Final Thoughts
When talking about graphics cards they all start out the same and it is up to the manufacturer to make changes to make the card better than the reference design. As always ASUS has done this with great success. The 560 Ti DirectCU II Top card has a very solid and clean design, add the DirectCU II cooling system and factory overclock to 900MHz and you really have something here.
The DirectCU II cooling system is made up of 2 large cooling fans on top of a large heatsink. The heatpipes in the heatsink make direct contact with the GPU for even better cooling. Temperatures were very good in our testing, not going over 61 degrees celsius during any gaming time or benchmark testing. The noise generated by the card is a little bit louder that say a reference card, but it is not much louder at all.
With the 560 Ti DirectCU II Top you are going to be able to play pretty much any DirectX11 game at full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution with good in-game settings and good image quality settings (4xAA and 16xAF). So you really cannot complain that much at all.
With the release of the 660 Ti series of cards, this card really is irrelevant if your price range is that of $275 – $315. Now if you want to save $40 over the 660 Ti then this card is still a very viable option and anyone upgrading from a lesser card would definitely like the improved performance. For being over a year old this card can still throw down and for that reason we are giving it a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Ability to play any DX11 game with good settings
– DirectCU II cooling
– Factory Overclock
– Super Alloy Power components
Cons:
– Sort of irrelevant with the release of the 660 Ti cards
