Pros: After much debate, I decided this would be the card to replace my trusty ATI 5770. While the 5770 was a good well-built card, this thing is a major step up. I went from a 128-bit bus with a bandwidth of about 75 GB/s to this card with a 256-bit bus and, with the factory overclocks, a bandwidth of 134.8 GB/s! And I haven't even tried overclocking it myself yet. All my games are maxed out, or at least close. I play Bad Company 2 at 1920 x 1080 with Advanced visual settings, all DX11 features on, and 4x AA and getting at least 60 FPS. (This according to FRAPS.. and my monitor's refresh rate is capped at 60 FPS) The card is also quiet... no louder than the whisper-quiet 5770 it replaced. It's good to be back to Nvidia. My ATI card was great with solid and mature drivers, but I always felt Nvidia has their stuff together better on that front.
Cons: Not much at all. This card is obviously high quality. I did notice that it gets a little warm. After only 30 mins of playing BC2, temps were up to around 63 C, and I have a large very well-ventilated case. But I suppose that's to be expected with the factory overclocking, so it is what it is.
Other Thoughts: I think this card hits that sweet spot for upper-midrange performance on a budget. I picked this up for $250 even on sale with free shipping, so the value is non-debatable. Of course there are people who say "a GTX 570 is better". Well of course it is. That's why its a GTX 570 and this is a 560. Still, this card crushes most games and normally costs $100 less. And no, you can't play Crysis or Metro 2033 maxed out... but not many cards can. And stop me if I'm wrong, but as technically impressive as the above games are, they just aren't that GOOD. They score sky-high on visuals and technical prowess, but not so much on originality or fun. And even if you DO like these games, this card can run them just fine.. not maxed out, but more than playable while looking good. This card is solid. EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Superclocked 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card - Lifetime Warranty 01G-P3-1563-AR
This review is going to get a bit technical, but not really heavy duty technical stuff about the nVidia Fermi cards, just some basic rocket science with THIS particular nVidia card, and I hope you all find it worthy of reading; I'll try and make it interesting with some practical applications of the science I'm talking about.
First and foremost this is an EVGA video board, and I cannot say enough about EVGA the company, their tech support, and their place in the manufacturer's championships at No.1, and I think that is not even debatable, it's factual. With the ONLY Lifetime Warranty in its class for this type of video card, the EVGA 560Ti SuperClocked video card is factory overclocked all right, but there's still room up at the top for even higher pursuits, which I'll describe in full in just a second. But first some of those techno-babbles that I hinted at earlier:
1) The 560 Ti series is the first video card from EVGA/nVidia to use the famed GF114 Processor (GPU)chip, which is an all new architecture with many new features
2) The GF114 CPU is cut on 40nm technology, which means it's lighter and smaller and able to achieve very high clock cycles because it's easier to keep cool, among other interesting features
3) With 137GB/sec bandwidth, a 256-bit bus, 384 Unified Shaders, and 1024MB of DDR5 VRAM (MLC memory to be specific) this card yields 30.7 GigaPixels for its pixel fillrate, and 61.4 GTexels for its texture fillrate, on a 32 ROPs PCI-E 16X bus interface: all this means is that it's incredibly fast at rendering scenery and game action is blinding fast, and all you have to do is plug it in and give it a 16X bus PCI-E slot and you're Golden!
4) It supports DirectX 11.0/10.0/SM5.0 out of the box without drivers, and with 1950 Million transistors is one of the most dense and compact video cards in its base board construction of all the Fermi nVidia cards at any price point
5) The 560 Ti SC is a "compact" form factor video card, therefore it fits into places which the large, and bulky 12"+ nVidia cards and even larger ATI video boards cannot squeeze, so you get a lot of video card power in a small form factor of just less than 11-inches, a very good thing for Mini-ATX and small form factor case builders
6) With Base Default clocks of 900Mhz Core, 1053Mhz Memory, and 1800Mhz Shader clocks it's one of the highest clocked OEM cards around, and with conditioning and proper adjustment can be overclocked significantly, and OpenCL, CUDA, PhysX, and DirectCompute 5.0 are natively supported too
7) In spite of the high clocks, the 560Ti SC is a low voltage video card, because it's efficient and can operate with the GF114 CPU at very low power settings, to wit at overclocked settings of 960/1920/2140Mhz the voltage is only 1.0370Volts at 100% GPU Load
Using Precision Video Card Utility, or MSI Afterburner if you prefer that flavor graphics card performance minder, it is possible to adjust the clocks significantly to achieve even higher performance clocks for demanding game play, or PhysX of Folding@Home workouts where time is the enemy and you only have so much of it to get a given result. I am running my GTX 560 Ti SC's (in SLI in my case, I have two of them) at the aforementioned 960/1920/2140Mhz clocks and using both cards for Folding@Home, each one with a dedicated Work Unit 24/7 365 days a year with excellent results!
