NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti: Gamer’s Weapon of Choice

Author

Oik Yusuf Araya

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Graphics Card

January 28, 2011

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Shortly after the release of its new flagship, the GeForce GTX 580, NVIDIA introduced another product that is aimed squarely at the mainstream market. Like the GeForce GTX 460 before it, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti should offer remarkable performance at a reasonable price. But how much performance can you expect from this GPU exactly?

The first GeForce GTX 500 series was announced barely a year after NVIDIA released their first DirectX 11-capable graphics chips, popularly known as the “Fermi” family of GPUs. As the high-end market has now been occupied by the GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570, NVIDIA is already moving on to extend the reach of their second gen DirectX 11 GPU with the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. This GPU is set to replace the GTX 470 in NVIDIA’s current lineups.

GeForce GTX 560 Ti

The “Ti” suffix is reminiscent of NVIDIA’s GPUs of old, the GeForce 3 Ti and GeForce 4 Ti. It appears that NVIDIA decided to bring the suffix back to their naming scheme with the GeForce GTX 560. The “Ti” itself is short for “Titanium”. The GeForce GTX 560 is first to bear the resurrected “Ti”, will there be others that follow it?

Specification

	NVIDIA GTX 580	NVIDIA GTX 570	NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti	NVIDIA GTX 460 1GB
Streaming Multiprocessors	16	15	8	7
Stream Processors (CUDA Cores)	512	480	384	336
Texture Units	64	60	64	56
ROP Units	48	40	32	32
Graphics Clock	772 MHz	732 MHz	822 MHz	675 MHz
Shader Clock	1544 MHz	1464 MHz	1644 MHz	1350 MHz
Memory Clock (effective)	4008 MHz	3800 MHz	4008 MHz	3600 MHz
Memory Size	1536 MB	1280 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB
Memory Type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory Interface	384-bit	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Codename	GF110	GF110	GF114	GF104
Fabrication Process	40 nm	40 nm	40 nm	40 nm
Transistor Count	3 Billion	3 Billion	1.95 Billion	1.95 Billion
Die Size	520 mm²	520 mm²	–	332 mm²
Power Connectors	8-pin + 6-pin	2x 6-pin	2x 6-pin	2x 6-pin
Min Recommended Power Supply	600 Watt	550 Watts	500 Watts	450 Watts
Thermal Design Power (TDP)	244 Watts	219 Watts	170 Watts	160 Watts
GPU Thermal Threshold	97 °C	97 °C	100 °C	104 °C
DirectX Version	11	11	11	11
Bus Support	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16

Under the codename GF114, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti GPU is made of 1,95 bliion transistors. It has 8 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) clusters, 64 Texture Units, 32 ROP units, and 384 Stream Processors (or CUDA Cores as NVIDIA calls them these days). The operating frequencies are 822 MHz, 1644 MHz and 4008 MHz for the core, shader, and memory respectively. The core clockspeed is especially high compared to other GeForce GTX 500 and GTX 400 series of GPU from NVIDIA.

The GF114 at a Glance

The picture above shows the diagram of the GF104 chip (GeForce GTX 460). This chip had eight Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) clusters, but by disabling one of them, NVIDIA reduced the amount of available Stream Processors and Texture Units to 336 and 56, respectively.

As for the GF114 (GeForce GTX 560 Ti), there are eight, active SM cores available. NVIDA has optimized the GF114 so that it has a better performance/ watt ratio compared to its predecessor, the GF104. Eight SM cluster means that it has 64 Texture Units and 384 Stream Processors in its disposal.