Cooler Comparison
The heatsinks of the MSI GTX560Ti's are very similar in design however the 448 core Twin Frozr III is slightly longer and instead of having a rough base, it's a lot smoother in comparison.
GTX560Ti-448 Heatsink
Another advantage the Twin Frozr III has over the previous incarnation is that it has an extra heatpipe. This should increase the heat dissipation of the Twin Frozr III, spreading the heat dump across the aluminium finned heatsink array.
Naked Comparison
Comparing the two cards with the heatsink removed it becomes clear that these two cards are very different beasts. The 448 core obviously is based around the GF110 core as opposed to the GF104. This means the whole card layout is more akin to the GTX570 than the GTX560. There are ten 128mb IC's rather than the 8 256 IC's on the 384 core. Both cards use a 6+1 VRM design however the 448 core has a third more MOSFET's and also has a voltage controller allowing fine voltage adjustment on the core, aux power and memory. The power delivery method is located towards the front of the card rather than the end although both designs make use of twin 6pin sockets.
Voltage Controller
The voltage regulation comes courtesy of the uP1981A regulator and allows fine adjustments of Core, memory and auxiliary voltages in 1mV increments.
VRM
The VRM is an improved design and features Military Class II Components. The SFC (Super Ferrite Choke) has higher current for better overclocking ability. Hi-C CAP for GPU provides more precise voltage and all Solid CAPs provide a longer lifespan.
Memory
The memory IC's used are K4G10325FG-HC04 from Samsung which doesn't bode well as we have seen in the past that the Hynix type tend to be much better overclockers. We will as always test the overclocking ability of both the core and memory later in the review.
GPU Core
Finally we reach the core (pun intended) of the MSI GTX560Ti-448 Power Edition. The GF110 is the same core used on both the GTX570 and flagship 580 only with less CUDA core than the GTX570 and two less than the much more expensive GTX580. It is still based upon the 40nm process though which should equate to decent temperatures and with less cores to keep cool, this should only serve to reduce temps even further.
With the visuals wrapped up it's time to take a look at the all new test setup and revised suite of benchmarks we will be using...
