quik1987
Banned
- 7,735
- 434
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
Is Asus ever gonna drop this 1218N?
quik1987
Banned
- 7,735
- 434
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
Is Asus ever gonna drop this 1218N?
- 12,703
- 71
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2004
took me 3 since i was trying to do some cable management.
also, copped a new mouse today
Logitech G9x, going to give my Logitech MX518 a rest since i use a claw/finger tip grip and not palm grip, which is what the 518 basically is for, unless you have big hands.. which i do not
- 12,703
- 71
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2004
took me 3 since i was trying to do some cable management.
also, copped a new mouse today
Logitech G9x, going to give my Logitech MX518 a rest since i use a claw/finger tip grip and not palm grip, which is what the 518 basically is for, unless you have big hands.. which i do not
- 18,297
- 1,007
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2009
Same mouse I have paid 69 for it. I need to get a better mousepad too
- 18,297
- 1,007
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2009
Same mouse I have paid 69 for it. I need to get a better mousepad too
- 12,703
- 71
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2004
i got a hard mousepad from best buy awhile ago, double sided for "speed" and "control" rocketfish brand. no complaints so far.
- 12,703
- 71
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2004
i got a hard mousepad from best buy awhile ago, double sided for "speed" and "control" rocketfish brand. no complaints so far.
- 743
- 10
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2011
i got a steel series Qck+. bigass mouse pad that takes up half my table lol
- 743
- 10
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2011
i got a steel series Qck+. bigass mouse pad that takes up half my table lol
- 4,522
- 298
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2004
Originally Posted by quik1987
Is Asus ever gonna drop this 1218N?
Any other slim PC's like this
- 4,522
- 298
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2004
Originally Posted by quik1987
Is Asus ever gonna drop this 1218N?
Any other slim PC's like this
- 12,703
- 71
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2004
dell adamo, but it was in the dumb macbook air price range (if not worse), and im not sure if they even sell it anymore
- 12,703
- 71
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2004
dell adamo, but it was in the dumb macbook air price range (if not worse), and im not sure if they even sell it anymore
- 266
- 10
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2005
Built this myself two months ago:
Antec Three Hundred
Intel Core i7 950
MSI GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB
4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3-16000
ASUS Sabertooth X58
Logitech G500
Corsair HX520
Samsung 216BW
Sound Blaster Audigy 4
Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000
Logitech Z-2300
Sennheiser HD555
Windows 7 64-Bit
The power supply, monitor, sound card, keyboard and speakers were parts from a previous build.
Antec Three Hundred
Intel Core i7 950
MSI GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB
4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3-16000
ASUS Sabertooth X58
Logitech G500
Corsair HX520
Samsung 216BW
Sound Blaster Audigy 4
Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000
Logitech Z-2300
Sennheiser HD555
Windows 7 64-Bit
The power supply, monitor, sound card, keyboard and speakers were parts from a previous build.
- 266
- 10
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2005
Built this myself two months ago:
Antec Three Hundred
Intel Core i7 950
MSI GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB
4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3-16000
ASUS Sabertooth X58
Logitech G500
Corsair HX520
Samsung 216BW
Sound Blaster Audigy 4
Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000
Logitech Z-2300
Sennheiser HD555
Windows 7 64-Bit
The power supply, monitor, sound card, keyboard and speakers were parts from a previous build.
Antec Three Hundred
Intel Core i7 950
MSI GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB
4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3-16000
ASUS Sabertooth X58
Logitech G500
Corsair HX520
Samsung 216BW
Sound Blaster Audigy 4
Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000
Logitech Z-2300
Sennheiser HD555
Windows 7 64-Bit
The power supply, monitor, sound card, keyboard and speakers were parts from a previous build.
- 18,297
- 1,007
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2009
Good looks on the mediamonkey tip. I finally got it set up the way I want it.
Mediamonkey Gold is
, instantly converts my FLAC files to mp3 when I'm putting them on my ipod.
Mediamonkey Gold is
- 18,297
- 1,007
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2009
Good looks on the mediamonkey tip. I finally got it set up the way I want it.
Mediamonkey Gold is
, instantly converts my FLAC files to mp3 when I'm putting them on my ipod.
Mediamonkey Gold is
- 7,635
- 4,161
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2008
Tested: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Video Card
Added by Norman Chan on Jan. 25, 2011\
We knew that this was coming, but Nvidia's launch of their new GeForce GTX 560 Ti today still feels unreal. After all, it was only six months ago that they launched the GeForce GTX 460, a $220 card that dominated the mid-range market until AMD's 68xx series debuted in late 2010. And while the naming of the GTX 560 Ti may indicate that this is a successor to the GTX 460 (as the GTX 580 was to the GTX 480), that's actually not the case, either. The $249 GTX 560 Ti actually shifts Nvidia's mid-range lineup down a notch, replacing the GTX 470 while the GTX 460 stays on the market with street prices of under $200. Nvidia's official stance is that this is a direct competitor to AMD's 6870--but as our benchmarking shows, this card actually performs closer to a Radeon 6950.
