It looks like the 28nm GPUs may take a while, which means we are stuck with AMD’s and NVIDIA’s selection at 40nm, namely HD 6000 and GT 500. The high-end GPUs will take another six months, so NVIDIA is planning to release slightly polished GTX 560 Ti.
GTX 560 Ti goes up against HD 6870 and HD 6950 in performance, while the next product from NVIDIA is GTX 570 that raise the bar another notch, putting it slightly above HD 6970 in performance. This has been the situation for a very long time, since neither NVIDIA nor AMD have made any price adjustment. With the performance difference there is also a price gap around $100, something NVIDIA intends to fix says VR-Zone.
NVIDIA has plans to launch a whole new GTX 560 Ti, that will be called GTX 560 Ti but not quite being that. The current GTX 560 Ti is based on GF114 with 384 CUDA cores, while the new one will use GF110. GF110 comes with 512 CUDA cores with all clusters active as in GTX 580 and GTX 590, while GTX 570 has 1 CUDA cluster with 32 cores closed. The new GTX 560 Ti has two of these clusters turned off, for a total of 448 CUDA cores.
| GTX 560 | GTX 560 Ti | GTX 560 Ti “2” | GTX 570 | GTX 580 | |
| Circuits | GF114 | GF114 | GF110 | GF110 | GF110 |
| Node | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm | 40nm |
| CUDA cores |
336 | 384 | 448 | 480 | 512 |
| GPU frequency |
810 MHz | 822 MHz | ? | 732 MHz | 772 MHz |
| Shader frequency |
1620 MHz | 1644 MHz | ? | 1464 MHz | 1544 MHz |
| Memory bus |
256-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory buffer* | 1024 MB | 1024 MB | 1 280 MB | 1280 MB | 1536 MB |
| Memory frequency |
4008 MHz | 4008 MHz | ? | 3600 MHz | 4008 MHz |
| Bandwidth | 128 GB/s | 128 GB/s | ? | 152 GB/s | 192.4 GB/s |
| TDP | 150W | 170W | ? | 219W | 244W |
| SLI support |
2-way | 2-way | 3-way | 3-way | 3-way |
*Reference
The idead with this new card is to fill the void NVIDIA has in the lineup, and with a $100 gap the void is quite big. The new GTX 560 Ti will end up in between GTX 560 Ti and GTX 570 in price, and most likely performance. The card is expected to have a reference design that is identical to GTX 570 in look and size.
It is closer related to GTX 570 than GTX 560 Tiand we really hope NVIDIA comes up with another name than rebranding it as GTX 560 Ti. GTX 565 feels more natural or perhaps GTX 570XT (XT is bad when used by NVIDIA, contrary to AMD naming).
New GTX 560 Ti and GTX 570 will be identical externally?
One theory is that NVIDIA wants to stop the manufacturing at TSMC: GF119, GF118, GF116 and GF114 and prepare for the coming 28nm circuits. It would mean that the current GTX 560 Ti would disappear, to be replaced by the new, better and more expensive version based on GF110, but this is just speculation.
Both NVIDIA and AMD are expected to have their first cards on 28nm out in 2012, possibly late 2011. Both companies are starting from the low end and move up the ladder, so those waiting for a faster card will have to wait. There are no concrete details today, but it looks like the 28nm GPUs in the higher segment will come in Q2 2012.
There is no information on price or availability.
