Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Core Limited Edition Review

Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Core Limited Edition

Zotac’s take on the GTX 560 Ti 448 sees the GPU housed on a surprisingly svelte 23cm (9in) PCB, dressed up in Zotac’s typical black and orange livery. The pair of 6-pin PCI-E power connectors are end-mounted, and rear I/O outputs include twin DVI ports, a full-size HDMI port and a DisplayPort connector.

Meanwhile, a dual-slot cooler is tasked with keeping the GPU cool, which is mostly hidden behind the card’s metal mesh outer housing. Whipping that off reveals a triple copper heatpipe cooler mounted centrally atop the GPU. Two heatpipes emerge from the GPU contact plate and turn left, running along the top and bottom of the left hand heatsink, while the third turns right into the other bank of cooling fins. As the centrally mounted 80mm cooling fan is blowing down onto the heatsink, this means more heat will be exhausted out of the card’s rear backplate than into your case.


Cooling the card’s memory and power circuitry is a black aluminium base plate running the length of the card, with all ten 128MB GDDR5 chips actively cooled. The GPU is supplied with four power phases, with the memory receiving its own dedicated power phase, for a total of 5+1 phase power. The GTX 560 Ti 448 Core will also only have a limited production run, but the Zotac also packs dual SLI connectors for those looking for multi-GPU support. However, despite sharing a name with the GTX 560 Ti 1GB and being effectively a GTX 570 1.3GB underneath its heatspreader, the GTX 560 Ti 448 core will only work in SLI with matching GTX 560 Ti 448 core graphics cards.

As we expect from many GTX 560 Ti 448 partner cards, the Zotac is also factory overclocked. The core frequency has been boosted from 732MHz to 775MHz, a six percent increase, although the memory frequency remains unchanged at 950MHz (3.8GHz effective).


The bundle Zotac includes with the card is surprisingly light, though, with only a pair of Molex to 6-pin PCI-E power connectors and a DVI-to-VGA adapter included in the box, and no sign at all of Nvidia darling Batman: Arkham City. A five year warranty helps sooth the lack of Dark Knight fist-biffing, although you’ll need to register with Zotac inside oftwo2 weeks to be eligible, or you'll just default to the standard two-year warranty.

Specifications

• Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 560Ti 448, 775MHz
  
• Pipeline 448 stream processors (1,550MHz), 40 ROPs
  
• Memory 1GB GDDR5, 3.8GHz effective
  
• Bandwidth 152GB/sec, 320-bit interface
  
• Compatibility DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1
  
• Outputs/Inputs 2 x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, 2 x SLI
  
• Power connections 2 x 6-pin, end-mounted
  
• Size 230mm long, dual-slot
  
• Warranty Five years if registered, otherwise two years