NVIDIA today brought its second-generation Fermi hardware into the true mid-range while resurrecting the Ti badge not used since the GeForce 3 and 4 days.
The GeForce GTX 560 Ti directly replaces the GTX 460 and is about a third faster, owing both to 384 visual effects cores (up from 332) as well as a much higher 822MHz core and 1.64GHz shader clocks (up from 675MHz and 1.35GHz). Eight hardware tessellation engines also give it a steeper performance increase for DirectX 11 and OpenGL games that support the feature.
The chipset is targeted most consciously against the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and is often faster, in some cases getting close enough to challenge the speeds of the 6950.
Earlier features include 3D display on one or more displays, DirectCompute and OpenCL, and full hardware decoding for Blu-ray.
The card should officially hit $249. The launch is a full one and should see cards already available today that include ASUS, EVGA, MSI and others. Pricing will vary and should include some factory-overclocked models. Computer builders are also using the GTX 560 Ti immediately.
