Galaxy GeForce GTX560 Ti MDT X5 Video Card Review @ [H]

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Galaxy GeForce GTX560 Ti MDT X5 Video Card Review - With the new Galaxy GeForce GTX560Ti MDT X5 video card it is possible to output to 5 displays even though this is a single GPU video card. Enjoy NVIDIA multi-display spanned resolution gaming without the need for two cards! Can this GTX 560 Ti based video card stand up in the latest games when spanned across three displays? We are surprised.
 
Very interesting product and review. Really wish we could have seen this in a 1.5 or 2 GB memory option, especially considering spot price of memory these days. Does admirably with 1GB, but cannot shake the notion that more would be better until FXAA becomes the norm.

Thanks again Kyle.
 
Nice review, and cool card. I like their method of lowering the resolution to achieve good framerates while enabling multimonitor. I see it as pretty much a way to keep costs down while still offering reasonable performance. I kind of wish there was an equally priced AMD card thrown in there at a comparable resolution (or number of pixels), just for reference on the charts. Still, cool!
 
You guys totally overrated this card. Practically anything from AMD > 6850 can do what this does with five displays, and isn't limited to wonky stuff like 1280 x 800. Calling this a good value compared to other GTX 560s denies the existence of the other half of the GPU market, which is nonsense. Also, for $330 you can almost get GTX 560 SLI or 6870 CrossFire, which practically doubles your performance for the same cost, and gives you either three or 5/6 display outputs. This thing isn't worth its asking price regardless of how you look at it.

PS I'd like to see a HD 6970 compared to this. They're both in the same price league and.display output league. Then tell me about "good value".
 
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XacTactX said:
You guys totally overrated this card. Practically anything from AMD > 6850 can do what this does with five displays, and isn't limited to wonky stuff like 1280 x 800. Calling this a good value compared to other GTX 560s denies the existence of the other half of the GPU market, which is nonsense. Also, for $330 you can almost get GTX 560 SLI or 6870 CrossFire, which practically doubles your performance for the same cost, and gives you either three or 5/6 display outputs. This thing isn't worth its asking price regardless of how you look at it.

PS I'd like to see a HD 6970 compared to this. They're both in the same price league and.display output league. Then tell me about "good value".
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+1

I can hear the Radeon HD6950 singing to this card:

Anything you can do,
I can do better.
I can do anything
Better than you.

The 6950 is:
- Cheaper
- Faster
- Has more memory if you buy a 2GB and still cheaper.
- Can do all the multi-monitor configs this card can and more (It can do 5x1 gaming whereas this 560 can't). Heck for $15-20 more I can buy a 6970 which will run circles around this card
- Even Nvidia only fanboys would be better off buying 2 plain GTX560s and SLIng them.
 
Lorien said:
+1

I can hear the Radeon HD6950 singing to this card:

Anything you can do,
I can do better.
I can do anything
Better than you.

The 6950 is:
- Cheaper
- Faster
- Has more memory if you buy a 2GB and still cheaper.
- Can do all the multi-monitor configs this card can and more (It can do 5x1 gaming whereas this 560 can't). Heck for $15-20 more I can buy a 6970 which will run circles around this card
- Even Nvidia only fanboys would be better off buying 2 plain GTX560s and SLIng them.
Click to expand...

QFT, Xactactx and Lorien are right here. I actually agree with Lorien!! :eek:

Oh and I LOL'd at the singing part of the post
 
Lord_Exodia said:
QFT, Xactactx and Lorien are right here. I actually agree with Lorien!! :eek:

Oh and I LOL'd at the singing part of the post
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I would agree too, if you are going to be doing nothing but 3-panel gaming. But the Galaxy card can go FAR beyond what the 6950 can do in a setting that looks beyond gaming. I did not feel it was "right" to show this card getting "dogged" or cast in a bad light when it is really much more than a mere 6950. Now throw in the fact that no other 560 in the world can do triple-display gaming and that warps the comparisons even more.

I think it is great to see a product like this out of Galaxy. This is outside of the box thinking that we need in the PC industry to keep it new and fresh.

If your thinking is narrow enough to see this as only a 6950 competitor, I would ask you to open your eyes a bit more. :) That's my 2 cents, and you may need change.
 
By far beyond, do you mean that it is essentially plug and play and less headache inducing than Surround/Eyefinity, along with the 5 monitor ability? I was trying to scan the review for anything else that might be considered a feature that places this card far ahead of the 6950 outside of gaming.
 
XacTactX said:
You guys totally overrated this card. Practically anything from AMD > 6850 can do what this does with five displays, and isn't limited to wonky stuff like 1280 x 800. Calling this a good value compared to other GTX 560s denies the existence of the other half of the GPU market, which is nonsense. Also, for $330 you can almost get GTX 560 SLI or 6870 CrossFire, which practically doubles your performance for the same cost, and gives you either three or 5/6 display outputs. This thing isn't worth its asking price regardless of how you look at it.

PS I'd like to see a HD 6970 compared to this. They're both in the same price league and.display output league. Then tell me about "good value".
Click to expand...

The point of this, this is the first, and only, NVIDIA-GPU based card allowing multiple display gaming from a single card. Sure, AMD has had this for years, and we made note of that, but this is the best offering on the NV side of things, if you want to do 3x1 gaming, or a 5-display setup, not requiring SLI. In that light, it is a great product for the NV side of things.

And a correction to your post, native is 3840x800 or 3840x1024 with 1080p display. And as indicated in the article, you can go higher, you can create a custom resolution of 5040x1050 which works fine.
 
