Nvidia is re-launching its Titanium moniker introduced about ten years ago with the release of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card aimed at the performance mainstream market. The novelty brings new levels of performance to sub-$249 segment and manages to rival more expensive Radeon HD 6950 in certain cases.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card is based on the GF114 graphics processing unit (GPU), an improved version of the GF104 made using 40nm fabrication process with reduced power consumption and improved layout, which allowed to activate all compute elements as well as run the chip at higher clock-speeds. The model GTX 560 Ti has 384 stream processing units. 64 texture units, 32 render back ends, 8 tessellation engines and well as 256-bit memory controller. Nvidia clocks the GF114 chip of 560 Ti at 822MHz and its stream processors operate at 1644MHz. The designer recommends partners to install 1GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 4008MHz onto the GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics cards.

The novelty fully supports DirectX 11, OpenGL 4, OpenCL 1 as well as all the modern functionality, including hardware decoding of high-definition stereo-3D video and so on. In addition, the novelty supports Nvidia-exclusive features, such as CUDA-exclusive GPGPU software, PhysX and proprietary 3DVision stereo-3D feature.

"The GTX 560 Ti GPU has it all: awesome DX11 performance, terrific overclockability, and ultra quiet operation - attributes of the perfect performance GPU. With the GTX 560 Ti under the hood, and an awesome library of DX11 titles coming in the very short future, it is truly a great time to be a PC gamer," said Drew Henry, general manager of GeForce GPU business at Nvidia.

The Titanium moniker of the graphics card should emphasize very high performance potential of the novelty as well as its future-proof DirectX 11 architecture. Obviously, the Ti moniker will naturally attract attention (and bring back the memories as well as nostalgia) of those, who remember the GeForce 3 Titanium and GeForce 2 Titanium released in 2001 as well as GeForce 4 Titanium launched in early 2002.

With an estimated selling e-tail price starting at $249, the GTX 560 Ti is available now from the add-in card partners, including ASL, Asustek Computer, Colorful, ECS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, Jetway, Leadtek, MSI, Palit, Point of View, PNY, Sparkle, Zotac and others. At launch, there will be a wide assortment of GTX 560 Ti cards available, including those with stock clocks of 822MHz and others that are clocked much higher, including some at 1GHz.

Tags: Nvidia, Geforce, Fermi, GF114, 40nm