Five Overclocked GeForce GTX 560 Cards, Rounded-Up

We were foiled in our quest to find the best vendor-provided GPU cooler for Nvidia's GeForce GTX 560. But out of the ashes sprung a round-up of cards armed with those very same solutions. Which of these five GF114-based boards is right for you?
            This story was conceptualized as a means to compare graphics card coolers from different vendors. Because no two GPUs have the exact same overclocking headroom, we wanted to take one GeForce GTX 560 and drop solutions from Asus, ECS, Galaxy, MSI, and Zotac onto that bare board. With thermal, acoustic, and performance data, we would have been able to give you a definitive answer as to whose heat sink and fan combination does the best job of pulling heat away from Nvidia's GPU. Surely, this would have been great information to have when overclocking.
Unfortunately, that plan was foiled by a number of variables that we simply couldn’t overcome to our satisfaction. For example, the cooler designers employ a surprisingly diverse range of fan power cable plugs, which aren't interoperable with any one card's connector. Moreover, fan temperature profiles vary from one card's firmware to another's, affecting our thermal and acoustic results.

With five GeForce GTX 560 cards in-hand, though, we still had the makings of a respectable round-up. So, we abandoned the idea of isolating cooler/fan effectiveness and forged ahead to bring you a comprehensive look at five examples of Nvidia's roughly-$200 contender.

	Asus GTX 560 DirectCU II TOP	ECS Black GTX 560	Galaxy MDT4 GeForce GTX 560	MSI N560GTX Twin Frozr II OC	Zotac GeForce GTX 560 AMP!
Graphics Clock	925 MHz	870 MHz	830 MHz	870 MHz	950 MHz
Shader Clock	1850 MHz	1740 MHz	1660 MHz	1640 MHz	1900 MHz
Memory Clock	1050 MHz	1000 MHz	1002 MHz	1020 MHz	1100 MHz
GDDR5 Memory	1 GB	1 GB	1 GB	1 GB	1 GB
Cooler	DirectCU II	Reference	Custom	Twin Frozr II	Custom
Size	10.25" x 5"	9.5" x 5"	8.75" x 5"	10" x 5"	9.5" x 5"
Connectors	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	4 x DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI	2 x DL-DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI
Form Factor	Dual-slot	Dual-slot	Dual-slot	Dual-slot	Dual-slot
GPU Voltage	0.912 V Idle 1.012 V Load	0.950 V Idle 0.987 V Load	0.912 V Idle 0.987 V Load	0.912 V Idle 0.987 V Load	0.912 V Idle 1.15 V Load
GPU Voltage Adjustment	Asus Smartdoctor	Not supported (MSI Afterburner)	Galaxy Xtreme Tuner HD	MSI Afterburner	Not supported (Stock 1.15 V)
Special Features And Software	N/A	N/A	Quad-Display Support	Includes game: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light	Includes game: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Warranty	3-Year parts & labor	2-Year labor 3-Year parts	2-Year labor 3-Year parts (if registered in 30 days)	3-Year parts & labor	2-Year Standard, Limited Lifetime Extended (if registered in 30 days)
Newegg Price	$219.99	$192.99	$229.99	$199.99	$219.99

As you can see, there’s a wide range of specifications applied to these cards, none of which match Nvidia’s reference 810 MHz core and 1002 MHz frequencies. The Galaxy model comes closest with its 830/1002 MHz clocks, but Zotac's AMP! edition goes all the way to 950/1100 MHz.
There’s a lot more distinguishing one board from the others than operating clock rates, though, as all of the coolers are unique as well. There's only one that matches the reference design. Some cards also include value-adds like games, and the Galaxy MDT supports as many as four display outputs and triple-monitor surround gaming. Of course, we also have to gauge how far our samples can be overclocked.

