Asus 1GB GeForce GTX 560TI DirectCUII PCI-E Graphics Card

First and foremost I would like to say this card surpassed my expectations in all areas.

Asus have done a very good job designing the packaging, which has different compartments for the various items within. The entire package is held inside a larger box which I have used to keep spare computer parts in. The card itself is placed inside an anti-static foam mould which is in its own compartment. Accessories include: a DVI to VGA adapter, mini HDMI to HDMI adapter, Molex to 6Pin PCIe Power adapters, driver CD (with tweaking software) and a manual.

The card itself fairly long, about 10inches from the backplate to the front end of the heatsink shroud. It takes up two expansion slots. The backplate features two DVI-D connectors, an HDMI connector and an airflow outlet. Due to the design of the heatsink, only a small portion of air flows out of the back, most is exhausted within the case. The PCB is of a matte black finish, with two green power LEDs situated about one inch in from the 6Pin connectors. There is one SLI finger at the back end of the card which allows for a two-way SLI configuration. There is no SLI bridge bundled with the card. The heatsink itself is mainly aluminium, with three copper heat-pipes dissipating heat from the core to the front end of the card. Situated directly above the GPU die is a solid aluminium heatsink. This is cooled by an 8mm PWM fan. The three copper heatpipes make direct contact with the GPU die and spread out to a second tight finned aluminium heatsink situated at the front of the card. This is also cooled by an 8mm PWM fan. In total there are two 8mm PWM fans. The entire heatsink is shrouded with a matte black metal plate which has red accent lines. In my opinion this styling is tasteful and not over-the-top. The PCB is reinforced by a metal bar that runs most of the way down the card. This prevent the card sagging inside the case. Both the metal reinforcement and the heatsink shroud have an embossed silver ASUS logo on them.

As far as performance goes, this card is in a league of its own. This is the 'pound/performance sweetspot' where you get the most performance per £ you spend. Although the card comes pre-overclocked to 830mhz on the core (only a 10mhz overclock above the standard clock), this card is easily able to reach clocks just shy of 1GHz on the core and over 2GHz on the shader. A moderate increase in voltage is needed, but this is handled well by the direct air cooled power MOSFETS. Even at these high clock speeds, in a well ventilated case, the heatsink comes into its own. When I tested, temperatures never exceeded 85 degrees centigrade in an ambient temperature of 25 degrees.

I currently run this card overclocked stably at 900Mhz core and 1800Mhz shader. You need not increase the voltage to achieve this overclock, and temperatures never exceed 72 degrees centigrade. The rest of noteworthy PC specs are as follows: Asus M4N98TD EVO SLI motherboard, AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU, 4GB OCZ Obsidian 1600MHz DDR3 RAM, Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W PSU, 1TB Samsung F3 HDD. All of these parts are relatively inexpensive and make for a great gaming setup. The possibility of adding another GTX 560 Ti in SLI mode means you can keep on gaming for longer into the future.

With this setup all new games are playable at 1080p with maximum settings and usually anti aliasing set to 4x. Framerates in games like Crysis 2, Mafia 2 and Metro 2033 are all above 30fps on maximum settings.

So all in all, if you are looking for a great value card, with overclocking performance that is rivalled only by the very expensive cards, THIS IS THE ONE FOR YOU!

This is an amazing card for the price. I have two of them running in SLI in my upgraded rig.

I'll just focus on installation and performance and also packaging and presentation. If you want all the detailed specs etc. just scroll down and read the product description.

First things first, contents. In the box you get the card (thankfully), power-splitter cable, mini HDMI to standard HDMI adapter, VGA adapter, a few screws and a driver disc (already outdated, go to nVidia's website for the latest drivers). The box and packaging is all premium quality and presented beautifully. Exactly what you expect from Asus.

Installation was a breeze. Just find your PCIe slot on your motherboard. Slide it in. Secure it to your case with a couple of screws. Attach the power cables from your power supply and your good to go. If you have two of these and want to run SLI just pop the second one into the PCIe slot next door, secure to case, attach power supply cables and SLI bridge, go to your nVidia Control Panel and activate the SLI option. Done.

Performance is excellent. Running the Crysis GPU benchmark (found in the games `Bin64' file) a single card was getting an average of 35-45fps (DX10, 4AA, 1080p). For a card in the sub £200 pricing, this is amazing.

