First Looks: Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample – Beyond The Limits

First Looks: Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample – Beyond The Limits

Gainward’s Golden

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti has been around for quite some time, yet graphics cards that make use of this GPU remain a popular choice among desktop users because of their competitive pricing. Straddling the line between mainstream and the high-end options, GTX 560 Ti graphics cards deliver to consumers a balance between reasonable pricing and above-average performance. That’s why Gainward, deeming that the GTX 560 Ti still bears relevance for budget-conscious consumers, brought us one of its best renditions of the said GPU in the form of the GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample.

Playing It Cool

This Gainward’s rendition of the GTX 560 Ti is a podgy piece of a graphics card. It is a dual-slot graphics solution that comes with a dual fan cooler. Underneath the fans, a system of heatsink and heatpipes virtually covers the card’s entire PCB (printed circuit board). The cooler’s exterior might not be too visually appealing, but it effectively does its job in keeping the GPU temperature under control. Under default settings, in which fans run at 30% (1020RPM) of their full speed, the GPU’s average temperature reads at 39 degrees Celsius. When manually set to 100% (3960RPM) while the GPU, memory, and shader clocks are overclocked to the maximum, the average GPU temperature can reach up to 47 degrees Celsius.

Tweaked Twice

Straight from the box, Gainward’s GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample operates with 900MHz GPU clock, 4200MHz memory clock, and 1936MHz shader clock. Given these specifications suggest that the card is factory-overclocked and much faster than a reference GTX 560 Ti card from NVIDIA. These clock ratings also make Gainward’s contender faster than other overclocked GTX 560 Ti cards in the wild such as those from Inno3D and Palit. Attesting to this premise are the results that we got using Futuremark’s 3DMark 11.

Auspiciously, we were able to squeeze out more graphics power from the GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample by making use of Gainward’s easy-to-use ExperTool 7.2 version. Utilizing this tweaking application, we ended up with a GPU clock rated at 968MHz. Much of the 3Dmark 11 scores remained favorable for Gainward, even when they are compared to the tweaked cards from Inno3D and Palit. Overclocking the card also resulted in performance increments on the game Metro 2033.

The GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample was tested on a setup made of Intel Core i5 750 2.67GHz processor, ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard, 2x 1GB Kingston DDR3-1066 memory modules, 600GB WD VelociRaptor hard disk drive, and AcBel 1000 Watts PSU, with Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit as operating system. The system’s average power consumption ranged from 238 watts to 240 watts, whether the graphics card was running at default or overclocked speeds.

Final Thoughts

Certainly, the Gainward GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample is one of the most powerful graphics cards in its class. As our test results reveal, it is capable of toppling its contemporaries, even those coming from brands that are more recognizable in local computer hardware stores. Its temperature and consumption are also up to standard – energy-conscious users may proceed pushing this card beyond its known limits without worrying. Locally, factory-overclocked GTX 560 Ti cards cost around PhP 13,250, so do expect that this Gainward is priced adjacent to the same mark as well.