ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DCII TOP/2DI/1GD5 Pro Reviews

Our ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DCII TOP was a force to be reckoned with. At its stock settings the card was keeping up with the Radeon HD 6950 in nearly all of our tests, while the overclocked ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DCII TOP man handled the Radeon HD 6950 in 4 of our 5 games, including F1 2010. The overclocking was very simple with ASUS' programs and provided excellent improvements over a generic GeForce GTX 560 Ti. The DirectCU II cooling system did not disappoint either providing our card with cool temperatures throughout our tests. We would suggest to ASUS to raise the slider caps currently with SmartDoctor and GPU Tweak, to allow this, and other video cards, to be better utilized by enthusiasts. Even with the current price drops on AMD's 6950 cards, our ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DCII TOP is a competitive buy at $234.99 after rebates. We can say that this price has been justified with the overclock potential we received, and the performance improvements were real enough to provide gameplay experience differences. Given all of this, we feel the ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DCII TOP clearly has earned our HardOCP Editor's Choice Gold Award. It is about time a GTX 560 Ti has earned this award, and this video card meets our criteria in every regard, including the most important, price.

Gaming with ultra-high quality settings at 2,560x1,600 might be too much for it to handle, but it's an excellent 1080p performer that's backed up by ASUS's top-notch build quality. Choosing between a GeForce GTX 560 Ti and a Radeon HD 6950 remains a tough decision, but if your heart is set on NVIDIA-specific features such as PhysX and 3D Vision, ASUS's GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP is well worthy of consideration.

The ASUS GeForce GTX 560 TOP Direct Cu II is pretty much the perfect implementation of a GTX 560. It comes with substantially increased clocks out of the box which catapults it right at GTX 560 Ti performance levels. Thanks to the Direct Cu II thermal solution the card is whisper quiet in both idle and load, yet keeps the card at comfortable 70°C heat levels when fully loaded. Additional overclocking is also possible, we could reach up 975 MHz on our sample which is a nice step up from the 950-960 MHz we saw on other GTX 560 cards tested today. Coming at $220 it is also priced reasonably, both considering raw performance and cooling power. However, the full GeForce GTX 560 Ti is only $10 more, which offers better performance when maximum overclocking is taken into account. Overall I'm really impressed with the GTX 560 TOP Direct Cu II.

In essence then you're not really losing out opting for this cheaper, sub-£200 alternative. And it really is mighty cool.

Elsewhere, the two custom-designed cards from ASUS and Palit are commendable efforts from both companies. It’s impossible to separate the two based on raw performance, but overall, the ASUS card has a slight advantage because of its much more efficient cooler. That said, the Palit card isn’t too shabby, considering it managed to maintain operating temperatures at a reasonable level, in spite of its boosted clock speeds. As for pricing, the Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic will command a US$10 premium over reference cards, bringing its price to US$259, which we think is quite good value for money considering the performance it offers. And although ASUS couldn't provide us with global pricing at the time of publish, we can expect it to cost a US$10 to US$20 premium over reference cards too.

The performance was good right out of the box with both of these cards and when it came time to overclock them, I was able to hit over 1GHz on the GF114 cores of both cards and well over 1150MHz on the GDDR5 memory. These bumps in performance from overclocking were not just small bumps, but significant jumps in performance, allowing the GTX 560 Ti from NVIDIA and ASUS to wipe the floor with the HD 6870, its direct competitor. Either AMD has some price drops coming soon or it will be conceding the $250 price point to the performance of the GTX 560 Ti.

This card is available today for $269.99, making it a $20 premium over the reference clocked cards. NVIDIA’s GTX 560 Ti is the new iteration of the GTX 460 from last year with all SPs enabled and performance is excellent. This card also overclocks very well with over 1GHz attained using ASUS’s SmartDoctor software. ASUS has done their homework on the new GTX560 Titanium DirectCU II Top Edition video card, its fast, overclocked and runs cooler than the standard referance cards from most manufactures with its unique design. For those who love the NVIDIA name and their chipsets, today is a great day, rejoice with the ASUS GTX560!