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The mid-range market is really heating up and one of the best things about these mid-range cards is that companies get the chance to attack the models instantly unlike higher end models such as the new Dual GPU offerings from both NVIDIA and AMD.
I've become quite a fan of the new GTX 560 thanks to the aggressive price tag NVIDIA have chosen to go with. At $199 US it's a fantastic valued card and combined with the fact NVIDIA have let its partners go a little crazy straight away with the model helps make the launch more interesting than others.
Trying to purchase a graphics card on a budget is always a tough choice because you are always wondering what another $50.00 could have gotten you. ASUS wanted us to see what you could get for that extra cash on a GeForce GTX560 and has a card with a 15% overclock and quiet cooling to boot. Legit plugs this budget board into one of our test systems to see how it performs against the NVIDIA GeFore GTX 560 reference design!
To cover SLI testing on the GTX 560 Ti we are using the ASUS DirectCU 2 TOP Edition, a custom designed version of the product which is factory overclocked. We will be testing the card against the 6870 in CrossFire to see, in real world scenarios, which multi-GPU configuration offers the best experience. As always Surround gaming videos will be included, as will 5760x1080 screenshots and of course the usual selection of high definition playback and GPU computing tests. To round things off we will see if we can break the 1GHz barrier on this card.
ASUS has already made a name for themselves as the top motherboard manufacturer for quite some time now, but they are really making a name for themselves in the graphics card market as well. Their specialized cards use quality components, come with better cooling than the reference design and even sometimes are overclocked. The card we are looking at today is no different. ASUS’s GeForce GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP comes factory overclocked up to 900MHz, uses ASUS’s own DirectCU II cooler and features a super alloy design on the power components. Let’s take a look at this card and see what it can do!
The ASUS GTX 560Ti comes with a factory overclock from 822MHz to 830MHz, and while this seems to be a key marketing point from ASUS, it is a minor increase. However, ASUS includes an application to overclock the card more on your own, and my efforts resulted in almost a 120MHz increase in GPU speed. This simple overclock provided a nice boost in performance.
Over the past couple of weeks, while the GTX 560 Ti was being released, a number of manufacturers released enhanced GTX 580s which were designed to offer desirable alternatives to the reference model. Some have enhanced coolers or redesigned PCB's. Others use higher quality components and have factory overclocks to appeal to enthusiasts. Today on our test bench we have two of the most impressive looking models to compare, Gainward's 3GB GTX 580 Phantom3 and the massive Asus GTX 580 DirectCU 2. We will be comparing these cards to the reference 580 and an overclocked 6970 to find out how good they actually are. Tests will include real world gaming, 3DMark 11, media playback, and GPU computing. Then, for the first time on Hardware Heaven, all gaming tests will include stereoscopic 3D testing.
ASUS is a well-known innovator of technology, but there are times when they recognize a good idea and strive to simply make it better. Queue the GeForce GTX 580 video card. Armed with the maximum number of CUDA cores and PolyMorph engines NVIDIA can deliver with the Fermi architecture, the GeForce GTX 580 represents their trophy effort to seize the performance market. While being similar to the GeForce GTX 480, the GeForce GTX 580 design updates the Fermi formula, improves upon the power appetite, reduces heat output, and increases graphical frame rate performance. ASUS raises the GF110 fixed function clock speed from 772 MHz to 782, while the graphics cores now operate at 1564 MHz. 1536MB of GDDR5 video frame buffer use a familiar 384-bit memory bus, clocked to 1002MHz for a 4008MHz data rate. This is before ASUS Voltage Tweak gives us access to unlocked potential...
NVIDIA found a way to take over 2200 components and get them assembled together on a single PCB to create their new flagship GPU called the GeForce GTX 590. The GTX 590 combines the power of two GF110 GPUs on a single graphics card. With a total of two GF110 GPUs packing 1024 CUDA cores and 3GB of GDDR5 memory you know this video card is going to do well in the benchmarks!
It's been ages since we've seen NVIDIA come out with a dual GPU card, and we know the main reason for that was because the GTX 400 series, as good as the mid-range models were, the initial launch pieces ran too hot and drew too much power, making a dual GPU card not an option. The GTX 500 series fixed all the issues that the GTX 400 series had and then added more power into the mix. So that means today we get the dual GPU NVIDIA card we've wanted for ages, and it's known as the GTX 590.
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