The rumour mill is spinning with the news that NVIDIA is looking likely to release a revamped GeForce 560 Ti based on the GF110 silicon found on the 570 and 580 models, as opposed to the current GF114 which is used by the GTX 560 and 560 Ti.
The new retail GTX 560 Ti?
Reports at VR-Zone say this new GTX 560 Ti will have 448 cores, which makes it a GTX 570 with one disabled Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) and, perhaps, some frequency underclocking. As it's the GF110 we're talking about here, bus width will be 320-bits. A 14SM arrangement with 448 cores should also mean a total of 56 TMUs and 40 ROPs.
Without the magic clock-frequency figures, we're unable to make an educated guess on exact performance but we expect the 'new' 560 Ti to be significantly faster than the current model. It's also expected that this refresh will make room for a DisplayPort connector and support for three-way SLI.
It's hard to ascertain NVIDIA's motivation for this release, though NVIDIA pulled the same stunt with the GTX 260 some years back. It's very possible that NVIDIA could be looking to maximise on the less-used GF110 die before the change-up to upcoming Kepler GPUs slated for release early next year; GeForce GTX 560 Ti OEM GPUs are already based on the GF110, by the way.
We suspect a more-immediate reason for a 560 Ti revamp, however, is to create an appealing price point for the festive season. Think of it as a downclocked, slightly stunted GTX 570 and you won't be far wrong. But if all this is true, why isn't this new GPU called the GTX 570 SE? Your guesses are as good as ours.
