VR-Zone takes a sneak peek at a GTX 560 from Gainward's Phantom series… not to mention some overclocking.
The GTX 560 is aimed at filling in the gap between the GTX 560 Ti and GTX 550 Ti, which is presently still occupied by the older GTX 460 1GB. Gainward has been kind enough to supply us with a GTX 560 for this preview.
Gainward will have three version of the GeForce GTX 560 at launch. In addition to the plain vanilla edition, there will be two overclocked models, as detailed in the table:
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 | Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Golden Sample | Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Phantom | |
| Core Clock | 810MHz | 822MHz | 822MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1620MHz | 1645MHz | 1645MHz |
| Memory Clock | 2004MHz | 2020MHz | 2020MHz |
Read Gainward's full press release here.
The factory overclock on the Phantom is understandably modest as Gainward is aiming for lower temperatures and noise instead. Curiously enough, clockspeeds are no higher on the Golden Sample even though this has always been Gainward's overclocking focused series.
A Closer Look
We have with us today the Phantom edition, which uses an unusual heatsink arrangement. The two 80mm fans are underneath the aluminium fins. While we don't have any hard numbers on whether this arrangement helps to reduce noise, the card runs quite silently even under load.
The positioning of the fans may slightly improve cooling of the power circuitry and memory chips, which are not otherwise in contact with the heatsink.
Gainward has opted for a VGA+DVI+HDMI output configuration. We would prefer to see double DVI+HDMI though.
Overclocking
We were able to achieve a pretty decent memory overclock, unfortunately the core topped out at 955MHz. It would have been nice to see the GTX 560 hit 1GHz, which we've seen some GTX 560 Tis do before.
| Overclocking Results – Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Phantom | |||
| Reference | Factory Overclock | Maximum Overclock | |
| Core Clock | 810MHz | 822MHz | 955MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1620MHz | 1645MHz | 1910MHz |
| Memory Clock | 2004MHz | 2020MHz | 2201MHz |
Gainward bundles an overclocking utility with its graphics cards, known as Expertool.
Performance
Overclocked, the GTX 560 can beat its more expensive brother. Here are some numbers:
Look out for our full review of the GTX 560!
