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Club3D GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition reviewed

by on25 March 2011
thumbtop-value-2008-lr

Review: A very silent partner


Club3D
recently launched its GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition graphics card that, as the name suggests, comes factory overclocked and strapped with special cooling. CoolStream cooler with two fans should provide superior cooling to the overclocked core and at the same time be quieter than Nvidia’s reference solution.

In fact, CoolStream can be found on Club3D’s GTX 550 Ti CoolStream Super OC Edition that launched yesterday, although with one fan only.

GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition card ended up overclocked to 880MHz for the GPU and 1760MHz for Shaders.  It features 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4100MHz and comes paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. We had a chance to check out GTX 560 Ti’s CoolStream cooler back at Cebit but today we’ll see how it fares aboard the GF114.

The card currently goes for about €214, which is about €5 more than Club 3D’s reference GTX 560 Ti goes for.

The GTX 560 Ti’s ticker is the GF114 GPU, which received plenty of positive acclaim so far and we’ve seen that the card boasts nice performance-per-clock ratio as well. Nvidia set GTX 560 Ti’s reference clocks at 822MHz for the GPU, 1644MHz for shaders and 4008MHz for memory. When the card is idle, the clocks go pretty low – 50.6MHz for the GPU, 101MHz for shaders and 67.5MHz for the memory.

Before we move on to the card, let us remind you that the GF114 is a derivation of GF104, as is evident from the number of transistors (1.95 billion). However, the GF114 packs a few improvements inherited from the GF110

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Before we show you the pictures, here’s what Club3D has to say about CoolStream technology:

" Club 3D CoolStream features high performance heatpipes that keep the components cool and outperform standard cooling solutions. Paired with a unique fan blade design, it increases airflow while reducing noise. The result is a dramatic increase of performance for your gaming and multimedia experience.

The name derived from Cool as in “cold”, together with Stream as in “flow”. A heatpipe contains fluid, which turns into gas (vaporizes) when it heats up, then it flows to the other end of the heatpipe. In this process, the gas looses the heat and changes back into fluid and returns to the place where it begun, thus creating a “flow” or stream.

CoolStream Technology will be used on Club 3D’s Nvidia and AMD chipset based products. This gives you up to 15% better heat dissipation than standard reference design coolers.

If you expect above the average performance on your Graphic card, Club 3D’s CoolStream Cooling Technology is just the kind of high performance that you have been looking for. Club 3D is currently using CoolStream Technology on HD 6900 + HD 6800, as well as on GTX 460, GTX 560Ti, GTX 550Ti, and will successively expand the range.
"

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Club3D GTX 560 Ti CoolStream is almost 22.9cm long, like the reference 22,9cm (9 inches), and the card is 2 slots wide.

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CoolStream cooler comes with 3 heatpipes and two 75mm fans. The fans are very quiet.

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As far as video outs go, we have here the classic Nvidia design i.e. two dual link DVIs and mini-HDMI out. Note that only two video outs can be used simultaneously. Nvidia included an HDMI sound device within the GPU, so there is no need for connecting the card to your motherboard’s/soundcard’s SPDIF out to get audio and video via HDMI.

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Geforce GTX 560 Ti comes with one SLI connector. This means you can combine up to two GTX 560 Ti cards in SLI mode for improved performance or image quality settings.

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The card has two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors.

 

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Unfortunately, Club3D GTX 560 Ti’s CoolStream OC Edition packaging didn’t come with additional converters or power cables. We really liked the box, especially for beings small and well designed, but we’d love to have seen at least a couple of mini-HDMI-to-HDMI dongles.

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Motherboard: EVGA 4xSLI
CPU: Core i7 965 XE (Intel EIST and Vdrop enabled)
Memory: 6GB Corsair Dominator 12800 7-7-7-24
Harddisk:   OCZ Vertex 2 100 GB
Power Supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 800W
Case: CoolerMaster HAF X
Fan Controler: Kaze Master Pro 5.25"
Operating System: Win7 64-bit
Nvidia 266.66_desktop_win7_winvista_64bit
AMD 11.2 CCC


3DMark 2011
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3DMark Vantage

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Aliens vs Predator

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Dirt 2

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Unigine Heaven

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TessMark

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Overclocking

Overclocking the GF114 should not be a problem, regardless of whether it’s reference or specially designed GTX 560 Ti. Most GTX 560 Ti cards will run stable at 920+MHz. Club3D’s cooling provides a nice foundation for a healthy overclock and we got to following results. We managed to push the GPU from 880MHz to 970MHz, and the card remained quiet throughout.

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Thermals and Noise

As far as noise levels go, the GTX 560 Ti CoolStream’s cooler is almost inaudible when idle, with GPU temperature around 34°C. The GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition is almost inaudible during operation too. In our case, intensive 3D resulted in GPU temperature of about 79°C, but it’s a pretty good balance between thermals and noise levels since the fan was inaudible throughout.

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Conclusion

Club3D recently launched its GTX 560 Ti non-reference card with CoolStream cooling, which was almost inaudible both in idle mode and under workload. We must say that we consider silence to be the prerequisite for recommending any GTX 560 Ti, as there are currently many quality and silent cards such as our today’s sample.

Of course, Club3D decided to make it GTX 560 Ti stand out of the crowd and introduced a factory overclock. So, the card runs at 880MHz (822MHz reference) for the GPU and 4100MHz for the memory (4008MHz effectively). The card has two dual-link DVI outs and one mini-HDMI out. Note however that mini-HDMI-to-HDMI converters aren't included with the card.

Club3D GTX 560 Ti CoolStream Edition currently goes for about €214, which is only €5 more than you’d pay for Club3D’s reference GTX 560 Ti. You can check out the prices here.

In conclusion, Club3D GTX 560 Ti CoolStream OC Edition card is a factory overclocked card that provides extra performance and silence at the same time. The card will chew up 1920x1600 smoothly, regardless of your game of choice and it will definitely be a good choice for those looking for a faithful and silent companion.

Top_Value_2011


Last modified on 27 March 2011
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