Read on for our full rundown of this new mid-range video card, which shakes up the sub-$300 GPU market quite a bit. (And as promised from a while back, we finally have GTX 570 benchmarks!)
[h3]The Mid-Range Mix[/h3]
The popular GeForce GTX 460, released last July.
First, let's get a sense of what the mid-range market looked like before today, and how that's changing with the release of the GTX 560 Ti. On the Nvidia side, the GTX 460 has held its ground as a price-performance champ with plenty of overclocking headroom and plenty of pre-overclocked parts from 3rd party board makers like Asus and Gigabyte. AMD's 6870 launched at a competitive $240 and performed better than the GTX 460, while the $180 6850 was decidedly a lower-end part that replaced the previous 5770. With subsequent price drops, the GTX 460 remained a good buy in the low $200 price range.
On the higher end of this spectrum, the $299 AMD's Radeon 6950 occupied a unique spot in the mid-range market, delivering near high-end performance with the full computing prowess of AMD's Cayman GPU architecture without breaking the bank. Its other advantage was that it didn't have a direct competitor from Nvidia, since the GTX 470 was an unoptimized Fermi launch card based on the troublesome GF100 architecture. The GTX 560 Ti, though officially positioned against the Radeon 6870, actually fills that hole. Even as a $249 part, its performance warrants more comparison to the Radeon 6950 than the 6870 (especially when overclocked), and its very presence has already caused ripples in the mid-range arena. AMD has just lowered suggested prices for its 6870 part, and has hastily launched a 1GB 6950 video card as a direct response to the GTX 560 Ti. Mid-range just got real interesting.
[h3]Meet the GeForce GTX 560 Ti [/h3]
The best way to understand the technical details of the GTX 560 Ti is to look at what Nvidia did with their flagship GTX 580. Just as the GTX 580's (and GTX 570's) GF110 architecture was an optimized version of the original GF100 Fermi design, the GTX 560 Ti is an optimized refresh of the GF104 architecture behind the GTX 460. On the surface, this new GF114 chip is very similar to the GF104-- a 368mm^2 die with 1.95 billion transistors: Fermi for the masses. But like the GF110, Nvidia made two important upgrades: unlocking the full potential of the Fermi chip by enabling all 8 of the chip's SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors), and changing up the types of transistors used.
With 8/8 SM clusters enabled, the GTX 560 Ti is immediately more capable than the GTX 460 (assuming same clock speeds). It has a full 384 CUDA compute cores as compared to the GTX 460's 336, 64 texture units, 8 polymorph engines, and 32 ROP units. The benefit of the extra enabled SM gives it better shader, geometry, and texture performance than a comparably clocked GTX 460--a theoretical 14% improvement.
On the transistor level, Nvidia re-engineered the GF104 chip for the GF114 in the same way they did the GF100 chip for GF110. Instead of using one type of "fast" transistor type, the GF114 uses three speeds of transistors: fast "leaky" ones where they're necessary and more reliable-yet-slower ones on low-priority processing paths. The advantage of transistor optimization is that Nvidia is able to clock a stock GTX 560 Ti at much higher speeds than the GTX 460, while still leaving room for overclocking. While the GTX 460 launched at 675MHz (with pre-overclocked boards at 700MHz-800MHz), the GTX 560 Ti's reference clock is 822MHz, with some board makers releasing models clocked at up to 1000MHz.
The extra clock speed, coupled with the additional compute capabilities of the GF114 makes the GTX 560 Ti a formidable mid-range component on paper. You can think of it as the GTX 460 reaching its full processing potential. The only downside is that, unlike the GF110 upgrade, the GF114 is actually a little more power hungry than the GF104. The GTX 560 Ti's max TDP is rated at 170Watts, or 10W more than the GTX 460. It's idle TDP remains the same, though.
Physically, the card is slightly bigger than the GTX 460 at just over 9 inches. The GF114 is actually pin-compatible with the GF104, but Nvidia's updated the reference board design to allow for a bigger cooler. The card requires two six-pin PCI-E power connectors, which plug in at the rear of the card--though we would have preferred top-facing power sockets. Like Nvidia's other cards, the GTX 560 Ti has two dual-link DVI ports and a mini-HDMI port, though only two outputs can be used at once. For three or more monitors, you'll need a second video card.
[h4]Performance Analysis [/h4]At reference clock speeds, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is, as expected, a substantial improvement over last year's GTX 460. Compared to the Radeon 6870, framerates are neck and neck, with the GTX 560 Ti pulling ahead when AA is turned on and in Far Cry 2 and the tessellation-heavy H.A.W.X 2. In many cases, it actually reaches (and even surpasses) the performance of the Radeon 6950, though the 6950's 2GB frame buffer doesn't kick in until games are played at higher resolutions like 2560x1600. The GTX 570, at $100 more expensive than the GTX 560 Ti, understandably pulls out ahead. This is mostly the case with the 6970, though Nvidia's DX11 performance shines once again in Metro 2033 and H.A.W.X. 2.
