Review: Zotac GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition

Overview

You didn't think you were only going to get one version of the new GTX 560 Ti out of us did you? Always willing to push a little further here's Zotac's take on the new card, the Zotac GTX 560 Ti Limited Edition 448 Cores.

Now, in the Asus GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Direct CU II review we've already spoken about how it's not really a standard Nvidia GTX 560 Ti at all, bar the nomenclature.

So we wont spend any more words discussing Nvidia's new marketing strategy for its old chips.

But there is another interesting facet to this new GTX 560 Ti's make up. And that's how the individual manufacturers create their cards.

Nvidia has made no reference designs for this chip and that means there are no hard and fast rules for the clockspeed settings.

And that, in turn, means the card manufacturers can release what are effectively overclocked cards straight off the bat.

Benchmarks

You can immediately tell the slight performance boost the out-of-the-box factory overclock gives you.

It's easy to assume from that the Zotac is the faster card but, while that is true at stock settings, the Asus card will easily outstrip the Zotac when you start waving the overclocking stick around.

DirectX 11 tessellation performance

DirectX 11 gaming performance

Verdict

So, in steps Zotac, it of the overclocked AMP! edition cards, with it's own up-clocked version of the GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Editon.

Compared with the Asus GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Direct CU II version we've previously checked out this leaps out of the box with a 33MHz boost in clockspeed and a subsequently speedier shader clock too.

Granted that's hardly a lot to shout about in terms of clockspeeds, but it does give a nice little boost in the Heaven score.

If you're not much of a tinkerer and prefer to leave your graphics at their stock settings then picking up a slightly higher clocked card oput of the box is probably more your bag.

That rings true in terms of pricing too. This Zotac card is around £30 cheaper than the Asus version with its vast cooling array.

The only reason to opt for that Asus card over this one would be if you were looking to push the card as fast as possible.

The smaller cooling setup on this Zotac card cannot cope with the 900MHz speeds we squeezed out of the Asus board. That's not to say we couldn't get anything out of this more diminutive card; we were able to push it up to 850MHz stably, though rather warmly.

Speaking of size though, the Zotac version is a far more space-conscious offering than the massive Asus card.

It's shorter and, while still a dual-slot part, it should fit happier in tighter chassis.

Zotac's GTX 560 Ti 448 card actually ends up making a lot more sense than the Asus version.

At £250 the Asus version is only a little cheaper than the same cooler-heavy GTX 570 Direct CU II from Asus.

Essentially making it a complete irrelevance by comparison.

The Zotac card however fits in nicely between the standard GTX 560 Ti and the standard GTX 570.

We'd still recommend the faster GTX 570 at only £35 more, but if you're already struggling to scrape together £220 for a new GPU, and lets face it who isn't, then the Zotac card has a lot going for it.

It's almost the same speed as a true Nvidia GTX 570 and comes in cheaper. It's not quite as well designed a card as the Asus offering, but in price positioning it just makes a lot more sense.

We liked:

Coming with higher clockspeeds out of the box, and a lower price-tag to boot, makes this a far more relevant version of the limited edition card.

We disliked:

It's still only a little cheaper than the fully-fledged GTX 570, so if you can save a little longer that will give you much more for your money.

Final word:

A GTX 560 Ti 448 that makes more sense in such a crowded marketplace.

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