Final thoughts and rating

NVIDIA is very soon to release its next-generation 'Kepler' GPUs on to an expectant public, if widespread reports are to be believed. Recent price-chopping of high-end GeForce 500-series graphics cards lend substance to Kepler's imminent arrival, though it would be foolish to write-off Fermi cards as yesterday's news just yet.

A healthy price reduction and new, performance-enhancing drivers put some much-needed sheen on to the GeForce 560/570/580 GPUs. The GTX 560 Ti 448, whose architectural underpinning is firmly entrenched in premium end of the market, is now available for sub-£200. EVGA's custom-cooled, pre-overclocked Classified model, meanwhile, costs just a few pounds more. Looking sharp and producing best-in-class performance across our range of games, while still overclocking farther without even needing to touch the voltage, it's about as good as NVIDIA's Fermi GPU is ever going to get.

Recommending incumbent technology while on the cusp of a new release is always fraught with obvious danger. Naysayers argue that it only makes sense to evaluate a purchase once all the facts are known. Today, Kepler casts a penumbra over all other high-end cards, but we feel as if EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Classified has enough quality at a £200 price point to be worthy of being on a shortlist, at the very least.

The Good

Very good performance (for the price)
Looks great
Overclocks well

The Bad

You know what's coming
Fans can be louder than we'd like

HEXUS Rating

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Classified

HEXUS Awards

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Classified

HEXUS Where2Buy

The reviewed card is available from Scan.co.uk and Yoyotech.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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When you mix up driver versions, graphics card series and factory overclocks, it becomes very hard to draw any meaningful conclusions because you haven't isolated what any increase in performance is due to.

I know you note the driver version change very clearly throughout the review - kudos for that - but it still affects the value of the analysis.

Think of it more as a ‘then-and-now’ evaluation. The performance you see for the other GeForce cards indicates what it was like at, say, September 2011. The newer drivers show you what the Ti 448 OC performs like now.

Of course, I fully concede the optimum outcome is to re-benchmark a whole host of cards with the latest driver - note that the NVIDIA WHQL has changed twice in a week - and then pass comment.

The overarching conclusion is one of NVIDIA instigating a double-whammy of improving performance in some of our games and also reducing the price via partner rebates. This then makes the GTX 560 Ti 448 OC an attractive proposition at £200. Really, this is the takeaway that I hope people get from the review.

Also,are you sure you used AMD 12.1 drivers for the HD7800 series? The official 12.2 drivers released last week are meant to have official support,so I assume you must have used a beta driver of some sort(not the 12.1 one)?? The 12.2 preview drivers were released a while before and seem to show decent gains for the HD7970 over 12.1:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5476/amd-radeon-7950-review/2

The 12.1s are identified as such by GPU-Z. However, for all intents and purposes, they are the same 8.95.5 package found in Catalyst 12.2. I'm currently benchmarking a Radeon HD 7970 (you can guess why) with the 12.2 set - identified as 12.3, funnily enough - and the benchmark performance is the same in our games as quoted in the AMD graphs in this review, give or take two per cent.

Tarinder
The 12.1s are identified as such by GPU-Z. However, for all intents and purposes, they are the same 8.95.5 package found in Catalyst 12.2. I'm currently benchmarking a Radeon HD 7970 (you can guess why) with the 12.2 set - identified as 12.3, funnily enough - and the benchmark performance is the same in our games as quoted in the AMD graphs in this review, give or take two per cent.

So,the AMD Catalyst Beta 8.95.5 for the HD7870? Ta!