Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo 1GB Video Card Review

Palit has released a Limited Edition GTX 560 Ti. Let's check out what the Twin Light Turbo is all about and see if it can do anything to really stand out.

Published
Updated
Manufacturer: Palit
15 minutes & 28 seconds read time

Introduction and The Package

Introduction

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Video cards are a bit few and far between these days and I'm not 100% sure it's going to pick up anytime soon. I suppose it's going to come down to AMD. If they release part of the HD 7000 series before XMAS, no doubt December will be busy, but if they don't, it's going to be a busy 2012 as we should see new cards from both NVIDIA and AMD.

Today, though, it's all about the GTX 560 Ti from Palit. We saw the other day a press release from the company show up telling us about the new GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo Limited Edition and straight away our attention was grabbed.

The GTX 560 Ti has been a great model for NVIDIA offering some excellent mid-range performance at a fantastic price point. We've seen many renditions of the model and today Palit are showing us a new one. The question we wonder is, what's the hook? What's going to grab us and convince us that we want this card?

Well, there's only one way to find out. But before we get into the performance side of things, the first thing we need to do is look at the package to see what's going on inside the box. Once that's done we'll take a closer look at the card itself before looking at the specifications. We'll then get into the fun stuff and see just what kind of performance this new GTX 560 Ti from Palit is able to offer us.

That covers just about everything, so let's not delay any longer and just get stuck into the package.

The Package

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Checking out the box, we don't have too much going on with just a nice simple design seen on the front giving us the brand and the model. Turning over, we get a bit more detail on the card and see exactly what's going on while also finding out some of the main features; nothing too out of the ordinary at all.

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In typical Palit style, the inside of the box is pretty bare with a quick install guide, driver CD and dual Molex to 6-Pin PCIe power connector. As usual, the bundle is pretty small; it's not uncommon at all from Palit as we quite often see the company offer us some of the cheapest variants of cards. If that comes at the cost of a few less bells and whistles in the box, I don't think people are going to complain.

The Card & Specifications

The Card

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Checking out the card, we instantly get this feeling we're looking at a passive cooled card, but we're not. Instead, there are two fans behind the cooler and we've seen this kind of design before from another company on a higher end model. It's proven to be very strong and it will be interesting to see how it fairs on the mid-range beast that is the GTX 560 Ti.

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Taking a look around the card, we can see towards the back we've got two 6-Pin PCIe power connectors here, while closer to the front we've got a single SLI connector giving us the ability to run two of these cards in SLI.

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On the I/O side of things we've got a single HDMI port on the left and VGA port on the right, while in the middle we see two Dual-Link DVI connectors. In typical Palit fashion, we again have a pretty strong line-up in the I/O side of things.

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The other thing that stands out on the card once we installed it in our system is the little LED lights that are present on the board, helping give off a red glow. It makes the card look great once installed and against our ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z that uses the same black / red color scheme, the card looks fantastic.

Specifications

While there's no clear OC labeling on the card, the fact it's got the "Turbo" tag in it pretty much tells us that the card is going to be overclocked. Palit haven't gone too crazy, but they have given us a bump in both the core and memory department.

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Above we can see the core comes in at 835MHz, slightly up on the default 822MHz. This in turn pushes the Shader to 1670MHz from 1645MHz. As for the 1GB of GDDR5, that's been bumped from 4008MHz QDR to 4100MHz QDR. It's nothing too crazy, but a nice little bump across the board that should yield some strong performance.

Test System Setup

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We would like to thank the following companies for supplying and supporting us with our test system hardware and equipment: Intel, ASUS, MSI, Western Digital and Corsair.

Why do you use a Z68 platform with x8 / x8 instead of an X58 one with x16 / x16? Z68 vs X58 - Which is The Better Gaming Platform?

On the testbed side of things nothing has changed since the last time we looked at a video card, so there's not a lot that needs to be said. On the comparison front we'll be checking out our Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo against the two main mid-range offerings from AMD - the HD 6870 1GB and slightly lower HD 6850 Vapor-X.

There's not much else that needs to be said, so let's just get into the performance side of things to see what's going on.

Let's get started!

The FPS Numbers Explained

When we benchmark our video cards and look at the graphs, we aim to get to a certain level of FPS which we consider playable. While many may argue that the human eye can't see over 24 FPS or 30 FPS, any true gamer will tell you that as we climb higher in Frames Per Seconds (FPS), the overall gameplay feels smoother. There are three numbers we're looking out for when it comes to our benchmarks.