My two video cards in an overclocked Core i7 970 CPU-equipped EVGA Classified E760-based computer are averaging almost 20,000 Points Per Day for my Folding@Home efforts, a most enjoyable situation that I have going! As I look at them right now, I am typing on that computer which is also my office server and my media and multi-media machine, with multiple RAID configurations off an Areca 1680IX-8 Hardware RAID Bus Master-- those video cards are cranking out two FAHome work units right now at 99% Load on the CPU for each card, and the cards are at 73-degrees for card NO.1, and 69-degrees Celsius for card NO.2, steady as rocks in Gibraltar. They have been doing this same dance for almost 7 months and counting, having put them in service at the first part of February, 2011, and they have not missed a day of work or play in all that time, 100% up time for these cards and my computer overclocked to 4.2Ghz no less! Pretty KUHL, right?
I also play some games on this CPU, with Crysis 2 and BC2 being my favorites presently, and with the video cards in SLI I can crank up the settings to just less than 1000Mhz Core clock and 2200Mhz Memory clocks and play either one of those high-demand games at full 1080P on my Samsung 46" LED LCD HDTV, which the computer is hooked up to via Mini-HDMI to HDMI switch off card No.1 with perfect resolution and unbelievable game play! There is no end to the joy that my card duo can bring me, as they are arguably the best pair of sub-$500 video cards that exist, and I've got a lifetime's warranty on both cards from EVGA to boot, the best situation possible! FRAPS says I am pulling more than 45FPS average in Crysis 2 at 1080P and BC2 yields 50-70+FPS goodness, an unreal performance from two video cards that I paid less than $500 for the both of them! Amazing!
What is left to encapsulate for the nice people about the EVGA 560 Ti SC's? Well, I do admit that I crank up the fans for Folding@Home work, and they can make a trifle bit of NOISE at their highest settings (80%+ and higher), but that is to be expected if you don't want to burn the cards up to melted circuit boards! That single fan in this configuration is more than doing the job, by the way, so there's no need for a twin-fan setup with the 560 Ti SC's, such as the MSI "Double frozen blah blah" cards have going for those setups...totally unnecessary!
Normally the twins are driving a set of Acer 24" LED LCD displays, that is when they are not playing games and driving the Samsung HDTV, and I have gotten better than 30K 3DMarks in 3DMark '06, and scored 24K 3DMarks in Vantage, which was accomplished with heavy overclocking on both video cards in SLI and the 970 CPU @ 4.4Ghz...air cooling on everything, by the way, no H20 in the house. I have found these two video cards to be my best investment in years and years in video boards. I mean what is there to say about two premium cards that cost less than $500 for the both of them, shipped? That is truly sick and totally crazy, but true! I mean two years ago I paid more than $700 for a pair of EVGA GTX-285 SC's and they don't even compare to these two at all, not even close.
Wavey Davey gives this video card his uncompromising HIGHEST RATING POSSIBLE, the Wavey Davey Double Gold Trophy for incredible performance and engineering, and a Lifetime Warranty in addition from the mother ship EVGA also! Incredible! You cannot go wrong with a pair of these, and I encourage anyone/everyone with the ability to support an SLI arrangement of this video card to GO FOR IT! You will not be disappointed! Can you imagine a Tri-SLI setup with this card in the house? Woooo-Hoooo! Get yours today!
As for single-card use, that is fine and dandy, you can't go wrong there either but what a shame if you don't or can't support an SLI gig with two of these monsters in the house! In any case, this is the finest video card for the $$ in existence today, even after being out almost 8 months now I can still say that, and that is amazing in and of itself the way the video card market changes so quickly, like hamburgers at McDonald's! The EVGA 560 TI SuperClocked video card is Da Kind...you cannot beat it so you'd best be writing out that list for the new computer and include at least one of these in the parts list, and if you're replacing an old video card with one/two of these you also cannot go wrong: this is the best value for the almighty $$$ on planet earth today!
Wavey Davey - 7-2-2011 - Evga - 560 - Geforce - Graphics Cards'
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