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

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power-splitter cable, mini HDMI to standard HDMI adapter, VGA adapter, a few screws and a driver disc (already outdated, go to nVidia's website for the latest drivers).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

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!

So, after several weeks of scouring the internet, reading thousands of reviews over the past 2 years worth of cards, I thought why not try my hand at this card.
it arrived the next day under express delivery (I was pretty eager) and took it out of the Amazon packaging (which was very secure). On to the the points

FOR THE PEOPLE WHO FIND THIS STUFF DIFFICULT TO GET AROUND!

1) This product is beautifully packaged. As a computer scientist, I've never seen anything like it and ive been through my fair share of cards. its elegantly wrapped in black "Asus" board with cd, documents and cables needed to plug into the PSU (power supply).

2) So after staring at it for a good 30 mins (it really is that gorgeous, like something out of Mercedes formula 1 garage), I opened my case,
slipped the old GTX gpu (graphics card) out of its slot and simply pushed it in, fastened it with 1 screw into the case and wired it into the power with supplied cables.. put the case back together.... Done.

3) I pressed the power button and nothing happened... only because I forgot the mains cable :P

and presto, on came the screen. For me, the resolution was wrong for my screen, (it was way too large) but after inserting the dvd,
it installed the correct drivers and restarted the pc to the ideal resolution, and it looks superb :)

FOR THE PEOPLE WHO DO LIKE COMPUTER JARGON!!

1) the card is SLI supported but doesn't contain an SLI bridge unit which is required.
I had one from a previous model so took the old GPU out and in with the new, bridged,

2) the unit is actually clocked at 830 which is only just above the the standard GPU from Nvdia,
ive managed a 940 with pure stability under a 700w PSU unit, runs like a dream.

3) under 64bit windows with 16GB, works fine, 3d vision requires correct monitor however.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO LOVE THE GAMES!!!

1) this unit will average around 44-52 FPS in a fully decked out
session of Bad Company 2 with all settings including AA x16..32.. etc
extremely powerful if I do say so myself.

2) it will run anything you throw at it right now.. .simples

3) Battlefield 3 cautious? this will play it just fine

SUMMARY

Q1 (January) card from Nvidia is brilliant across the board,
well worthy upgrade