2 GTX560 OCing reviews

[thilanliyan]

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/02/01/galaxy_geforce_gtx_560_ti_gc_overclocking_review

http://techgage.com/article/amd_hd_6950_1gb_vs_nvidia_gtx_560_ti_overclocking/1
Unfortunately they were only able to take the 560 to 930MHz in this review.

 

[Aristotelian]

"Can the GeForce GTX 560 Ti match Radeon HD 6950 performance? The answer is yes, but it takes running the GPU to its limits in order to do so; whereas the Radeon HD 6950 has headroom to grow. The Radeon HD 6950 can also be over-volted and overclocked with many manufacturers supporting custom coolers. The Radeon HD 6950 can be pushed farther, increasing its performance beyond the stock frequencies also. When that is done, performance once again turns in favor of the Radeon HD 6950. So what it means, in essence, is that the GeForce GTX 560 Ti will never honestly catch up to the Radeon HD 6950, cause the GTX 560 Ti is at its limits where the HD 6950 is just getting started."

Thought I'd include that tidbit, before posting another rant about comparing overclocked results to stock clocked cards and expecting a fair conclusion. Kudos to them for that.

 

[toyota]

not to mention the extra 135 watts the overclocked gtx560 has to use to match the stock 6950.

 

[96Firebird]

But future drivers will increase performance.

:awe:

 

[notty22]

A buyer can get a 1000mhz gtx 560 and never have to o/c and have 6950 performance. Thats one area that AMD or its AIB's have elected not to go. They did have bios flashing. Thats still more work than a stock 1000mhz gtx 560 needs
edit: I figured I'd paste the gaming graphs, I found you could drag and drop from window to window, nice posting feature.

 

[bryanW1995]

I prefer bios flashing, no need to run afterburner or anything else in the background then.

 

[tviceman]

I prefer bios flashing, no need to run afterburner or anything else in the background then.

Afterburner doesn't run in the background if you tell it to set the clocks at a specific speed at startup.

 

[Aristotelian]

Thats one area that AMD or its AIB's have elected not to go.

Do Nvidia release overclocked versions of their own cards? I thought it was entirely up to the AIBs. You're right that Nvidia's products are easily available across the board in superclocked versions, and I wonder why this isn't the case with AMD's products given that they overclock well as well.

Note that in the review this thread is about, the reviewer noted that the 6950 can be overclocked as well. Nor is dragging a slider an effort, on my view.

 

[Powermoloch]

let see oc on both sides

 

[toyota]

Do Nvidia release overclocked versions of their own cards? I thought it was entirely up to the AIBs. You're right that Nvidia's products are easily available across the board in superclocked versions, and I wonder why this isn't the case with AMD's products given that they overclock well as well.

Note that in the review this thread is about, the reviewer noted that the 6950 can be overclocked as well. Nor is dragging a slider an effort, on my view.

AIBs need to have permission from AMD or Nvidia to run oced cards.

 

[notty22]

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti SOC

​

Of course we are comparing a heavily overclocked GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card to a non-overclocked Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6950.

That said, neither AMD graphics card has shown us much in terms of overclocking potential,

with both providing significantly less than a 100MHz overclock. The Gigabyte Super Overclocked graphics card on the other hand comes 178MHz overclocked from factory, which is almost unheard of.

Also :
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Overclocking Guide

 

[Arkadrel]

"..core frequency to 1015MHz and shader frequency to 2030MHz..."

that overclocked 560 ti, is a tiny bit faster than a stock 6950... still thats pretty nice.

The 250$ 560 ti performs like a 6950, a 260$ card, when you overclock the 560 (1015mhz core, 2030 shader).

10$ saved from that overclock.

