NVIDIA Launches Third GeForce GTX 560 for Back-2-School. Surprised?

It seems to us that GTX 560 is on the verge of being the most variable product in terms of processing cores. First NVIDIA launched GeForce GTX 560 Ti launched with 384 cores, followed by the standard GeForce GTX 560 with 336 cores (1:1 replacement for GTX 460) and now the company is preparing an “OEM Special” with 352 cores. However, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti OEM-only part stands to consume up to 40 Watts more than GTX 560 Titanium, and will come on a more expensive PCB. Confused?

In order to capture as much desktop sales as possible, NVIDIA decided to launch a GeForce GTX 560 Ti part with more memory than their direct competitors from AMD: Radeon HD 6850 1GB, 6870 1GB / 2GB and HD 6950 1GB / 2GB. The 1GB parts from AMD will be faced against GTX 560 1.25GB, while the 2GB parts will be addressed by GTX 560 2.5GB.

As you might have guessed it by now, NVIDIA decided to create a GTX 560 using its top-of-the-line, three billion transistor pixel-crunching monster called GF110. The PCB is near identical to GTX 570; you can count on 320-bit interface, the same as on GTX 570.

As far as the clocks go, GPU will tick at identical clocks to GTX 570: 732MHz for the GPU, 1.46GHz for 352 cores and 950MHz QDR (3.8 GT/s) for the GDDR5 memory, resulting in same bandwidth as on GTX 570 (152GB/s). This is significantly higher than GTX 560 or 560 Ti (both give up to 128GB/s). In any case, this board should be a good deal, especially when combined with 2.5GB of GDDR5 memory.

Time to see what competition has in store to answer this downgraded GF110 (OEM-only Radeon HD 6890 with a Cayman GPU?). Bear in mind that such a move would not be uncommon, as AMD already responded to NVIDIA with their Radeon HD 6790, i.e. a Barts GPU that goes head to head against GeForce GTX 550 Ti and an end-of-life GTX 460 (which we would recommend anyways).

Original Author: Theo Valich