Overclocked, the GTX 560 Ti is a whole new animal. Though Crysis crashed to Desktop at 960MHz, the card was stable and showed significant gains in our other benchmarks, pulling ahead of the 6950 outright without noticeable noise increase from the card. Given that 1000MHz GTX 560 Ti's have a street price of $270, we think this is a very compelling mid-range competitor.
[h3]Summary[/h3]
The timing of the GTX 560's release makes this an awkward card in Nvidia's lineup, despite its solid performance. When the GTX 460 was released last year, its price/performance quotient was so impressive that it was an irresistible buy for leap-frogging upgraders who were using the GTX 8xxx and 9xxx series cards--the same people Nvidia is targeting with this release. But that means the GTX 560 Ti makes less of an impact than the GTX 460 did last year, especially since the 460 isn't being phased out.
For those of you that never made the GTX 460 jump, the GTX 560 Ti is a great buy. But for the many people already on GTX 460s, upgrading to a GTX 560 Ti doesn't make sense--you're better off overclocking or doubling up with a second GTX 460 in SLI.
What makes the GTX 560 Ti notable is how it affects the entire mid-range market. Nvidia's $250 pricing is pretty competitive, and has forced AMD to immediately make some pricing changes to its mid-range lineup. As Loyd Case wrote about in his hardware upgrade column, the best time to buy a piece of hardware is often after the next product in the same category (from any manufacturer) is released. That proves to be the case here: one of the immediate consequences of the GTX 560 Ti's release is how attractive it makes the newly priced Radeon 6950s and 6870s look--which is great for AMD fans. But that's not to discount the GTX 560 Ti's merits--you're getting a ton performance and overclocking potential for $250. For Nvidia fans who held off on the GTX 400 series, patience is paying off: the high-end GTX 580 is what the 480 should have been, and the mid-range GTX 560 Ti is what the 460 could have been. In other words, 2nd-generation optimized Fermi is a win across the board.
From tested.com
Added by Norman Chan on Jan. 25, 2011\
We knew that this was coming, but Nvidia's launch of their new GeForce GTX 560 Ti today still feels unreal. After all, it was only six months ago that they launched the GeForce GTX 460, a $220 card that dominated the mid-range market until AMD's 68xx series debuted in late 2010. And while the naming of the GTX 560 Ti may indicate that this is a successor to the GTX 460 (as the GTX 580 was to the GTX 480), that's actually not the case, either. The $249 GTX 560 Ti actually shifts Nvidia's mid-range lineup down a notch, replacing the GTX 470 while the GTX 460 stays on the market with street prices of under $200. Nvidia's official stance is that this is a direct competitor to AMD's 6870--but as our benchmarking shows, this card actually performs closer to a Radeon 6950.
Read on for our full rundown of this new mid-range video card, which shakes up the sub-$300 GPU market quite a bit. (And as promised from a while back, we finally have GTX 570 benchmarks!)
[h3]The Mid-Range Mix[/h3]
The popular GeForce GTX 460, released last July.
First, let's get a sense of what the mid-range market looked like before today, and how that's changing with the release of the GTX 560 Ti. On the Nvidia side, the GTX 460 has held its ground as a price-performance champ with plenty of overclocking headroom and plenty of pre-overclocked parts from 3rd party board makers like Asus and Gigabyte. AMD's 6870 launched at a competitive $240 and performed better than the GTX 460, while the $180 6850 was decidedly a lower-end part that replaced the previous 5770. With subsequent price drops, the GTX 460 remained a good buy in the low $200 price range.
On the higher end of this spectrum, the $299 AMD's Radeon 6950 occupied a unique spot in the mid-range market, delivering near high-end performance with the full computing prowess of AMD's Cayman GPU architecture without breaking the bank. Its other advantage was that it didn't have a direct competitor from Nvidia, since the GTX 470 was an unoptimized Fermi launch card based on the troublesome GF100 architecture. The GTX 560 Ti, though officially positioned against the Radeon 6870, actually fills that hole. Even as a $249 part, its performance warrants more comparison to the Radeon 6950 than the 6870 (especially when overclocked), and its very presence has already caused ripples in the mid-range arena. AMD has just lowered suggested prices for its 6870 part, and has hastily launched a 1GB 6950 video card as a direct response to the GTX 560 Ti. Mid-range just got real interesting.