30 FPS - It's the minimum number we aim for when it comes to games. If you're not dropping below 30 FPS during games, you're going to have a nice and smooth gaming experience. The ideal situation is that even in a heavy fire fight, the minimum stays above 30 FPS making sure that you can continue to aim easily or turn the corner with no dramas.

60 FPS - It's the average we look for when we don't have a minimum coming at us. If we're getting an average of 60 FPS, we should have a minimum of 30 FPS or better and as mentioned above, it means we've got some smooth game play happening.

120 FPS - The new number that we've been hunting down over recent months. If you're the owner of a 120 Hz monitor, to get the most out of it you want to get around the 120 FPS mark. Moving from 60 FPS / 60 Hz to 120 FPS / 120 Hz brings with it a certain fluidity that can't really be explained, but instead has to be experienced. Of course, if you're buying a 120 Hz monitor to take advantage of 3D, an average of 120 FPS in our benchmark means that in 3D you will have an average of 60 FPS, which again means you should expect some smooth gameplay.

3DMark 11

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.1

Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com

Product Homepage: http://www.3dmark.com/3dmark11/

Buy It Here

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world's most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC's gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

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Straight off the mark we can see that the GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo offers some great performance against the AMD offerings.

Unigine Heaven Benchmark

Version and / or Patch Used: 2.5

Developer Homepage: http://www.unigine.com

Product Homepage: http://unigine.com/press-releases/091022-heaven_benchmark//

New benchmark grants the power to unleash the DirectX 11 potential in the gift wrapping of impressively towering graphics capabilities. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. With the interactive mode emerging experience of exploring the intricate world is ensured within reach. Through its advanced renderer, Unigine is one of the first to set precedence in showcasing the art assets with tessellation, bringing compelling visual finesse, utilizing the technology to the full extend and exhibiting the possibilities of enriching 3D gaming.

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Looking at Heaven performance, we continue to see strong numbers from the GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo because of that superior tessellation performance.

Benchmarks - Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.2

Version and / or Patch Used: Benchmark Demo

Timedemo or Level Used: Built-in Test

Developer Homepage: http://www.ubi.com/UK/default.aspx

Product Homepage: http://www.hawxgame.com/

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. The game is the sequel to Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., released in 2009.

The game begins with Colonel David Crenshaw participating in a routine patrol mission in the Middle East. After halting an insurgent attack, a volley of missiles is fired at the Air Force base that Crenshaw was stationed at, with one of the missiles disabling Crenshaw's aircraft, resulting Crenshaw being in enemy captivity. A joint strike force composed of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and a Ghost Recon squad executes an operation to rescue Crenshaw. In Scotland, Royal Navy Pilot Colin Munro encounters an unidentified passenger aircraft that explodes from an on-board bomb when undergoing training exercise. In Russia, an air force squadron led by Colonel Denisov and Captain Dmitri Sokov engages separatist aircraft but is ordered to retreat from the region after numerous Russian military installations have been attacked.

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Looking at HAWX 2, we see some great performance again and we've got playable numbers across the board including the higher resolution 2560 x 1600 setup.

Benchmarks - Mafia II

Mafia II

Version and / or Patch Used: Latest Steam Update

Timedemo or Level Used: Built in Benchmark

Developer Homepage: http://www.2kczech.com/

Product Homepage: http://www.mafia2game.com/

Buy It Here

Mafia II is a third-person action-adventure video game, the sequel to Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. It is developed by 2K Czech, previously known as Illusion Softworks, and is published by 2K Games. The game is set from 1943 to 1951 in Empire Bay (the name is a reference to New York's state nickname "The Empire State"), a fictional city based on San Francisco and New York City, with influences from Chicago and Detroit. The game features a completely open-ended game map of 10 square miles. No restrictions are included from the start of the game. There are around 50 vehicles in the game, as well as licensed music from the era.

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Mafia II sees some strong performance at 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200; unfortunately we drop below that 60 FPS mark at the highest resolution. Still, we see very good numbers at the lower ones that will result in some extra smooth gameplay.

