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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti: A Retrospective and Relevance in 2025

Examining a legend of the past in the context of modern requirements.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Fermi Architecture: The Foundation of 2011

The GTX 560 Ti, released in 2011, is based on the Fermi architecture (GF114). It was NVIDIA's first generation with support for DirectX 11, but lacks modern technologies such as RTX or DLSS. The card is built on a 40nm manufacturing process, which is considered outdated as of 2025. Unique features include support for PhysX for enhanced physics in games and 3D Vision for stereoscopic 3D—technologies that are almost obsolete today.

2. Memory: Modest Specifications for Modern Tasks

GDDR5 and 1 GB: Minimalism of the Past

The graphics card is equipped with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 128 GB/s. This was sufficient for games of the 2010s, but in 2025, even basic projects like Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield require at least 4–6 GB of VRAM. The memory capacity of the GTX 560 Ti is insufficient for high-resolution textures or complex scenes, resulting in decreased FPS and data loading from SSD/HDD.

3. Gaming Performance: Nostalgia over Practicality

1080p? Only for Older Projects

In 2010s games like Skyrim or Battlefield 3, the GTX 560 Ti delivered 40–60 FPS on high settings. However, in 2025, even CS2 or Fortnite on low settings at 1080p will run at 20–30 FPS. There’s no question of 1440p or 4K—this card does not support resolutions higher than 1080p for current games. Ray tracing is absent, as is upscaling (DLSS/FSR).

4. Professional Tasks: Extremely Limited Potential

CUDA: Support Exists, but the Power is Lacking

With 384 CUDA cores, the GTX 560 Ti is theoretically suitable for basic tasks: rendering in Blender, video encoding in HandBrake. However, its performance is several times lower than even budget cards of 2025. It is unsuitable for editing 4K video or working with neural networks. OpenCL compatibility is present, but drivers haven't been updated since 2018.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP 170 W: Inefficiency by 2025 Standards

With a TDP of 170 W, the card required decent cooling. Cases with good ventilation and a 500 W power supply were recommended. Today, such specifications seem excessive—modern GPUs with similar performance (like the GTX 1650) consume 75–100 W. The noisy cooling system (typically 1–2 fans) also falls short compared to passive and low-profile solutions.

6. Comparison with Competitors: Battles of the Past

AMD Radeon HD 6950: The Main Rival

In 2011, the GTX 560 Ti competed with the Radeon HD 6950 (2 GB GDDR5). Both cards showed similar FPS levels, but AMD offered more VRAM. Today, both models are equally outdated. Among modern equivalents (in terms of price on the secondary market), the GTX 1050 Ti can be highlighted, which is twice as energy-efficient and supports DirectX 12.

7. Practical Tips: Caution and Compromises

Power Supply and Compatibility

- PSU: Even in 2025, the GTX 560 Ti requires a power supply of 450–500 W with a 6-pin connector.

- Platforms: Compatible only with motherboards featuring PCIe 2.0 x16. Modern PCIe 4.0/5.0 are backward-compatible, but performance won’t improve.

- Drivers: Official support has been discontinued. The last version is 391.35 (2018).

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price on the secondary market (~$20–30).

- Suitable for retro gaming (games from the 2000s to early 2010s).

- Reliability: Many units are still operational.

Cons:

- Does not support DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3.

- Insufficient VRAM for modern tasks.

- High power consumption.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the GTX 560 Ti Suitable for in 2025?

This graphics card is an artifact of its era, best considered in two scenarios:

1. Retro Enthusiasts: For building a PC in the style of the 2010s or running classic games without modifications.

2. Budget HTPCs: For media centers where performance is not required (video playback, office tasks).

For gaming, video editing, or machine learning, the GTX 560 Ti is hopelessly outdated. Its purchase is justified only as a nod to nostalgia or a temporary solution with a budget of up to $50. In all other cases, modern budget models like the NVIDIA GTX 1650 or AMD RX 6400 are better options.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti is a monument to past technologies, reminding us how rapidly the industry evolves. In 2025, it remains a niche status, but for most users, it has become a part of history.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2011

Model Name

GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Generation

GeForce 500

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

1,950 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

40 nm

Architecture

Fermi 2.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

1024MB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

1002MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

128.3 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

13.17 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

52.67 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

105.3 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.238 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

384

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

170W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (11_0)

CUDA

2.1

Power Connectors

2x 6-pin

Shader Model

5.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.238 TFLOPS

Hashcat

Score

36798 H/s

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448

1.286 +3.9%

Radeon 630 Mobile

1.265 +2.2%

GeForce GTX 560 Ti

1.238

Radeon E9172 MXM

1.223 -1.2%

Radeon R7 M380

1.194 -3.6%

Hashcat / H/s

Radeon HD 6850

38717 +5.2%

GeForce 940M

36824 +0.1%

GeForce GTX 560 Ti

36798

GeForce GTX 770M

35068 -4.7%

GeForce GTX 470

34753 -5.6%