KFA² GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB LTD OC Review

KFA² GeForce GTX 560 Ti LTD OC Review

Manufacturer KFA²
UK price (as reviewed) £247.87 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed) N/A

As far as mid-range graphics cards go, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB takes some beating. It costs less than £200, it's fairly quiet and it punches above its weight. It's proven itself to be the new mid-range king, and it's a great choice if you game at resolutions up to and including 1,920 x 1,080. Of course, there's one possible way to beat the standard GeForce GTX 560, and that's to buy an overclocked version such as KFA²'s new GeForce GTX 560 Ti LTD OC.

This is the first GeForce 500-series graphics card we've reviewed from KFA², and the company is hitting the market with a bang as far as the GeForce GTX 560 Ti LTD OC is concerned. The GPU core speed of a stock GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB is 820MHz, but KFA² has cranked this all the way to a lofty 950MHz. The stream processors have also seen a 260MHz increase, rising from 1,640MHz to 1,900MHz. Finally, the effective memory frequency has been boosted to 4.4GHz (effective) from 4.2GHz (effective).


These are huge overclocks by anyone's standards, but KFA² hasn't just cherry-picked GPUs here. On the unique white-coloured PCB are an additional four phases of PWM circuitry - making for an 8+1-phase layout - and a custom cooler. KFA² has also upgraded one of the 6-pin power connectors to an 8-pin connector, allowing for more stable power delivery for overclocking. All the added hardware will mean water-cooling this card could prove tricky, though, due to the significant deviation from the reference PCB design.


Meanwhile, the custom cooler comprises a large aluminium heatsink to cool the GPU, another heatsink for the VRMs and an 80mm fan that cools both. Exhaust air is passed out of both ends of the cooler, and while it would be preferable if all the hot air was blown out of the rear of the case, few GTX 560 Ti 1GB coolers do this so this isn’t a particular criticism of KFA²’s cooler. In short, this card is a very different beast compared to the reference sample we reviewed last month.

Specifications

Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 950MHz
Pipeline 384 stream processors (1,900MHz), 32 ROPs
Memory 1GB GDDR5, 4.4GHz effective
Bandwidth 140.8GB/sec, 256-bit interface
Compatibility DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1
Outputs/Inputs DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, 1 x SLI
Power connections 1x 6-pin, 1x 8-pin side-mounted
Size 230mm long, dual-slot
Warranty Two years