MSI N560GTX-Ti Hawk

MSI N560GTX-Ti Hawk Review

NVIDIA has padded the higher ranks well with the 500 series while still serving the low-end. During this time, the manufacturers have come out with new revisions of the higher-end cards such as the GTX 560 Ti. The GTX 560 Ti has 384 CUDA processors and 1GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit memory bus. Reference Core Clock speed is at 822 MHz, 1645 MHz Shader and 1002 MHz for the memory. PCIe 2.0 x 16 is the standard for NVIDIA connectivity where AMD runs at 2.1 (generally). These cards support 2-way SLI, and a slew of features that NVIDIA has developed. 3D Vision and surround is readily supported along with PureVideo for HD and 3D multi-monitor support. Microsoft DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 are the gaming formats supported. The card up for review today was provided by MSI and is a variant of their Twin Frozr III dubbed Hawk. This model has been overclocked all the way to 950 MHz core, 1900 MHz Shader, and 1050 MHz memory. Four heat pipes and dual-fans (with special blades) cool the GPU core while a plate with thermal pads cool the memory and power circuits. MSI has designed the card to be easily highly overclocked with features including OVP bypass and two different fan modes can be selected with just the flip of a switch.