In terms of the specifications and aesthetics of the card, it is a compact, cost-effective graphics card based on the new 40 nm GF114 GPU variant with model name GF114-200-KB-A1. The GTX 560 SE features 288 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, 24 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 1 GB of GDDR5 memory.
The performance of the card isn’t at all surprising. Slotting in between the GTX 550Ti and GTX 560 (non-Ti version). This card is competing against the HD 7770 which scores around 13500 points in the GPU score of 3D Mark Vantage and around 3500 in 3D Mark 11 so we can see the GTX 560 SE is slightly below this (by around 10%). Therefore the card should be priced significantly cheaper, as much as 25% cheaper given the fact it is slower and of the ‘old’ generation of 40nm video cards.
Power consumption figures are pretty good, the GTX 560 SE falls below both the GTX 560 and the slower GTX 550Ti card, offering decent performance per watt for a 40nm card. Although when the overclocking kicks in the power consumption probably soars. However, a
comparable Sandy Bridge based system with a HD 7770 instead of a GTX 560SE will consume about 20% less power for 10% more performance.
If Nvidia want this card to be successful we think they should be looking at both the HD 7770 and HD 6850 as competitors. Consequently a price tag of $130 sounds realistic as the HD 6850 costs $140 and the HD 7770 costs $160. The overclocking capabilities of the GTX 560 SE are good as well, overclocking can take the card almost to performance levels of the GTX 560 but obviously power consumption will rise significantly and overclocking headroom will vary between cards.
GTX 560 SE pictured and benchmarked