Benchmarks - Lost Planet 2

Lost Planet 2

Version and / or Patch Used: Benchmark Demo

Timedemo or Level Used: Built in Benchmark - Test A Scene 1

Developer Homepage: http://www.capcom.com/

Product Homepage: http://www.lostplanet2game.com/

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. The last words imply possible DLC additions to the game, "There's nothing to be gained by wiping out snow pirates... unless you had some kind of grudge."

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Lost Planet 2 is a really intensive game and we see all our cards struggle to break that 60 FPS mark at any resolution. Because of the heavy tessellation and the strong tessellation performance from the GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo, though, you can see we're extremely close to that 60 FPS average we need at the lowest resolution.

Benchmarks - Aliens vs. Predator

Aliens vs. Predator

Version and / or Patch Used: Standalone Benchmark

Timedemo or Level Used: Built in Benchmark

Developer Homepage: http://www.rebellion.co.uk/

Product Homepage: http://www.sega.com/games/aliens-vs-predator/

Aliens vs. Predator is a science fiction first-person shooter video game, developed by Rebellion Developments, the team behind the 1999 original PC game, and published by Sega for Microsoft Windows, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. The game is based on the Alien vs. Predator franchise, a combination of the characters and creatures of the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise. There are three campaigns in the game, one for each race/faction (the Predators, the Aliens and the Colonial Marines), that, while separate in terms of individual plot and gameplay, form one overarching storyline.

Following the storyline of the campaign modes comes the multiplayer aspect of the game. In this Multiplayer section of the game, players face off in various different gametypes in various different ways.

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Another intensive game that manages to sneak in that 60 FPS average we need at 1680 x 1050. Moving above that, we see all our cards fall back below those playable numbers we need.

Benchmarks - Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.0.2

Timedemo or Level Used: Dark Tower

Developer Homepage: http://www.eidos.com/

Product Homepage: http://www.justcause.com/

Just Cause 2 employs the Avalanche Engine 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in Just Cause. The game is set on the other side of the world from the original Just Cause, on the fictional island of Panau in Southeast Asia. Panau has varied terrain, from desert to alpine to rainforest. Rico Rodriguez returns as the protagonist, aiming to overthrow the evil dictator Pandak "Baby" Panay and confront his former mentor, Tom Sheldon.

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Under Just Cause 2 we can see that we've got that 60 FPS mark we need at 1680 x 1050, but as we move up in the resolution table our FPS falls below that 60 FPS mark we aim for.

Benchmarks - Metro 2033

Metro 2033

Version and / or Patch Used: Latest Steam Update

Timedemo or Level Used: Built in Benchmark

Developer Homepage: http://www.4a-games.com/

Product Homepage: http://www.thqnordic.com/

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360.[3] In March 2006, 4A Games announced a partnership with Glukhovsky to collaborate on the game.[4] The game was announced at the 2009 Games Convention in Leipzig;[5] a first trailer came along with the announcement.[6] A sequel was announced, currently titled Metro: Last Light.

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Like we've seen in a few tests, that 1680 x 1050 performance on the really intensive games is really close to that average we like to get. We're seeing 58 FPS out of our Palit GTX 560 Twin Light Turbo here which we'd pretty much consider playable; you might drop a detail level just slightly, though, to make sure everything is silky smooth.

Benchmarks - Dirt 3

Dirt 3

Version and / or Patch Used: Latest Steam Update

Timedemo or Level Used: Built in Benchmark

Developer Homepage: http://www.codemasters.com/

Product Homepage: http://www.dirt3game.com/

DiRT 3 boasts more cars, more locations, more routes and more events than any other game in the series, including over 50 rally cars representing the very best from five decades of the sport. With more than double the track content of 2009's hit, DiRT 3 will see players start at the top as a professional driver, with a top-flight career in competitive off-road racing complimented by the opportunity to express themselves in Gymkhana-style showpiece driving events.

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Moving into Dirt 3, we see some strong performance at 1680 x 1050, while the HD 6870 manages to just scrape in as well. We can see that the GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo manages to offer us that 60 FPS average at 1920 x 1200 as well which is nice.

Benchmarks - Total War: Shogun 2

Total War: Shogun 2

Version and / or Patch Used: Latest Steam Update

Timedemo or Level Used: Built in Benchmark

Developer Homepage: http://www.creative-assembly.co.uk/

Product Homepage: http://www.totalwar.com/shogun2

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Onin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

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Under the lower 720P preset we can see strong performance from the GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo. When we move to 1920 x 1080 and the high preset, you can see that all our cards struggle.