[h3]Meet the GeForce GTX 560 Ti [/h3]
The best way to understand the technical details of the GTX 560 Ti is to look at what Nvidia did with their flagship GTX 580. Just as the GTX 580's (and GTX 570's) GF110 architecture was an optimized version of the original GF100 Fermi design, the GTX 560 Ti is an optimized refresh of the GF104 architecture behind the GTX 460. On the surface, this new GF114 chip is very similar to the GF104-- a 368mm^2 die with 1.95 billion transistors: Fermi for the masses. But like the GF110, Nvidia made two important upgrades: unlocking the full potential of the Fermi chip by enabling all 8 of the chip's SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors), and changing up the types of transistors used.
With 8/8 SM clusters enabled, the GTX 560 Ti is immediately more capable than the GTX 460 (assuming same clock speeds). It has a full 384 CUDA compute cores as compared to the GTX 460's 336, 64 texture units, 8 polymorph engines, and 32 ROP units. The benefit of the extra enabled SM gives it better shader, geometry, and texture performance than a comparably clocked GTX 460--a theoretical 14% improvement.
On the transistor level, Nvidia re-engineered the GF104 chip for the GF114 in the same way they did the GF100 chip for GF110. Instead of using one type of "fast" transistor type, the GF114 uses three speeds of transistors: fast "leaky" ones where they're necessary and more reliable-yet-slower ones on low-priority processing paths. The advantage of transistor optimization is that Nvidia is able to clock a stock GTX 560 Ti at much higher speeds than the GTX 460, while still leaving room for overclocking. While the GTX 460 launched at 675MHz (with pre-overclocked boards at 700MHz-800MHz), the GTX 560 Ti's reference clock is 822MHz, with some board makers releasing models clocked at up to 1000MHz.
The extra clock speed, coupled with the additional compute capabilities of the GF114 makes the GTX 560 Ti a formidable mid-range component on paper. You can think of it as the GTX 460 reaching its full processing potential. The only downside is that, unlike the GF110 upgrade, the GF114 is actually a little more power hungry than the GF104. The GTX 560 Ti's max TDP is rated at 170Watts, or 10W more than the GTX 460. It's idle TDP remains the same, though.
Physically, the card is slightly bigger than the GTX 460 at just over 9 inches. The GF114 is actually pin-compatible with the GF104, but Nvidia's updated the reference board design to allow for a bigger cooler. The card requires two six-pin PCI-E power connectors, which plug in at the rear of the card--though we would have preferred top-facing power sockets. Like Nvidia's other cards, the GTX 560 Ti has two dual-link DVI ports and a mini-HDMI port, though only two outputs can be used at once. For three or more monitors, you'll need a second video card.
[h4]Performance Analysis [/h4]At reference clock speeds, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is, as expected, a substantial improvement over last year's GTX 460. Compared to the Radeon 6870, framerates are neck and neck, with the GTX 560 Ti pulling ahead when AA is turned on and in Far Cry 2 and the tessellation-heavy H.A.W.X 2. In many cases, it actually reaches (and even surpasses) the performance of the Radeon 6950, though the 6950's 2GB frame buffer doesn't kick in until games are played at higher resolutions like 2560x1600. The GTX 570, at $100 more expensive than the GTX 560 Ti, understandably pulls out ahead. This is mostly the case with the 6970, though Nvidia's DX11 performance shines once again in Metro 2033 and H.A.W.X. 2.
Overclocked, the GTX 560 Ti is a whole new animal. Though Crysis crashed to Desktop at 960MHz, the card was stable and showed significant gains in our other benchmarks, pulling ahead of the 6950 outright without noticeable noise increase from the card. Given that 1000MHz GTX 560 Ti's have a street price of $270, we think this is a very compelling mid-range competitor.
[h3]Summary[/h3]
The timing of the GTX 560's release makes this an awkward card in Nvidia's lineup, despite its solid performance. When the GTX 460 was released last year, its price/performance quotient was so impressive that it was an irresistible buy for leap-frogging upgraders who were using the GTX 8xxx and 9xxx series cards--the same people Nvidia is targeting with this release. But that means the GTX 560 Ti makes less of an impact than the GTX 460 did last year, especially since the 460 isn't being phased out.
For those of you that never made the GTX 460 jump, the GTX 560 Ti is a great buy. But for the many people already on GTX 460s, upgrading to a GTX 560 Ti doesn't make sense--you're better off overclocking or doubling up with a second GTX 460 in SLI.
What makes the GTX 560 Ti notable is how it affects the entire mid-range market. Nvidia's $250 pricing is pretty competitive, and has forced AMD to immediately make some pricing changes to its mid-range lineup. As Loyd Case wrote about in his hardware upgrade column, the best time to buy a piece of hardware is often after the next product in the same category (from any manufacturer) is released. That proves to be the case here: one of the immediate consequences of the GTX 560 Ti's release is how attractive it makes the newly priced Radeon 6950s and 6870s look--which is great for AMD fans. But that's not to discount the GTX 560 Ti's merits--you're getting a ton performance and overclocking potential for $250. For Nvidia fans who held off on the GTX 400 series, patience is paying off: the high-end GTX 580 is what the 480 should have been, and the mid-range GTX 560 Ti is what the 460 could have been. In other words, 2nd-generation optimized Fermi is a win across the board.
