In an effort to compete with rival's AMD aggressively priced Radeon
HD 6950 1GB, Nvidia today relased the GeForce GTX 560 Ti GPU.
The GeForce GTX 560 Ti ships with 384 CUDA Cores and 64 texture
units. The memory subsystem of the GTX 560 Ti consists of four 64-bit
memory controllers (256-bit) with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.
Clock speeds for the GeForce GTX 560 Ti are 820MHz graphics
clock/1640MHz CUDA Cores. Memory speed is 4000MHz data rate.
The card's PCB measures 9 inches in length. Display outputs include
two dual-link DVIs and one mini-HDMI. Two 6-pin power connectors are
required for operation.
To enable maximum frequency headroom, the GTX 560 Ti reference board
design has essentially been overbuilt. Compared to the original GTX
460 board, Nvidia has added more robust 4-phase power circuitry,
faster 5Gbps memory modules, and improved cooling. The new cooler
features an additional copper heatpipe and a larger heatsink and
cooling fan. Finally, a baseplate was added to cool the graphics
memory and the GPU's power circuitry.
To protect the graphics card and system from issues caused by
excessive power draw, the GTX 560 Ti reference board features the
same power monitoring hardware first introduced last year with the
GeForce GTX 580. The power monitoring hardware is an optional feature
for GTX 560 Ti; some of Nvidia's add-in card partners may elect not
to implement it on their custom GTX 560 Ti boards.
The GeForce GTX 560 Ti will be replacing the GeForce GTX 470 in
Nvidia's lineup and is positioned directly against the Radeon HD
6870.
Compared to the GTX 460, the new GTX 560 Ti GPU share the same die
and Nvidia has the same die and architecture optimizations that were
introduced with the GTX 580 and GTX 570 GPUs. These include
improved timing for faster core and memory clocks, re-engineered
transistors for improved performance per watt as well as
additional functional units for tessellation, shading, and texturing:
The card has 384 CUDA Cores and eight PolyMorph Engines.
The GeForce GTX 560 Ti also uses the same Streaming Multiprocessor
(SM) configuration as GTX 460, with 48 CUDA Cores, four dispatch
units, and eight texture units and special function units per SM. GTX
560 Ti also features bitstreaming support for Dolby True HD and
DTS-HD Master Audio over HDMI.
These result to a 21% better performance/watt than the GTX 460 1GB,
while it also runs 33% faster than the GTX 460 1GB. Compared to the
legendary 8800 GT, the GTX 560 Ti offers the addition of DX11
support and also provides twice the memory bandwidth and three times
the number of CUDA Cores. In terms of performance, the GTX 560 Ti
delivers up to five times the geometry rates, and frame rates that
are up to 3X faster than the 8800 GT, accorrding to Nvidia.
Nvidia also claims that the GTX 560 Ti delivers up to 40-50% more
performance/watt in DX11 games than the AMD HD 6870.
GeForce GTX 560 Ti features eight PolyMorph Engines that are
dedicated to DX11 tessellation and two Raster Engines. In comparison,
the Radeon HD 6870 is limited to a single tessellation and raster
unit. AMD incorporated an additional tessellation unit and raster
engine in their latest flagship 6900 series high-end GPUs, validating
their need for higher levels of tessellation. However, even with this
new addition, Nvidia claims that the GTX 560 Ti delivers more
performance in geometry processing and tessellation. Nvidia does not
hesitate to compare the new card even with the Radeon HD 6950, where
it claims that the GTX 560 Ti is able to outperform AMD?s flagship
RV970 Cayman GPU.
The GTX 560 Ti will be available from Nvidia's partners at an
estimated selling price of €239.