Today we are looking at one of the sexiest GTX 560's released to date. This card is supplied in a pre overclocked state and features the awesome MSI Twin Frozr II cooler. We have very high expectations for this product and we will be comparing it to a wide variety of cards from both AMD and Nvidia partners.
The MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II is based around Nvidia's latest GF114 chip. The GTX560 Ti is identical to the GF104 (GTX460) in regards to specifications and transistor count although it has a full compliment of 384 CUDA cores enabled. There are many electrical enhancements when compared to the older design, which should deliver great power consumption figures.
Additionally, the hardware is based around a 256 bit wide GDDR5 memory interface with 32 ROPs and features branched geometry processing.
The MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II features clock increases from 822mhz to 880mhz on the core, and GDDR5 speeds enhanced from 1002mhz to 1050mhz.
Geforce GTX 460 1GB |
Geforce GTX 560
|
MSI N560GTX
|
|
Core Clock Speed | 675mhz |
823mhz
|
880mhz
|
Shader Units | 336 |
384
|
384
|
ROPs | 32 |
32
|
32
|
Transistors | 1950M |
1950M
|
1950M
|
Memory Size | 1024MB |
1024MB
|
1024MB
|
Memory Bus Width | 256bit |
256bit
|
256bit
|
Memory Clock | 900mhz |
1002mhz
|
1050mhz
|
The MSI N560GTX T1 Twin Frozr II arrives in a stylish, gatefold style box which places emphasis on the metal cooler.
The bundle contains literature on the product, various video converters (HDMI and VGA) and several power cables.
The MSI card is a complete overhaul on the reference design, featuring an aluminum heatpipe cooler with twin fan configuration. We have had very positive experiences with this cooler in the past. The card is a dual slot design, like the reference design.
It is possible to combine two of these cards in SLI, for enhanced performance and to improve image quality settings.
It requires two 6 pin PCI connectors to operate properly.
The card is supplied with two DVI ports and a single mini HDMI port. This is a rather limited output logic design when compared directly against AMD cards as they can combine six TDMS links into any output configuration they desire. If you want to power three monitors, you need two of these cards in a system.
The Twin Frozr II cooler is a fantastic design, formed around two banks of aluminum fins and a dual fan configuration. There are four thick heatpipes, which ensure that heat is dispersed between left and right banks.
MSi use Ni-C Cap with Tantalum Core, which is an extremely stable metal offering high conductivity and 15 times less leakage when compared to standard capacitors. MSI claim similar technology is used on space shuttles and satellites. These are part of the ‘Military Class II Components' ethic that MSI include with these high end products.
They also use Super Ferrite Core with 30% higher current capability and to offer an improved overclocking experience. We will check later how far the card can be pushed with voltage increases.
A GPUz overview of the MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II.
Today we are using one of KitGuru’s most powerful systems, a Core i7 970 based configuration – liquid cooled to 4.33ghz, with a Corsair AX1200 power supply – all built into a sexy Thermaltake Level 10 chassis.
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Power Supply: Corsair Ax1200
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 9-9-9-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Hazro Ultra Sharp HZ230Wi, Dell Ultrasharp U2410 Rev A00
System validation is available over here.
Other graphics cards for comparisons:
AMD HD6970
PowerColor HD6970 PCS+ (940/1425)
AMD HD6950
AMD HD6870
Sapphire HD6870 Toxic Edition (970/1150)
AMD HD6850
AMD HD5870
AMD HD5850
Asus GTX580 Direct CU II (782/1002)
nVidia GTX570
eVGA GTX460 FTW (850/1000)
nVidia GTX460
eVGA GTX460 768MB SC (763/950)
XFX HD5830 XXX (740/1125)
Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Catalyst 12.1
Forceware 266.66 WHQL
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
TessMark
ShaderToy
HQV 2.0 Software
Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Nikon D300S with R1C1 kit
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Games:
Resident Evil 5
Colin McRae Dirt 2
Lost Planet 2
Dead Space 2
Far Cry 2
Alien V Predator
Mafia 2
Tom Clancy H.A.W.X. 2
Metro 2033
Left4Dead2
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.
Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:
- Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
- Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
- Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
- Multicore CPU support
- Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
- Powerful C++ API
- Comprehensive performance profiling system
- Flexible XML-based data structures
1080p is a standard resolution we use with the Heaven Benchmark on all graphics cards, this means all review results are comparable throughout previous months.
Shaders are set to high, Tessellation to normal, anistrophy to 4 and Anti Aliasing is disabled.
