NVIDIA upgrades GeForce GTX 560 Ti to 448 cores
updated 10:00 am EST, Tue November 29, 2011
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti gets mid-life upgrade
NVIDIA orchestrated a mid-cycle upgrade for the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. A new Limited Edition bumps it from 384 visual processing cores to 448 to keep it relevant. While the main, individual, and memory clock speeds take a step back to 732MHz, 1.46GHz, and 900MHz each, NVIDIA is counting on the extra parallelism and a jump to a wider 320-bit memory bus (up from 256-bit) with 1.25GB of RAM to let it handle considerably more at once.
The upgrade also enables three-card SLI instead of just two. Support for 3D Vision Surround, CUDA, OpenCL, DirectX 11, OpenGL 4, and PhysX carries over on the card.
NVIDIA sees the card as a way to give the best possible performance for a crop of newer games, such as Batman: Arkham City and Skyrim. The design is unofficially intended to sometimes outperform alternatives like AMD's Radeon HD 6950 while coming closer in price.
Windows users can get the Limited Edition card now at $289, or substantially less than the common $340 price of a GTX 570. It's not clear if or when pre-configured PCs and Macs will carry the special-run GTX 560 Ti, but it may clear out after the holidays and could be a clue as to expectations for new mid-range GeForce 600 series chipsets in early 2012.
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...to keep it relevant?
What the heck is that supposed to mean?
Dang. I've already put my Christmas wish on the wife's list for the regular GTX 560 to upgrade my gaming rig. They go for around $199, and was planning on dropping another one in next year to fire up SLI again. Meh.