Running the same benchmark with two of these cards with the same settings was 70-80fps. At certain points it went over 100fps!

So to summarise, the performance of a single card is excellent and well worth the upgrade if that's what you are looking at doing. Also at less than £200 you would be a fool not to seriously consider the Asus GTX560 as a viable upgrade.

Two of these cards will eat through every current game with everything set to 'high detail'. Better performance than a GTX580 and about £20-£50 cheaper for the two GTX560's.

Highly recommended.

2 x Asus GTX560Ti in SLI
Intel i5 Sandybridge 3.3Ghz @ 4.7Ghz
Asus P8P67 Pro Motherboard
8GB Corsair Vengence RAM
2 x Corsair F60 SSD
Corsair TX950 PSU
Win7 64Bit

I have had the card for a week now and it has enabled me to play every game on my PC at 1920x1200 at maximum settings with framerates over 30 fps (STALKER: Call of Pripyat, Dead Island, Modern Warfare 2) Although none of those games really stress this card as they are older DirectX 9 titles. According to Nvidia's beta performance guide, the GTX 560 Ti is capable of running Battlefield 3 at high settings in 1920x1080 resolution which should be a good indicator of the card's performance.

The Asus 1GB GTX 560 Ti DirectCUII is currently the best value card around, like the best selling 8800GT before it. If you have read the reviews of this card from hardware sites, most of them will tell you that the ATI Radeon HD 6950 is slightly faster and in most cases it is, however at the time of the reviews the prices of the 560 Ti and the HD 6950 were the same, or the 560 Ti was more expensive.

This is not the case in the UK and you'll be lucky to find a HD 6950 with 1GB for under £200. I got my Asus GTX 560 Ti DirectCUII for £160.48 (circa early October 2011). Currently on Amazon (23/10/11), you can get a:

Asus GTX 560 Direct CU (non Ti) with the older DirectCU cooler for £148 which is almost £20 cheaper which is great if you are on a budget.
Asus GTX 560 Direct CU II (non Ti) which comes factory overclocked at 850MHz for £167.28 which is a few pence cheaper than the 560 Ti.
Asus GTX 560 Ti DirectCuII TOP is factory overclocked at 900MHz for £188.19, which is £20 more expensive than my regular ASUS GTX 560 Ti DirectCUII (clocked at 830MHz)

If you can afford to spend another £20 over the non Ti version and you know to to overclock, the 560 Ti represents the best value/performance ratio. The main reason is the 560 Ti has an additional 48 stream processors, 384 vs 336 for the 560. So while you can overclock the non Ti at 1GHz to match the speed of the 560 Ti, the 560 Ti at that speed would be close to a GTX 570 which costs around £270! So if you know how to overclock, then is no point paying an extra £20 for a factory overclocked card, as the hardware is identical between the 560 Ti and the TOP version, the only difference being a few bytes in the card's firmware! Of course the TOP would be guaranteed and tested to run at 900MHz, but you would have to be VERY unlucky to get a card that wouldn't run at 900MHz as that is a fairly conservative overclock. Using the MSI Afterburner utility to overclock is a doddle and there are plenty of tutorials online for you novices out there.

My card is currently clocked at 950MHz (might overclock to 1GHz after I get a new case with better airflow) with memory at 4.7GHz (1,175MHz x4) and the card is very quiet while gaming with average temps of 65 to 70c. Although the DirectCUII cooler is more efficient (it keeps the GPU at least 15c cooler than the standard single fan Nvidia cooler), it does not exhaust the hot air outside the case. If your case does not have intake and exhaust fans then this would be the only real issue with this card. The card also features it's own heatsink over the MOSFETs and high quality Japanese capacitors and voltage components which all helps to maximise the card's overclocking potential.

The word quality sums up this card, it feels solid as it has a metal spine to keep the card from sagging and the shroud around the heatsink is metallic if you were wondering. I am surprised that Asus can produce a card with is own custom designed PCB plus heatsink and dual fans in such quality, while other card manufacturers pump out the bog standard nvidia reference design (like the PNY card I was looking at before discovering the Asus) at the same prices!

Overall I am thrilled with this card and I am looking forward to giving it a workout once Battlefield 3 and Skyrim is released.