ASUS ENGTX560Ti 448DC2/2DIS/1280MD5 Pro Reviews

A cooling masterclass by Asus, but the real GTX 570 can be picked up for around £260-odd.

If NVIDIA set out to fill a vacuum between the standard GeForce GTX 560 Ti and GeForce GTX 570, it more than achieved it with the new GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 cores. Cards based on this new SKU are priced somewhere in between the price-points of the two, but the performance measured shows it's tilting precariously close to the GTX 570. And why shouldn't it? The new GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores has everything the GTX 570 has - GF110 GPU, 1280 MB of memory over a 320 bit GDDR5 memory interface, 40 ROPs, and even the same reference clock speeds. It's just that the GTX 570 has about 7% more CUDA cores. Is this all sounding too good to be true? Well, here's the catch. First, the GTX 560 Ti 448 cores is a "Limited Edition" product, meaning that limited quantities of it will be produced. We think North American and European markets should digest all cards made in this winter shopping season alone. Next, it's a "Limited Availability" product, meaning that it will be available only in select North American and European markets. The ASUS GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores DirectCU II offers good performance that can handle all the latest titles extremely well. What makes the card unique is its triple slot cooler design which promises low temperatures, low noise and good overclocking capabilities. In our testing we saw low temperatures indeed, but it seems ASUS has been too greedy with low temperatures as fan noise is similar to dual-slot cards. In my opinion the biggest selling point of a triple slot cooler is the low noise potential it offers. My personal system has an ASUS GTX 580 DirectCU II, because low noise is paramount for me and I don't plan on using a multi GPU setup, so I have lots of space in my case anyway. Modern motherboards do offer PCIe slots that are spaced three slots apart, so the space issue might not apply to everyone.