NVIDIA today introduced the GeForce GTX 560 GPU, the latest addition to the company's Fermi architecture-based product family and Nvidia's response to AMD's HD Radeon HD 6870 GPU. Starting at $199 USD, the GeForce GTX 560 joins its big brother, the previously launched GTX 560 Ti GPU, which retails for $250. With the new card, Nvidia tries match rival's AMD offering (HD 6870) in the $200 price tag. The card is also situated between the GeForce GTX 460 and GeForce GTX 560 Ti in terms of price and performance. In addition, Nvidia offering the new card as a replacement to the previous-generation GeForce 9800 GT, which is possibly the most popular-owned gaming GPU on the market.

Nvidia is allowing its add-on partners to offer overclocked versions of the GeForce GTX560 cards. So given the factory overclocks we will see, it makes the prospects of a good aftermarket overclock on the mid-grade cards a very good possibility.



The 40nm GPU has 336 CUDA cores and it is clocked at 810 MHz and can go up to 950 MHz, the card's memory is set to 4008 MHz ~ 4400 MHz (overclocking) and it will be available by Nvidia's partners with 1024MB and 2048MB GDDR5 memory configurations with 256-bit memory interface. Stream processor clocks are running at 1620MHz and up to 1900MHz under overclocking.

	GTX 570	GTX 560 Ti	GTX 560	GTX 460 1GB
Stream Processors	480	384	336	336
Texture Address / Filtering	60/60	64/64	56/56	56/56
ROPs	40	32	32	32
Core Clock	732MHz	822MHz	810MHz ~ 950 MHz	675MHz
Shader Clock	1464MHz	1644MHz	1620MHz ~1900MHz	1350MHz
Memory Clock	950MHz (3800MHz data rate) GDDR5	1002Mhz (4008MHz data rate) GDDR5	1001Mhz~1100MHz (4004~4200MHz data rate) GDDR5	900Mhz (3.6GHz data rate) GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Frame Buffer	1.25GB	1GB	1GB	1GB
FP64	1/8 FP32	1/12 FP32	1/12 FP32	1/12 FP32
Transistor Count	3B	1.95B	1.95B	1.95B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm
Price Point	$330	~$240	~$200	~$160

The cards are expected to retail with 1x miniHDMI and 2x DualLink DVI x2 outputs.

With a combined 336 NVIDIA CUDA architecture cores, up to 2048MB of GDDR5 memory, 4 billion transistors and high quality individual components all packed into the dual slot card, the Nvidia GTX 560 Graphics Cards can power today's DX11 games at resolutions of up to 1920x1080 or even higher.

PhysX and CUDA technology from NVIDIA as well as the Unreal Egine 3 - the world's most widely used game engine with DX11 capabilities including tessellation, are all supported by the Nvidia card.

NVIDIA today also released beta GeForce R275 drivers. According to Nvidia, they bring increased performance and enhanced functionality to a broad spectrum of PC games, including 3D Vision support to Duke Nukem Forever, PhysX support to Alice: Madness Returns, and Surround support to Dungeon Siege III.

Highlights of GeForce R275 Drivers:

- Performance boost across a variety of games, including Crysis 2 (6%), Bulletstorm (15%), and Portal 2 (8%)
- NVIDIA Update technology now includes SLI profiles
- Improved desktop scaling experience with new user interface and features
- Improved resizing experience for HDTVs
- More than 525 3D Vision gaming profiles, including new additions for Portal 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Age of Empires Online, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Dungeon Siege III, among others
- New 3D Vision Photo Viewer with Windowed Mode Support
- Support for more than 65 3D Vision Ready displays, including desktop monitors, notebooks and projectors.

The GeForce GTX 560 GPU is available starting today from Nvidia's leading add-in card partners.