From tested.com
- 7,635
- 4,161
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2008
Tested: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Video Card
Added by Norman Chan on Jan. 25, 2011\
We knew that this was coming, but Nvidia's launch of their new GeForce GTX 560 Ti today still feels unreal. After all, it was only six months ago that they launched the GeForce GTX 460, a $220 card that dominated the mid-range market until AMD's 68xx series debuted in late 2010. And while the naming of the GTX 560 Ti may indicate that this is a successor to the GTX 460 (as the GTX 580 was to the GTX 480), that's actually not the case, either. The $249 GTX 560 Ti actually shifts Nvidia's mid-range lineup down a notch, replacing the GTX 470 while the GTX 460 stays on the market with street prices of under $200. Nvidia's official stance is that this is a direct competitor to AMD's 6870--but as our benchmarking shows, this card actually performs closer to a Radeon 6950.
Read on for our full rundown of this new mid-range video card, which shakes up the sub-$300 GPU market quite a bit. (And as promised from a while back, we finally have GTX 570 benchmarks!)
[h3]The Mid-Range Mix[/h3]
The popular GeForce GTX 460, released last July.
First, let's get a sense of what the mid-range market looked like before today, and how that's changing with the release of the GTX 560 Ti. On the Nvidia side, the GTX 460 has held its ground as a price-performance champ with plenty of overclocking headroom and plenty of pre-overclocked parts from 3rd party board makers like Asus and Gigabyte. AMD's 6870 launched at a competitive $240 and performed better than the GTX 460, while the $180 6850 was decidedly a lower-end part that replaced the previous 5770. With subsequent price drops, the GTX 460 remained a good buy in the low $200 price range.
On the higher end of this spectrum, the $299 AMD's Radeon 6950 occupied a unique spot in the mid-range market, delivering near high-end performance with the full computing prowess of AMD's Cayman GPU architecture without breaking the bank. Its other advantage was that it didn't have a direct competitor from Nvidia, since the GTX 470 was an unoptimized Fermi launch card based on the troublesome GF100 architecture. The GTX 560 Ti, though officially positioned against the Radeon 6870, actually fills that hole. Even as a $249 part, its performance warrants more comparison to the Radeon 6950 than the 6870 (especially when overclocked), and its very presence has already caused ripples in the mid-range arena. AMD has just lowered suggested prices for its 6870 part, and has hastily launched a 1GB 6950 video card as a direct response to the GTX 560 Ti. Mid-range just got real interesting.
[h3]Meet the GeForce GTX 560 Ti [/h3]
The best way to understand the technical details of the GTX 560 Ti is to look at what Nvidia did with their flagship GTX 580. Just as the GTX 580's (and GTX 570's) GF110 architecture was an optimized version of the original GF100 Fermi design, the GTX 560 Ti is an optimized refresh of the GF104 architecture behind the GTX 460. On the surface, this new GF114 chip is very similar to the GF104-- a 368mm^2 die with 1.95 billion transistors: Fermi for the masses. But like the GF110, Nvidia made two important upgrades: unlocking the full potential of the Fermi chip by enabling all 8 of the chip's SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors), and changing up the types of transistors used.
With 8/8 SM clusters enabled, the GTX 560 Ti is immediately more capable than the GTX 460 (assuming same clock speeds). It has a full 384 CUDA compute cores as compared to the GTX 460's 336, 64 texture units, 8 polymorph engines, and 32 ROP units. The benefit of the extra enabled SM gives it better shader, geometry, and texture performance than a comparably clocked GTX 460--a theoretical 14% improvement.
On the transistor level, Nvidia re-engineered the GF104 chip for the GF114 in the same way they did the GF100 chip for GF110. Instead of using one type of "fast" transistor type, the GF114 uses three speeds of transistors: fast "leaky" ones where they're necessary and more reliable-yet-slower ones on low-priority processing paths. The advantage of transistor optimization is that Nvidia is able to clock a stock GTX 560 Ti at much higher speeds than the GTX 460, while still leaving room for overclocking. While the GTX 460 launched at 675MHz (with pre-overclocked boards at 700MHz-800MHz), the GTX 560 Ti's reference clock is 822MHz, with some board makers releasing models clocked at up to 1000MHz.
The extra clock speed, coupled with the additional compute capabilities of the GF114 makes the GTX 560 Ti a formidable mid-range component on paper. You can think of it as the GTX 460 reaching its full processing potential. The only downside is that, unlike the GF110 upgrade, the GF114 is actually a little more power hungry than the GF104. The GTX 560 Ti's max TDP is rated at 170Watts, or 10W more than the GTX 460. It's idle TDP remains the same, though.
