Confirming earlier rumors, Nvidia has officially acknowledged the existence of its non-Titanium GeForce GTX 560. While the GPU-maker wasn't gracious enough to reveal the card's full specifications, it says the GTX 560 will rest between last year's GTX 460 ($150-$170) and the new GTX 560 Ti ($240) in terms of pricing and performance. It also shared the card's benchmark results in three upcoming games: Duke Nukem Forever, Alice: Madness Returns, and Dungeon Siege III.
Referencing Valve's hardware survey, Nvidia noted that the most popular graphics card on Steam is 2008's GeForce 9800GT, while the most used resolution is 1920x1080. The company says this forces many gamers to make compromises in performance, graphical fidelity, or both in order to play modern titles at such a high resolution. Based on our recent budget graphics roundup, this is increasingly true for the GTX 460, which isn't ideal for maxing out demanding games.
That's precisely where the GTX 560 steps in: it's supposedly a bit snappier than the GTX 460, while it's expected to cost a little less than the full-fledged GTX 560 Ti. Nvidia says its upcoming entry will deliver solid performance when running the latest games at 1080p, even with PhysX and 3D Vision enabled. Additionally, when paired up in SLI, two Titanium-less GTX 560s will offer enough muscle to play games at 5760x1080 using Nvidia Surround without breaking the bank.
According to the company's benchmarks, the GTX 560 maintained "rock solid" frame rates while running Duke Nukem Forever at 1080p with stereoscopic 3D enabled. Likewise, the card ran Alice: Madness Returns maxed out at 1080p with stable performance. The company demonstrated its Nvidia Surround technology with Dungeon Siege III, running the game almost entirely maxed (8x AA instead of 16x) at 5760x1080. The GTX 560 offered "consistently smooth" frames.