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MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II/OC graphics card review

by Parm Mann on 9 March 2011, 17:00 4.0

Tags: MSI

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa4y5

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HEXUS bang4buck and HEXUS bang4watt

Putting all the numbers into perspective, let's take a closer look at overall performance.

In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,080 frame-rates for seven games, normalised them* and taken account of the single-cards' prices.

But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen seven different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources and pricing tends to fluctuate daily, especially for new-release GPUs.

Consequently, the table below highlight a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in. Other architectural benefits are not covered, obviously.

  Aggregate FPS
(1,920x1,080)
Normalised* FPS
(1,920x1,080)
Current pricing bang4buck
(1,920x1,080)
Power consumption** bang4watt***
(1,920x1,080)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1,536MB 494.20 422.60 £395 1.07 252 1.68
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1,280MB 436.90 385.95 £265 1.46 196 1.97
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti SOC 1,024MB 439.90 387.05 £230 1.68 207 1.87
KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 Ti LTD OC 1,024MB 422.20 373.80 £250 1.50 174 2.15
MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II OC 1,024MB 405.30 357.75 £215 1.66 171 2.09
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1,024MB 374.10 328.65 £190 1.73 154 2.13
ASUS GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB 432.60 384.20 £205 1.87 244 1.57
ASUS GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB 348.90 304.45 £190 1.60 204 1.49
KFA2 GeForce GTX 460 1,024MB 286.70 229.75 £140 1.64 169 1.36
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB 262.40 198.00 £135 1.47 130 1.52
HIS Radeon HD 6970 2,048MB 413.10 375.75 £275 1.37 183 2.05
PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2,048MB 371.70 337.55 £225 1.50 155 2.18
AMD Radeon HD 6950 1,024MB 374.50 339.75 £195 1.74 150 2.27
HIS Radeon HD 6870 1,024MB 328.40 289.70 £175 1.66 126 2.30
Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1,024MB 288.40 240.60 £130 1.85 97 2.48
XFX Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB 365.00 333.30 £190 1.75 139 2.40
XFX Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB 312.60 272.40 £155 1.76 117 2.33

* the normalisation refers to taking playable frame rate into account. Should a card benchmark at over 60 frames per second in any one game, the extra fps count as half. Similarly, should a card benchmark lower, say at 40fps, we deduct half the difference from its average frame rate and the desired 60fps, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.

** the GPU power consumption is derived from subtracting a flat rate of 100W - indicating system power-draw without a card - from the Call of Duty: Black Ops load figure. While this figure isn't solely indicative of power pulled by the GPU, as the CPU also throttles up, it's a better metric than using peak system-draw alone.

*** the HEXUS.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against GPU power-draw that's shown in the table: the former is divided by the latter. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Analysis

MSI's GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II lands close to the middle on our bang4buck chart, but Gigabyte's competitively-priced 1,000MHz Super Overclock card has the edge.

The bad news for GTX 560? AMD's Radeon HD 6950 1GB - now available at around the £195 mark - offers very similar performance for less. And, if you're shopping for a bargain, Sapphire's Radeon HD 6850 is going for a penny less than £130 at the time of writing - that price is enough for it shoot up close to the top of the chart.

NVIDIA's GeForce 500-series cards have done well to reduce power consumption when compared to the first run of Fermi-derived products, but the performance-per-watt metric continues to be dominated by AMD.