Physically, the card is slightly bigger than the GTX 460 at just over 9 inches. The GF114 is actually pin-compatible with the GF104, but Nvidia's updated the reference board design to allow for a bigger cooler. The card requires two six-pin PCI-E power connectors, which plug in at the rear of the card--though we would have preferred top-facing power sockets. Like Nvidia's other cards, the GTX 560 Ti has two dual-link DVI ports and a mini-HDMI port, though only two outputs can be used at once. For three or more monitors, you'll need a second video card.
[h4]Performance Analysis [/h4]At reference clock speeds, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is, as expected, a substantial improvement over last year's GTX 460. Compared to the Radeon 6870, framerates are neck and neck, with the GTX 560 Ti pulling ahead when AA is turned on and in Far Cry 2 and the tessellation-heavy H.A.W.X 2. In many cases, it actually reaches (and even surpasses) the performance of the Radeon 6950, though the 6950's 2GB frame buffer doesn't kick in until games are played at higher resolutions like 2560x1600. The GTX 570, at $100 more expensive than the GTX 560 Ti, understandably pulls out ahead. This is mostly the case with the 6970, though Nvidia's DX11 performance shines once again in Metro 2033 and H.A.W.X. 2.
Overclocked, the GTX 560 Ti is a whole new animal. Though Crysis crashed to Desktop at 960MHz, the card was stable and showed significant gains in our other benchmarks, pulling ahead of the 6950 outright without noticeable noise increase from the card. Given that 1000MHz GTX 560 Ti's have a street price of $270, we think this is a very compelling mid-range competitor.
[h3]Summary[/h3]
The timing of the GTX 560's release makes this an awkward card in Nvidia's lineup, despite its solid performance. When the GTX 460 was released last year, its price/performance quotient was so impressive that it was an irresistible buy for leap-frogging upgraders who were using the GTX 8xxx and 9xxx series cards--the same people Nvidia is targeting with this release. But that means the GTX 560 Ti makes less of an impact than the GTX 460 did last year, especially since the 460 isn't being phased out.
For those of you that never made the GTX 460 jump, the GTX 560 Ti is a great buy. But for the many people already on GTX 460s, upgrading to a GTX 560 Ti doesn't make sense--you're better off overclocking or doubling up with a second GTX 460 in SLI.
What makes the GTX 560 Ti notable is how it affects the entire mid-range market. Nvidia's $250 pricing is pretty competitive, and has forced AMD to immediately make some pricing changes to its mid-range lineup. As Loyd Case wrote about in his hardware upgrade column, the best time to buy a piece of hardware is often after the next product in the same category (from any manufacturer) is released. That proves to be the case here: one of the immediate consequences of the GTX 560 Ti's release is how attractive it makes the newly priced Radeon 6950s and 6870s look--which is great for AMD fans. But that's not to discount the GTX 560 Ti's merits--you're getting a ton performance and overclocking potential for $250. For Nvidia fans who held off on the GTX 400 series, patience is paying off: the high-end GTX 580 is what the 480 should have been, and the mid-range GTX 560 Ti is what the 460 could have been. In other words, 2nd-generation optimized Fermi is a win across the board.
From tested.com
Added by Norman Chan on Jan. 25, 2011\
We knew that this was coming, but Nvidia's launch of their new GeForce GTX 560 Ti today still feels unreal. After all, it was only six months ago that they launched the GeForce GTX 460, a $220 card that dominated the mid-range market until AMD's 68xx series debuted in late 2010. And while the naming of the GTX 560 Ti may indicate that this is a successor to the GTX 460 (as the GTX 580 was to the GTX 480), that's actually not the case, either. The $249 GTX 560 Ti actually shifts Nvidia's mid-range lineup down a notch, replacing the GTX 470 while the GTX 460 stays on the market with street prices of under $200. Nvidia's official stance is that this is a direct competitor to AMD's 6870--but as our benchmarking shows, this card actually performs closer to a Radeon 6950.
Read on for our full rundown of this new mid-range video card, which shakes up the sub-$300 GPU market quite a bit. (And as promised from a while back, we finally have GTX 570 benchmarks!)
[h3]The Mid-Range Mix[/h3]
The popular GeForce GTX 460, released last July.
First, let's get a sense of what the mid-range market looked like before today, and how that's changing with the release of the GTX 560 Ti. On the Nvidia side, the GTX 460 has held its ground as a price-performance champ with plenty of overclocking headroom and plenty of pre-overclocked parts from 3rd party board makers like Asus and Gigabyte. AMD's 6870 launched at a competitive $240 and performed better than the GTX 460, while the $180 6850 was decidedly a lower-end part that replaced the previous 5770. With subsequent price drops, the GTX 460 remained a good buy in the low $200 price range.
