EVGA GTX 560 Ti DS review

EVGA have pushed up the clocks on the stock GTX 580 - but can you push it further?

EVGA GTX 560 Ti DS
Are EVGA just confusing matters with so many GTX 580's? We think so

TechRadar Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Decent overclock provided over stock card

  • +

    Good further overclocking potential

  • +

    Great third-party cooler

Cons

  • -

    Price too close to HD 6950

  • -

    Another GTX 560 Ti

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We'll come right out and say it – there are too many 1GB GTX 560 Ti cards on the market. EVGA is the major culprit, producing an astounding five slightly different takes on Nvidia's reference card.

This, the GTX 580 Ti DS edition, comes overclocked to 900MHz to the reference card's 882MHz, and two cooling fans to trump just one on the original model.

The memory's been cranked up 200MHz or so in this 'super overclocked' edition too, but for the majority of people this card's aimed at, it's not so much the clock speeds EVGA has set that matters, it's what's possible to achieve by tweaking it yourself.

It's not just the fans that bolster this particular GTX 560 Ti's overclocking potential. Under the unusually stylish outer case lie three heatpipes, as well as heatsinks for the memory and voltage regulator. That amounts to clock settings that teetered around the 1,000MHz mark in our test rig, with the shaders operating at 2,000MHz. Bonkers, no?

Even if you're happy with the ready-baked overclock that EVGA has supplied, you're looking at an extra 5-10 frames per second in games like DiRT 3 and Shogun 2 over the stock card.

Our chief concern is that at £190, this is a GTX 560 Ti in AMD HD 6950 territory. In short, the 6950's a superior card out of the box, and if you can still flash the 6970 BIOS onto it, it overclocks better than any other.

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Phil Iwaniuk
Contributor

Ad creative by day, wandering mystic of 90s gaming folklore by moonlight, freelance contributor Phil started writing about games during the late Byzantine Empire era. Since then he’s picked up bylines for The Guardian, Rolling Stone, IGN, USA Today, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, VG247, Edge, Gazetta Dello Sport, Computerbild, Rock Paper Shotgun, Official PlayStation Magazine, Official Xbox Magaine, CVG, Games Master, TrustedReviews, Green Man Gaming, and a few others but he doesn’t want to bore you with too many. Won a GMA once. 

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