radeon HD 6970 (2GB, reference clocks, 880/1370 MHz) supplied by AMD
- ATI Radeon HD 6950 (2GB, reference clocks, 800/1250 MHz) supplied by AMD
- ATI Radeon HD 5870 (1GB, overclocked clocks, 850/1200 MHz) by Diamond
- ATi Radeon HD 6870 (1GB, reference clocks, 900/1050 MHz) supplied by AMD
- ATi Radeon HD 6850 (1GB, reference clocks, 775/900 MHz) supplied by AMD
- ATi Radeon HD 4870 (1GB reference clocks, 750/950 MHz) by MSI.
- Onboard Realtek Audio
- Two identical 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for Nvidia GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers
- Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
- Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
- Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU cooler, supplied by Noctua
- Philips DVD SATA writer
- HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD
Test Configuration – Software
- ATi Catalyst 11.1a Release Candidate for all Radeons except for HD 4870, HD 6850 and HD 5870; for those 3 cards, Catalyst 10-12 was used; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard” where available; surface performance optimizations are off
- NVIDIA GeForce release candidate 266.56 for GTX 560 Ti; WHQL 266.58 used for GTX 580, GTX 570 and GTX 460. WHQL 263.09 drivers used for GTX 480/GTX 560-OC/GTX 560-768M and GTX 280. High Quality
- Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
- DirectX July/November 2010
- All games are patched to their latest versions.
- vsync is forced off in the control panel.
- Varying AA enabled as noted in games and “forced” in Catalyst Control Center for UT3 and Batman: Arkham Asylum; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
- All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates except as noted.
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
- Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.
The Benchmarks
- Vantage
- 3DMark11
- F.E.A.R.
- X3:Terran Conflict
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
- Wolfenstein
- Call of Duty 4
- Unreal Tournament 3
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Left4Dead
- Grand Theft Auto IV
- Serious Sam, Second Encounter HD (2010)
- Mafia II
- Call of Juarez
- Crysis
- Crysis Warhead
- Lost Planet
- Far Cry 2
- World in Conflict Soviet Assault
- Just Cause 2
- H.A.W.X.
- Resident Evil 5
- Borderlands
- Alien vs. Predator
- Battleforge
- STALKER, Call of Pripyat
- Dirt 2
- Metro 2033
- F1 2010
- Lost Planet 2
- H.A.W.X. 2
- Heaven 2
A note on testing with the drivers. All of the “competing cards” – GTX 570 Ti, GTX 570, GTX 580 and GTX 460 were run with the very latest drivers (266.5x) released this week. The HD 6970, HD 6950, and HD 6970 were also run with the very latest drivers available to the press as “release candidate” Catalyst 11-1a which shall be available to the public as WHQL in a couple of days. The other cards were run with the very last set of drivers available – GeForce 263.09/260.09 and Catalyst 10-12. Although both brand new sets gained decent performance improvement, the other drivers will provide a good context for judging the overall performance of the GTX 560 Ti and were included at the request of ABT forum members. Our reader’s input is always valued and considered.
Waaah! this was one amazing review, excellent job Poppin!
I’m already thinking of upgrading my system 😛
fantastic review gives out the Clear picture which gives out what and there is no Bias of favoring nvidia or ati like we get to see on other sites
great work done !!
Hey, another stellar review–glad to see even more games. You continue to lead the web with by far the most games benchmarked.
Just curious about the Mafia II 2560×1600 results, where GTX 570 is much, much slower than GTX 480.. was it an accident with using different settings, or is it a glitch with newer drivers?
Thank-you!
In Mafia II, the GTX 570 (266.58) and the GTX 480 (263.09) are using different drivers and should not be directly compared to each other. Generally, the brand new GeForce driver set evenly brought overall excellent performance increases over the last set – but with a couple of oddities in my system.
There were three instances (out of 64 benchmarks) where the GTX 570 failed to perform as expected and where I repeated the benchmarks many times and checked and rechecked settings. I would guess that they are driver-related since they did not show in the earlier driver set.
Of course, it is possible that a resolution setting got accidentally changed between the time that I ran the first set and last weeks testing so I will retest these same benches over again. In my follow up article which is going to pit SLI versus CrossFire, we shall use the (same) latest drivers for GTX 480 and GTX 570 (for single and SLI results).
It was a resolution setting. I tested the GTX 480 at 1920×1200, not at 2560×1600. The charts have been corrected and only the competing cards tested with the very latest driver set are compared now.
Thank-you for bring this error to my attention!
“we found the GTX 460 to be just a bit cooler-running than our GTX 460”
Thank-you. Typo Fixed.
“We found the GTX 560 Ti to be just a bit cooler-running than our GTX 460.”
Article word count: 13,316 😛
“And now we test at 1920×1200:”
You then put the graph for 1680×1050 😉