The MSI N560GTX TFII is positioned right behind the AMD HD6950, registering only 1.5 frames slower. The MSI card is significantly faster than the excellent eVGA GTX460 FTW highlighting the benefits of the new architecture already.
Stone Giant is a benchmark tech demo that showcases and measures DirectX 11 performance using the BitSquid Engine. This is a very heavy tessellation dependant benchmark which runs very well on nVidia hardware.
All the nVidia cards lead with this particular benchmark, with the new MSI n560GTX TFII taking third place, behind the GTX570 and Asus GTX580.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.
A fantastic result for the MSI card, scoring over 19k in the performance level benchmark. This is actually more than the AMD HD6950 at reference clocks. Very impressive indeed. The eVGA GTX460 FTW by comparison scores just over 16,200 points.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.
After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.
A few cards switch positions from the last page, with the HD6950 edging out the MSI N460GTX with pure Direct X 11 performance. Still a very strong result and significantly faster than the last generation GTX460.
TessMark, is small synthetic graphics benchmark focused on Tessellation performance of Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4 capable cards.
Like Unigine Heaven, TessMark allows to select the level tessellation. The small difference is that TessMark proposes four differents levels:
- moderate
- normal
- extreme
- insane
Moderate and normal levels are levels we’ll find in real world applications like games. Extreme and insane levels are reserved for GPUs with high levels of tessellation processing power. We tested today with moderate, normal, and extreme settings to get an indication of the tessellation scaling with each card.
Nvidia solutions take all the top slots in this particular suite with the MSI 560GTX claiming third position.
ShaderToyMark is an OpenGL benchmark, developed with GeeXLab, and focused on pixel shaders only.
In the words of the author … Why ShaderToyMark? Simply because I recently played with the pixel shaders available with Shader Toy, a great WebGL tool for testing GLSL shaders. And I said to myself: that would be nice to see several of these shaders running at the same time in the same 3D window… ShaderToyMark was born.
The contributors of Shader Toy are all famous demomakers and their shaders are real gems. It’s just amazing to see what can clever people do with some sin/cos and other math tricks.
We are using the default settings for our testing today.
Again, the high end nVidia solutions lead the pack, however the MSI N560GTX puts in a good showing, outperforming the HD6950 by a couple of frames per second.
HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.
There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.
This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.
Read our initial analysis over here.
MSI N560GTX TFII | |
Dial
|
4 |
Dial with static pattern | 5 |
Gray Bars | 5 |
Violin | 5 |
Stadium 2:2 | 5 |
Stadium 3:2 | 5 |
Horizontal Text Scroll | 3 |
Vertical Text Scroll | 5 |
Transition to 3:2 Lock | 5 |
Transition to 2:2 Lock | 0 |
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video
|
5 |
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video
|
5 |
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed
|
5 |
5:5 FPS Animation
|
5 |
6:4 12 FPS Animation
|
5 |
8:7 8 FPS Animation
|
5 |
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)
|
5 |
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)
|
5 |
Random Noise: Sailboat
|
5 |
Random Noise: Flower
|
5 |
Random Noise: Sunrise
|
5 |
Random Noise: Harbour Night
|
5 |
Scrolling Text
|
5 |
Roller Coaster
|
5 |
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
Bridge Traffic
|
5 |
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text
|
5 |
Roller Coaster
|
5 |
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
Bridge Traffic
|
5 |
Luminance Frequency Bands
|
5 |
Chrominance Frequency Bands
|
5 |
Vanishing Text | 5 |
Resolution Enhancement
|
15 |
Theme Park
|
5 |
Driftwood | 5 |
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
Skin Tones
|
5 |
Total | 192 |
The new forceware drivers with this specific hardware generates a total score of 192 points, out of a possible 210. This is one of the highest scores we have seen from nVidia and shows that they are starting to catch up with AMD.
Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 is one of the finest solutions for the Blu-Ray experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the Bluray Disc of Avatar, one of our favourite sci-fi films in recent years.
Average CPU load is around 7 percent with it dropping to 2 percent in some scenes. The most we recorded was 15% which means the processor is mainly free to perform other duties if necessary.
Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.
Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.
The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II is miles ahead with this Direct X 10 powered game, followed by the flagship HD6970 from AMD. The MSI N560GTX slots in right behind the GTX570, averaging 106 fps.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.
To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.
Again, the MSI N560GTX TFII falls just behind the GTX570 scoring 1 fps less, which is a pretty incredible result. AMD solutions score well with this benchmark, although the powerhouse Asus GTX580 Direct CU II leads the pack.
Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.
Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.
Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.
Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High)
All the nvidia based boards claim the top spots, with the MSI N560GTX TFII ending up in third position, another strong result.
Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.
Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.
Dead Space 2 is a hell of a fun game but it doesn't tax any of the modern gaming cards, even at very high resolution and image quality settings. The MSI N560GTX has no problem powering through this engine, trailing behind the GTX570.
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.
We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.
As we have said many times before, the HAWX 2 engine is dramatically skewed in favour of nVidia hardware, with a GTX460 outperforming AMD’s flagship HD6970 by several frames per second. Still all solutions can handle this engine at 2560×1600. The MSI N560GTX TFII falls in behind the GTX570.
Mafia II is a gritty drama which chronicles the rise of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. As the game progresses, Vito will join the Falcone Crime Family and become a made man. There are 15 chapters in the game, connected into one storyline.
We tested at 2560×1600 with fullscreen: on, antialiasing:on , Anisotrophic filtering: 16x, Shadow Quality: High, Ambient Occlusion: on, Geometry Detail: High and APEX PhysX: medium.
With physX enabled, the AMD boards take a bigger hit, and the N560GTX TFII manages a perfectly playable experience, averaging 37 fps and never dropping into the danger zone. Great results again.
Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.
After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.
We are testing in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high.
Lost Planet 2 is a sponsored by nVidia game and as such as expect it to score well with their hardware. Unsurprisingly, it does. With the MSI N560GTX TFII outscoring the HD6970, although the minimum frame rate figures are slightly lower.
Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.
This engine support DX11 and was one of the integral releases for ATI when they launched the 5xxx series cards a while ago. Hardware tessellation is used on the crowd, as well as water and cloth objects. DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occulsion is also integrated with full floating point high dynamic range lighting.
We are testing in full DX11 mode.
The MSI N560GTX TFII maintains playable frame rates throughout all our testing scoring an average of 63 fps on our 30 inch screen, this is almost identical to the HD5870.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.
Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
As we had hoped, the Twin Frozr II cooler delivers a great set of results. The card, when under load, peaks at 60c when gaming. Thanks to the dual fan design it isn't generating much noise at all. The bios profile isn't aggressive either, peaking at around 2,400 rpm. Furmark obviously pushes the hardware further, causing core temperatures to rise to 67c and the fan profiles to spin to around 2,700 rpm. This is not really indicative of a real world situation, but it shows theroectical possibilities.
Return to ambient is a feature we have recently added to our reviews … we measure the time it takes for a solution to return to idle temperatures, immediately after full load. The faster the time, the better the cooler – for example a Noctua NH D14 cooler will return an Intel processor to idle temperatures much faster than a reference cooler. This is a good indication of how quickly a heatsink can dissipate heat.
The twin fan solution dramatically drops the temperatures to 55c (within 5 seconds), then the fan profile lowers and it takes another 15 seconds to return to idle. Great results from the Twin Frozr II cooler.
We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
The cooler is quiet under load, barely audible within a high performance gaming system. Furmark causes the fans to spin slightly higher, although noise emissions are still very impressive indeed.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.
Nvidia's power modifications to the GF104 transistor layout are noticeable, although the GTX460 wasn't that bad a design either on reflection. These are really almost identical to the XFX HD6950 XXX edition we tested a short while ago.
To overclock today we used the latest beta of MSI Afterburner, which is based on Rivatuner.
By increasing the voltage, we managed to get the core to over 1006mhz, a 14.3 percent increase. The GDDR5 memory maxed out at 1232mhz, a 17.3 percent increase. Very solid results indeed.
The final overclock produced almost 3 fps with the Unigine Heaven Benchmark, a positive increase indeed.
MSI have been producing some of the highest quality motherboards and graphics cards over the last year. When we heard that they were releasing a 560GTX with their Twin Frozr II cooler, we had high expectations that this would be one of the finest mid range cards on the market. We were right.
We have had experience with the Twin Frozr II cooler before on the last generation MSI GTX460, it worked wonders then and it is just as impressive with the latest nVidia chip. Temperatures at full load hold around 60c with lightning fast return to ambient transients.
Noise levels are equally as impressive, thanks to the thick quad heatpipe design, the fans never have to work too hard to keep the card running well within specifications. Power consumption is also a positive, with the card only demanding 145 watts when gaming.
When looking at performance results, this card never fails to excite. It can churn through any engine at high resolutions without breaking a sweat, Direct X 11 titles look great and run very smoothly, without any hitching and stuttering. It can often keep up with the HD6950, sometimes even outperforming it, depending on the engine.
KitGuru says: With a two year warranty and an asking price of just under £200, this is surely one of the best purchases you could make for a new system.