 

[Castiel]

If you play BC2 the 560 is a much better option then the 6950

 

[Skurge]

A buyer can get a 1000mhz gtx 560 and never have to o/c and have 6950 performance. Thats one area that AMD or its AIB's have elected not to go. They did have bios flashing. Thats still more work than a stock 1000mhz gtx 560 needs

Those 1ghz 560s cost more than a 6950 2gb and a lot more than a 6950 1gb so I'd expect to be faster. Doesnt seem much faster if any faster by the looks of those reveiws.

Seems newegg has the 6950 1gb for less than the cheapest 560.

 

[ArchAngel777]

"..core frequency to 1015MHz and shader frequency to 2030MHz..."

that overclocked 560 ti, is a tiny bit faster than a stock 6950... still thats pretty nice.

The 250$ 560 ti performs like a 6950, a 260$ card, when you overclock the 560 (1015mhz core, 2030 shader).

10$ saved from that overclock.

My 280 GTX has failed on me three times and two of them without any overclocking involved at all. You don't think that Gigabyte 1Ghz core isn't going to be problematic for them? I am betting that thing is going to be the king of RMAs.

Is it a nice card? Absolutely. Will it retain those clocks after 3 months of gaming? Iffy. Secondly, I imagine the DOA's will be rather high as well. These things can't go through much Q&A, not for a mere $10-$15 price increase. Heck, the best nVidia partner (eVGA) can't even get their quality control down right on their stock cards. People all over their forum RMAing cards only to receive ones that do the same exact thing and these people have proven that it is the card after putting it in multiple rigs all capable of running high end GPUs.

With that said, I think the 560ti is a more consistent performer, so I'd still rather go with a 560ti at this point, I just don't think 1Ghz core is going to be stable in all scenarios nor for any length of time.

 

[BD231]

With that said, I think the 560ti is a more consistent performer, so I'd still rather go with a 560ti at this point, I just don't think 1Ghz core is going to be stable in all scenarios nor for any length of time.

I highly doubt that. Like most nVidia card deaths the problems are in the surrounding components on the PCB, not the GPU itself. Any overclocked card comes with the correct arrangement of capacitors/vrms/ect to support the GPU at the chosen operating frequency so there's no greater chance than there would be on a lesser clocked card.

It's one of the main ways nVidia/Ati lock overclock potential on their chips.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I highly doubt that. Like most nVidia card deaths the problems are in the surrounding components on the PCB, not the GPU itself. Any overclocked card comes with the correct arrangement of capacitors/vrms/ect to support the GPU at the chosen operating frequency so there's no greater chance than there would be on a lesser clocked card.

It's one of the main ways nVidia/Ati lock overclock potential on their chips.

That is true only if you can prove they redesigned the PCB, added higher quality caps, etc... Most of these things are just loosely cherry picked. Now, if they implement another $30 in parts, I'd maybe buy your arguement, but when they list the card for a mere $10 over their lower clocked card, nah... Not a chance they are doing anything different other than increasing voltage and putting a different cooler, or higher speed fan in place.

 

[notty22]

The gigabyte SOC has a custom (superior ?)PCB and components.
TPU did a review/teardown of a reference Nvidia gtx 560 here is the pcb VS the Gigabyte SOC (super over clock)
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_560_ti_soc,2.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti/2.html

 

[happy medium]

Crappiest review ever award.

They say this............

"This improvement will certainly help your gameplay experience at 1920x1200. We wouldn’t say this is exactly a 2560x1600 video card though even with these overclocks. We attempted to play some games, such as BC2 at 2560x1600 with the overclock. Even at 2560x1600 with NO AA performance was not fast enough with the overclock to consider it playable. This overclock will simply make your 1920x1200 experience better."

But they test games at 2500x1600.

And if you dont overclock the gtx560's memory ,you get crappy overclocking scores. We all know this.

Gtx 560 @ 1000 core with a higher memory overclock.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-gtx-560-ti-soc-review/20

The first thing I noticed about this review is that the gtx560 trades blows with a gtx480/gtx570 and 6970, forget the 6950.

