Without any doubt, the nVidia Geforce 560Ti has been one of the best bang-for-your-buck releases in the last year. So, with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" adage being thrown firmly out the window, Zotac appears to be preparing to release a Limited Edition 560Ti on steroids.
Your vanilla 560Ti features 384 Cuda Cores and a 256-bit wide memory bus, but tends to run at a much higher clock speed out the box than its more upmarket siblings to keep up with competitors in the performance race. The new (pictured) 560Ti will instead have 448 active Cuda cores and a 320-bit wide bus, whilst potentially seeing lower default clock speeds in order to keep TDP under control.
Earlier this month a leaked nVidia datasheet of SKU's was released detailing such a GTX 560Ti; the exact specs of this Zotac version aren't known, but they probably won't deviate too far from that listed. Rather than being based on the GF114 core of the 560Ti, the 448 Cuda Core iteration would be a version of the GF110 GPU seen on the 570 and 580, clocked at 730MHz and 3.8GHz on the GPU and memory respectively. The 560Ti (448) therefore would have 32 fewer cores than the 570, and a price-point smack between the 560Ti and 570.
The trouble is, there's not an awful lot of room between these price points and there's no guarantee that the 448 core version will be generally faster than the standard 560Ti. It's also difficult to see if an approx. £200 GTX560Ti (448) could compete with the myriad excellent 3rd party 560Ti's already on the market and 570's at <£240 from a price-performance aspect. The key will be the performance and overclocking potential of the card, but it's possible that it will sit in a no-mans-land which doesn't justify the additional cost versus the ever more impressive 560Ti from a budget standpoint.
If the spec sheet is to be believed however, the 560Ti 448 will also serve as a lower price for entry into 3-way SLi for Fermi. This may just prove niche enough to tempt a few punters for whom 3-way SLi with 570's is unworkable due to cost of other factor.
Sources: Fudzilla, TechPowerUP, SweClockers