On the higher end of this spectrum, the $299 AMD's Radeon 6950 occupied a unique spot in the mid-range market, delivering near high-end performance with the full computing prowess of AMD's Cayman GPU architecture without breaking the bank. Its other advantage was that it didn't have a direct competitor from Nvidia, since the GTX 470 was an unoptimized Fermi launch card based on the troublesome GF100 architecture. The GTX 560 Ti, though officially positioned against the Radeon 6870, actually fills that hole. Even as a $249 part, its performance warrants more comparison to the Radeon 6950 than the 6870 (especially when overclocked), and its very presence has already caused ripples in the mid-range arena. AMD has just lowered suggested prices for its 6870 part, and has hastily launched a 1GB 6950 video card as a direct response to the GTX 560 Ti. Mid-range just got real interesting.
[h3]Meet the GeForce GTX 560 Ti [/h3]
The best way to understand the technical details of the GTX 560 Ti is to look at what Nvidia did with their flagship GTX 580. Just as the GTX 580's (and GTX 570's) GF110 architecture was an optimized version of the original GF100 Fermi design, the GTX 560 Ti is an optimized refresh of the GF104 architecture behind the GTX 460. On the surface, this new GF114 chip is very similar to the GF104-- a 368mm^2 die with 1.95 billion transistors: Fermi for the masses. But like the GF110, Nvidia made two important upgrades: unlocking the full potential of the Fermi chip by enabling all 8 of the chip's SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors), and changing up the types of transistors used.
With 8/8 SM clusters enabled, the GTX 560 Ti is immediately more capable than the GTX 460 (assuming same clock speeds). It has a full 384 CUDA compute cores as compared to the GTX 460's 336, 64 texture units, 8 polymorph engines, and 32 ROP units. The benefit of the extra enabled SM gives it better shader, geometry, and texture performance than a comparably clocked GTX 460--a theoretical 14% improvement.
On the transistor level, Nvidia re-engineered the GF104 chip for the GF114 in the same way they did the GF100 chip for GF110. Instead of using one type of "fast" transistor type, the GF114 uses three speeds of transistors: fast "leaky" ones where they're necessary and more reliable-yet-slower ones on low-priority processing paths. The advantage of transistor optimization is that Nvidia is able to clock a stock GTX 560 Ti at much higher speeds than the GTX 460, while still leaving room for overclocking. While the GTX 460 launched at 675MHz (with pre-overclocked boards at 700MHz-800MHz), the GTX 560 Ti's reference clock is 822MHz, with some board makers releasing models clocked at up to 1000MHz.
The extra clock speed, coupled with the additional compute capabilities of the GF114 makes the GTX 560 Ti a formidable mid-range component on paper. You can think of it as the GTX 460 reaching its full processing potential. The only downside is that, unlike the GF110 upgrade, the GF114 is actually a little more power hungry than the GF104. The GTX 560 Ti's max TDP is rated at 170Watts, or 10W more than the GTX 460. It's idle TDP remains the same, though.
Physically, the card is slightly bigger than the GTX 460 at just over 9 inches. The GF114 is actually pin-compatible with the GF104, but Nvidia's updated the reference board design to allow for a bigger cooler. The card requires two six-pin PCI-E power connectors, which plug in at the rear of the card--though we would have preferred top-facing power sockets. Like Nvidia's other cards, the GTX 560 Ti has two dual-link DVI ports and a mini-HDMI port, though only two outputs can be used at once. For three or more monitors, you'll need a second video card.
[h4]Performance Analysis [/h4]At reference clock speeds, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is, as expected, a substantial improvement over last year's GTX 460. Compared to the Radeon 6870, framerates are neck and neck, with the GTX 560 Ti pulling ahead when AA is turned on and in Far Cry 2 and the tessellation-heavy H.A.W.X 2. In many cases, it actually reaches (and even surpasses) the performance of the Radeon 6950, though the 6950's 2GB frame buffer doesn't kick in until games are played at higher resolutions like 2560x1600. The GTX 570, at $100 more expensive than the GTX 560 Ti, understandably pulls out ahead. This is mostly the case with the 6970, though Nvidia's DX11 performance shines once again in Metro 2033 and H.A.W.X. 2.
Overclocked, the GTX 560 Ti is a whole new animal. Though Crysis crashed to Desktop at 960MHz, the card was stable and showed significant gains in our other benchmarks, pulling ahead of the 6950 outright without noticeable noise increase from the card. Given that 1000MHz GTX 560 Ti's have a street price of $270, we think this is a very compelling mid-range competitor.
[h3]Summary[/h3]
The timing of the GTX 560's release makes this an awkward card in Nvidia's lineup, despite its solid performance. When the GTX 460 was released last year, its price/performance quotient was so impressive that it was an irresistible buy for leap-frogging upgraders who were using the GTX 8xxx and 9xxx series cards--the same people Nvidia is targeting with this release. But that means the GTX 560 Ti makes less of an impact than the GTX 460 did last year, especially since the 460 isn't being phased out.