Benchmarks - Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.01

Timedemo or Level Used: Ranch Long

Developer Homepage: http://www.ubi.com/

Product Homepage: http://www.farcry2.com/

Buy It Here

The Dunia Engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2 by the award-winning Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers the most realistic destructible environments, amazing special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storm effects, real-time night-and-day cycle, dynamic music system, non-scripted enemy A.I. and so much more.

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Looking at Far Cry 2, we can see strong performance across the board with our Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo having no issue dealing with this game at any resolution.

Benchmarks - High Quality AA and AF

High Quality AA and AF

Our high quality tests let us separate the men from the boys and the ladies from the girls. If the cards weren't struggling before they will start to now.

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When we crank up the detail with AA and AF, we can see that Far Cry 2 goes ok still, but Aliens vs Predator and Mafia II does struggle.

Temperature Test

Temperature Tests

The temperature of the core is pulled from MSI Afterburner with the max reading used after a completed run off 3DMark Vantage and the Performance preset.

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One of the flaws to this cooler can be that the temperature of the card isn't as good. You can see here, though, the Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo comes in looking very good at 67c.

Sound Test

Sound Tests

Pulling out the TES 1350A Sound Level Meter we find ourselves quickly yelling into the top of it to see how loud we can be.

After five minutes of that we get a bit more serious and place the device two CM away from the fan on the card to find the maximum noise level of the card when idle (2D mode) and in load (3D mode).

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This is one of the biggest benefits to this style of cooler - it's near silent. I could actually hear my own main rig over my testbed, and my own rig isn't that loud.

Power Consumption Tests

Using our new PROVA Power Analyzer WM-01 or "Power Thingy" as it has become quickly known as to our readers, we are now able to find out what kind of power is being used by our test system and the associated graphics cards installed. Keep in mind; it tests the complete system (minus LCD monitor, which is plugged directly into AC wall socket).

There are a few important notes to remember though; while our maximum power is taken in 3DMark06 at the same exact point, we have seen in particular tests the power being drawn as much as 10% more. We test at the exact same stage every time; therefore tests should be very consistent and accurate.

The other thing to remember is that our test system is bare minimum - only a SSD hard drive is used with a single CD ROM and minimal cooling fans.

So while the system might draw 400 watts in our test system, placing it into your own PC with a number of other items, the draw is going to be higher.

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Power Draw doesn't hold any surprises coming in just over the 300 Watt mark. Nothing too crazy at all and most power supplies aren't going to have a problem dealing with this kind of setup.

Final Thoughts

Like we said in the introduction, video cards are really few and far between at the moment and it's clear that some VGA-only companies are feeling it. With no new clear models from both AMD and NVIDIA for the time being, companies are instead opting to just mix up some of the much loved mid-range models.

Mixing up the GTX 560 Ti is hard, because at launch we saw so many versions of the card. Today Palit has done a great job of showing us something different. The Twin Light Turbo version of the card not only offers some good performance thanks to its little overclock on offer, but comes in at a good temperature and in near silence.

Considering some of the FPS we see coming out of the card here, the fact you're able to get it at such low volume is always appreciated. The only thing we don't know is the price, since the card hasn't quite hit the channel yet. As usual, Palit always get us the card nice and early and we work hard to offer a review quickly for them.

If the past is anything to go by, though, and it's fairly safe to assume it is, then the Palit GTX 560 Twin Light Turbo will hit at the perfect price point. Palit tend to not let the bundle do the talking and instead let the card do it. Today the card says I can offer good performance with little noise, and that's a sentence we like to hear.

The Palit GTX 560 Twin Light Turbo is ultimately the epitome of a great mid-range card. It should hit at a strong price point, offers good performance and has a cooler that really stands out for all the right reasons.

If you're thinking about getting a new video card because you just can't be bothered waiting for the next iteration of cards from NVIDIA or AMD, then this is a great card that hits the mid-range market perfectly. As always, Palit do a fantastic job of not disappointing.

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Shawn takes care of all of our video card reviews. From 2009, Shawn is also taking care of our memory reviews, and from May 2011, Shawn also takes care of our CPU, chipset and motherboard reviews. As of December 2011, Shawn is based out of Taipei, Taiwan.

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