IC Fabrication

Thermal Power Plant

Thermal Power Plant Layout

Active and Passive Devices

What are Active Devices?
                An active device is any type of circuit component with the ability to electrically control electron flow (electricity controlling electricity). In order for a circuit to be properly called electronic, it must contain at least one active device. Active devices include, but are not limited to, vacuum tubes, transistors, silicon-controlled rectifiers (SCRs), and TRIACs.
                 All active devices control the flow of electrons through them. Some active devices allow a voltage to control this current while other active devices allow another current to do the job. Devices utilizing a static voltage as the controlling signal are, not surprisingly, called voltage-controlled devices. Devices working on the principle of one current controlling another current are known as current-controlled devices. For the record, vacuum tubes are voltage-controlled devices while transistors are made as either voltage-controlled or current controlled types. The first type of transistor successfully demonstrated was a current-controlled device.

What are Passive Devices?
                   Components incapable of controlling current by means of another electrical signal are called passive devices. Resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, and even diodes are all considered passive devices.
                    Passive devices are the resistors, capacitors, and inductors required to build electronic hardware. They always have a gain less than one, thus they can not oscillate or amplify a signal. A combination of passive components can multiply a signal by values less than one, they can shift the phase of a signal, they can reject a signal because it is not made up of the correct frequencies, they can control complex circuits, but they can not multiply by more than one because they lack gain.

Using Universal Gates to Form Logic Gates

Logic Gates

A logic gate is an elementary building block of a digital circuit . Most logic gates have two inputs and one output. At any given moment, every terminal is in one of the two binary conditions low (0) or high (1), represented by different voltage levels. The logic state of a terminal can, and generally does, change often, as the circuit processes data. In most logic gates, the low state is approximately zero volts (0 V), while the high state is approximately five volts positive (+5 V).

There are seven basic logic gates: AND, OR, XOR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and XNOR.

The AND gate is so named because, if 0 is called "false" and 1 is called "true," the gate acts in the same way as the logical "and" operator. The following illustration and table show the circuit symbol and logic combinations for an AND gate. (In the symbol, the input terminals are at left and the output terminal is at right.) The output is "true" when both inputs are "true." Otherwise, the output is "false."

AND gate

Input 1	Input 2	Output
0	0	0
0	1	0
1	0	0
1	1	1

The OR gate gets its name from the fact that it behaves after the fashion of the logical inclusive "or." The output is "true" if either or both of the inputs are "true." If both inputs are "false," then the output is "false."

OR gate

Input 1	Input 2	Output
0	0	0
0	1	1
1	0	1
1	1	1

The XOR ( exclusive-OR ) gate acts in the same way as the logical "either/or." The output is "true" if either, but not both, of the inputs are "true." The output is "false" if both inputs are "false" or if both inputs are "true." Another way of looking at this circuit is to observe that the output is 1 if the inputs are different, but 0 if the inputs are the same.

XOR gate

Input 1	Input 2	Output
0	0	0
0	1	1
1	0	1
1	1	0

A logical inverter , sometimes called a NOT gate to differentiate it from other types of electronic inverter devices, has only one input. It reverses the logic state.

Inverter or NOT gate

Input	Output
1	0
0	1

The NAND gate operates as an AND gate followed by a NOT gate. It acts in the manner of the logical operation "and" followed by negation. The output is "false" if both inputs are "true." Otherwise, the output is "true."

NAND gate

Input 1	Input 2	Output
0	0	1
0	1	1
1	0	1
1	1	0

The NOR gate is a combination OR gate followed by an inverter. Its output is "true" if both inputs are "false." Otherwise, the output is "false."

NOR gate

Input 1	Input 2	Output
0	0	1
0	1	0
1	0	0
1	1	0

The XNOR (exclusive-NOR) gate is a combination XOR gate followed by an inverter. Its output is "true" if the inputs are the same, and"false" if the inputs are different.

XNOR gate

Input 1	Input 2	Output
0	0	1
0	1	0
1	0	0
1	1	1

Using combinations of logic gates, complex operations can be performed. In theory, there is no limit to the number of gates that can be arrayed together in a single device. But in practice, there is a limit to the number of gates that can be packed into a given physical space. Arrays of logic gates are found in digital integrated circuits (ICs). As IC technology advances, the required physical volume for each individual logic gate decreases and digital devices of the same or smaller size become capable of performing ever-more-complicated operations at ever-increasing speeds.