For those of you that never made the GTX 460 jump, the GTX 560 Ti is a great buy. But for the many people already on GTX 460s, upgrading to a GTX 560 Ti doesn't make sense--you're better off overclocking or doubling up with a second GTX 460 in SLI.
What makes the GTX 560 Ti notable is how it affects the entire mid-range market. Nvidia's $250 pricing is pretty competitive, and has forced AMD to immediately make some pricing changes to its mid-range lineup. As Loyd Case wrote about in his hardware upgrade column, the best time to buy a piece of hardware is often after the next product in the same category (from any manufacturer) is released. That proves to be the case here: one of the immediate consequences of the GTX 560 Ti's release is how attractive it makes the newly priced Radeon 6950s and 6870s look--which is great for AMD fans. But that's not to discount the GTX 560 Ti's merits--you're getting a ton performance and overclocking potential for $250. For Nvidia fans who held off on the GTX 400 series, patience is paying off: the high-end GTX 580 is what the 480 should have been, and the mid-range GTX 560 Ti is what the 460 could have been. In other words, 2nd-generation optimized Fermi is a win across the board.
From tested.com
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[h4]AMD Radeon HD 6990 shows up in its metallic flesh, looking larger than life[/h4]
By Vlad Savov
posted Jan 26th 2011 7:09AM
What does the next great superpower of desktop graphics look like? Well, it shares an unmistakable family resemblance to the current champ, but its dimensions have somehow been made even larger. Yes, we're talking about AMD's Radeon HD 6990 -- a dual-GPU monstrosity that's set to serve as the company's 2011 flagship -- which has just been shown off at an Asia Pacific Fusion Tech Day gathering. Aside from the crazy imagery (one more after the break and a gallery at the source), we've found a promise that this polygon deliverator will be available in late Q1 2011. Which gives us just enough time to rent out a room big enough to house it. Now, when's Crysis 2 coming out?
[Thanks, Christopher]
engadget
By Vlad Savov
posted Jan 26th 2011 7:09AM
What does the next great superpower of desktop graphics look like? Well, it shares an unmistakable family resemblance to the current champ, but its dimensions have somehow been made even larger. Yes, we're talking about AMD's Radeon HD 6990 -- a dual-GPU monstrosity that's set to serve as the company's 2011 flagship -- which has just been shown off at an Asia Pacific Fusion Tech Day gathering. Aside from the crazy imagery (one more after the break and a gallery at the source), we've found a promise that this polygon deliverator will be available in late Q1 2011. Which gives us just enough time to rent out a room big enough to house it. Now, when's Crysis 2 coming out?
[Thanks, Christopher]
engadget
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[h4]AMD Radeon HD 6990 shows up in its metallic flesh, looking larger than life[/h4]
By Vlad Savov
posted Jan 26th 2011 7:09AM
What does the next great superpower of desktop graphics look like? Well, it shares an unmistakable family resemblance to the current champ, but its dimensions have somehow been made even larger. Yes, we're talking about AMD's Radeon HD 6990 -- a dual-GPU monstrosity that's set to serve as the company's 2011 flagship -- which has just been shown off at an Asia Pacific Fusion Tech Day gathering. Aside from the crazy imagery (one more after the break and a gallery at the source), we've found a promise that this polygon deliverator will be available in late Q1 2011. Which gives us just enough time to rent out a room big enough to house it. Now, when's Crysis 2 coming out?
[Thanks, Christopher]
engadget
By Vlad Savov
posted Jan 26th 2011 7:09AM
What does the next great superpower of desktop graphics look like? Well, it shares an unmistakable family resemblance to the current champ, but its dimensions have somehow been made even larger. Yes, we're talking about AMD's Radeon HD 6990 -- a dual-GPU monstrosity that's set to serve as the company's 2011 flagship -- which has just been shown off at an Asia Pacific Fusion Tech Day gathering. Aside from the crazy imagery (one more after the break and a gallery at the source), we've found a promise that this polygon deliverator will be available in late Q1 2011. Which gives us just enough time to rent out a room big enough to house it. Now, when's Crysis 2 coming out?
[Thanks, Christopher]
engadget
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Could that even fit in most cases? You'd have to make some modifications to your case
- 18,297
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Could that even fit in most cases? You'd have to make some modifications to your case
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MediaMonkey is VERY powerful if you can understand its complexity. If you havent figured out you can actually fine tune the auto conversion settings by going to tools > options > portable devices> find your device> configure > auto-convert.Originally Posted by omgitswes
Good looks on the mediamonkey tip. I finally got it set up the way I want it.
Mediamonkey Gold is, instantly converts my FLAC files to mp3 when I'm putting them on my ipod.