 

[notty22]

Reading TPU's review closer, the reference gtx 560 has nicer cooling than what the gtx 460's had.
They cool the VRM's and ram chips, both are just residual fan air cooled on the reference gtx 460's and same with my Cyclone's.

NVIDIA's cooler uses a vapor-chamber technology heatplate to maximize heat transfer between the GPU and the rest of the heatsink. You can also see above that the heatsink cools secondary components like voltage regulation circuitry and memory chips.

 

[happy medium]

and Techage is even worse. They don't even know how to overclock.

"The fact that we couldn't reach a higher clock had nothing to do with voltages or the like, because as far as I'm aware, there are no tools out there currently that allow that adjustment. Out of the box, the card should be far more overclockable than our sample, and for you, that's a great thing. For us, it doesn't help us in proving any points."


SO they got 930 core with a gtx560 and never touched the voltages? They don't know of a program to adjust voltage? That reviewer is garbage.

 

[Skurge]

Crappiest review ever award.

They say this............

"This improvement will certainly help your gameplay experience at 1920x1200. We wouldn’t say this is exactly a 2560x1600 video card though even with these overclocks. We attempted to play some games, such as BC2 at 2560x1600 with the overclock. Even at 2560x1600 with NO AA performance was not fast enough with the overclock to consider it playable. This overclock will simply make your 1920x1200 experience better."

But they test games at 2500x1600.

And if you dont overclock the gtx560's memory ,you get crappy overclocking scores. We all know this.

Gtx 560 @ 1000 core with a higher memory overclock.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-gtx-560-ti-soc-review/20

The first thing I noticed about this review is that the gtx560 trades blows with a gtx480/gtx570 and 6970, forget the 6950.

Now HardOCP do crappy reviews? I don't remember you saying that when they were using broken drivers to benchmark crossfire.

In any case, they tested at both resolutions. If it wasn't playable at 2560x1600, they tested at 1920x1200. I don't see what the problem is.

Also, you need to look around. Most GTX560s don't have much headroom on the ram. And they did overclock the memory as far as it would go.

The memory overclocked up to 2170MHz (4.34GHz GDDR5) vs. 1000MHz or 4GHz. Right off the bat.

The memory voltage slider was grayed out so we could not adjust the frequency of the memory and obtain a higher value.

Don't blame the reviews if the card has a spotty memory controller. I wonder why you don't have a problem with them not overclocking the 6950 as it costs the same.

 

[Skurge]

and Techage is even worse. They don't even know how to overclock.

"The fact that we couldn't reach a higher clock had nothing to do with voltages or the like, because as far as I'm aware, there are no tools out there currently that allow that adjustment. Out of the box, the card should be far more overclockable than our sample, and for you, that's a great thing. For us, it doesn't help us in proving any points."


SO they got 930 core with a gtx560 and never touched the voltages? They don't know of a program to adjust voltage? That reviewer is garbage.

I thought you said a 560 could reach 1ghz on stock volts even after I showed you 5 cards that couldn't achieve that feat and also showed you each card comes with a different voltage.

 

[BD231]

That is true only if you can prove they redesigned the PCB, added higher quality caps, etc... Most of these things are just loosely cherry picked. Now, if they implement another $30 in parts, I'd maybe buy your arguement, but when they list the card for a mere $10 over their lower clocked card, nah... Not a chance they are doing anything different other than increasing voltage and putting a different cooler, or higher speed fan in place

MSI GTX 460 hawk + Gigabyte GTX 460 super OC . If each chip were cherry picked there'd be a massive premium of course.

 

[happy medium]

Don't blame the reviews if the card has a spotty memory controller. I wonder why you don't have a problem with them not overclocking the 6950 as it costs the same.

The gtx 560 SOC is at 4580 memory out of the box and was overclocked to 4950.
Did Gigabyte fix the faulty memory controller?
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-gtx-560-ti-soc-review/20