Gigabyte GTX 560 OC Review

RHKCommander959 - May 17, 2011
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Testing:

The testing consists of running Aliens vs. Predator, Metro 2033, Crysis Warhead, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Just Cause 2, Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.1, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, 3DMark 11 Professional, 3DMark Vantage, and temperature/power consumption testing. Three common resolutions are used for all the tests with 4AA and 16AF settings, but the 3DMark tests have four resolutions/runs. After a run through all the tests, the card is overclocked to roughly its maximum stable capabilities and then tested again. Settings stay the same for each card tested so the results can be compared. All testing is done on similar hardware running 64-bit Windows 7. The charts are all organized in terms of best to worst performance.

Processor: Intel i7 920 @ 3.60GHz
Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P SE 1366
Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D-E
Memory: Mushkin Redline DDR3 1600MHz 6-8-6-24
Video Card: Gigabyte GTX 560 OC
Power Supply: Mushkin 800 watt Modular power supply
Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 1TB SATA
Optical Drive: LG DVD-RW
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Case: Hiper Osiris

Comparison Video Cards:

Overclocking:

Gigabyte GTX 560 OC 910/1125

I had set out with hopes to overclock this card well considering the card was factory overclocked already. The upgraded PCB components and heat sink also led me to believe it should do rather well. The card pushed (without voltage adjustment capability) to 910 MHz core and 1125 MHz memory using MSI Afterburner V2.20 Beta 2. 920 MHz and higher would result in crashing after a few test runs but 910 MHz was rock solid stable. 1135 MHz on the memory was unstable but lowering it to 1125 MHz made it stable. Gigabyte has included software called Easy Boost on the driver CD which has the same functionality but still no voltage control. The program also has some nifty features like BIOS backup and flashing, version number, and so on. Overclocking was simple with trial and error finding where the card would stop freezing on the core and then the memory. Temperatures were great and the card operated silently in comparison to the case fans. With voltage modifications, I'm sure this card could have gone a good deal further. Stock voltage was only 0.975V for the core.

Maximum Clock Speeds:

Testing for the maximum clock speed consists of looping Crysis Warhead and Unigine 2.5 for 30 minutes each to see where the clock speeds will fail when pushed. If the clock speed adjustment fails, then the clock speeds and tests are re-run until they pass the full one hour of testing.