There's nothing quite like a new graphics card to provide a quick and very obvious boost to games experienced on a PC.
That's precisely what the Zotac GeForce GTX 560Ti supplied.
After the easiest installation and set-up I've ever experienced -- I had the card up and running in what felt like a matter of minutes -- I had the Zotac GeForce GTX 560Ti chewing on games like Batman: Arkham City. And over the last number of months, I've had the opportunity to play many current and older games (2-3 years older) with no issues whatsoever (provided I stayed on top of ensuring I always had the latest drivers installed).
I was initially afraid that the due to the tight confines of my PC case, that overheating might be an issue but after playing Crysis, Saints Row: The Third, Half-Life 2, StarCraft II, and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at length with details turned up as high as the rest of my system would allow, I didn't experience any issues related to heat.
Of course, it resulted in more heat because the card is working and doing a lot, but nowhere near the kind of heat that I would have been concerned about.
The fan is on the noisy side to be sure -- not rattling, just relatively loud -- but since I do almost all of my gaming with a headphones, I hardly ever noticed this. Just to provide a gamer comparison: It's not as loud as the fan on the original run of Xbox 360s.
It's actually too bad that many PC cases have no way to see the cards inside because the GeForce GTX 560Ti looks pretty darn nice. Which leads me to my biggest gripe with the card: It got me thinking about upgrading the rest of my PC.
If I swapped out the RAM and CPU, got a new case with clear sides... That would make these games scream along with my bank account so I'm holding off on upgrades for the time being.
Taken from the point of view of someone that will never get into overclocking PC components (i.e. me), the Zotac GeForce GTX 560Ti is a fine card and for about $250US most places it's a relatively inexpensive way to boost the performance of games now and hopefully for the next few years.
- Aaron Simmer
FULL SPECIFICATIONS:Model ZT-50306-10M
GPU GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Core Clock 822 MHz
Core Processors 384 Stream Processors
Shader Clock 1645 MHz
Memory Size 1GB
Memory Type GDDR5
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Clock 4000 MHz
DVI 2Dual-Link DVI Supported Yes
HDMI 1 x HDMI 1.4a w/audio
DisplayPort 1
Max Resolution 2560 x 1600
Interface PCI Express 2.0 x 16 (Compatible with 1.1)
Cooler Type Fan (Dual Slot)
SLI Supported Yes
Recommended PSU Wattage 450-Watt
DirectX DirectX 11
HDCP Ready Yes
RAMDAC 400 MHz
Package Contents
- 1 x DVI-to-VGA adapter
- 2 x Dual MOLEX to 6-pin PCIe power adapter
- 1 x Driver Disk
- 1 x ZOTAC Boost Premium software bundle
Dimensions 4.376in x 9.3in - 111.15mm x 236.22mmWeight 2.3100
- 1 x User manual
Warranty 2-Year Standard Warranty; Limited Lifetime Extended Warranty