Thanks for the review of this very interesting card. I too would like to see this technology on a 580.
 
amdgamer said:
For most of us, we only care about whether it can play Crysis. Some of us care whether it can fold, and some also care about how well it can bitmine but most of us just care about gaming!

Anyway, nice review of a pretty unusual product that definately is interesting.
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I put a pretty heavy focus on gameplay in the evaluation. Since Deus Ex is the newest game, I knew I had to get in there, and made it the front game there, boy I've enjoyed that game so much lately, really great game.
 
XacTactX said:
You guys totally overrated this card.
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No we did not. You have underrated it. And trust me on this one, we know a shitload more about the video card market than you do. Open your eyes and see the big picture. This is a big deal in many ways. Still yes it is a niche product, that may not fit YOUR niche, but the problem with people like you is that you can only assign value in your own specific scenario. We need to be a bit more outside that the box than that when we are writing for millions of people.
 
Cobalt35 said:
Thanks for the review of this very interesting card. I too would like to see this technology on a 580.
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First thing out of my mouth when Galaxy showed me this product a few months ago.
 
I can see how this product would appeal to someone who is interested in a Nvidia card and is interested in getting their feet wet into the world of multi-monitor gaming, and not even just that, but using it to enhance their work productivity. At $329, it's pretty affordable for an Nvidia card that allows you to use a multimonitor setup, and I like how it has everything you need to achieve that built right onto the card rather than requiring you to use external hardware to achieve the same result. (Don't take my $329 being affordable quote out of context by comparing it to other 560's, as that's not the comparison I'm trying to make.) I always felt like SLI technology itself was not really so much gimmicky, but the whole SLI bridge option never really appealed to me.

It wasn't untill I saw what Eyeinfinity could do that I realized that the best solution is for lack of a better word "SLI or Crossfire on a stick".

It's less of a hassle and provides a better experience and achieves a desired result. It's great to see that Galaxy was able to achieve this with a Nvidia card and keep it affordable at the same time. Galaxy has also been active on this forum and offers a good warranty, that's something I would keep an eye on if I were buying a Nvidia card.

I am in the AMD camp however, since I own a XFX 5870, but that's not to say I haven't used Nvidia products before, the last card I had was a 7900 GTX, and I'm sure you all remember how bad ass that card was paired with a FX-60 right around when Oblivion launched.

However, Galaxy is a name I will keep in mind should Nvidia step up it's game and come out on top against AMD in the future. Putting out products like this definitely doesn't hurt my opinion of them, it instead enhances them. I have always liked innovation even if I'm generally not an early adopter as I wait for prices to come down and kinks/glitches to be worked out.

BTW, Kyle, this article is a lot better than that infamous 5830 article that I shelled you on when it was released.

THIS is the kind of niche card that deserves an award!
 
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can this card be run in sli with another 560ti?
if so it would be close to 580 levels minus vram
 
n3zyd said:
can this card be run in sli with another 560ti?
if so it would be close to 580 levels minus vram
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As stated on page 1, there is no SLI connector, and no SLI support with this video card.

That was an excellent post above, Fail. You got the point we were talking about, with this video card.
 
Fail said:
I can see how this product would appeal to someone who is interested in a Nvidia card and is interested in getting their feet wet into the world of multi-monitor gaming, and not even just that, but using it to enhance their work productivity. At $329, it's pretty affordable for an Nvidia card that allows you to use a multimonitor setup, and I like how it has everything you need to achieve that built right onto the card rather than requiring you to use external hardware to achieve the same result. (Don't take my $329 being affordable quote out of context by comparing it to other 560's, as that's not the comparison I'm trying to make.) I always felt like SLI technology itself was not really so much gimmicky, but the whole SLI bridge option never really appealed to me.

It wasn't untill I saw what Eyeinfinity could do that I realized that the best solution is for lack of a better word "SLI or Crossfire on a stick".

It's less of a hassle and provides a better experience and achieves a desired result. It's great to see that Galaxy was able to achieve this with a Nvidia card and keep it affordable at the same time. Galaxy has also been active on this forum and offers a good warranty, that's something I would keep an eye on if I were buying a Nvidia card.

I am in the AMD camp however, since I own a XFX 5870, but that's not to say I haven't used Nvidia products before, the last card I had was a 7900 GTX, and I'm sure you all remember how bad ass that card was paired with a FX-60 right around when Oblivion launched.

However, Galaxy is a name I will keep in mind should Nvidia step up it's game and come out on top against AMD in the future. Putting out products like this definitely doesn't hurt my opinion of them, it instead enhances them. I have always liked innovation even if I'm generally not an early adopter as I wait for prices to come down and kinks/glitches to be worked out.

BTW, Kyle, this article is a lot better than that infamous 5830 article that I shelled you on when it was released.

THIS is the kind of niche card that deserves an award!
Click to expand...

I have to agree with you Fail. Nvidia should have pushed Surround on a single card with the 5-series. Surround still feels like a last minute addition to their feature set while AMD is pushing it heavily. SLI and CFX still have their own set of issues which can only be more obvious when dealing with multi-monitor gaming. I would love to see Galaxy put this tech on higher end cards, cards that could perform even better in games.
 
About time we see some kool innovation.

I actually see this as a business tool, but it can also game!

A question I have, can this card do 4x1 and 2560x1600 on the extra monitor?

This would be an amazing productivity setup. A centre 20"x2 + 30"x1 + 20"x2

In this configuration I could still do some "light" gaming on the 3)' with lower settings.

Man I like this.

BTW Brent, well done. One of the best Graphic card articles in a long time.

PS: I realize the centre 30" setup would be messed up, but in productivity mode I would not really care, and in gaming it would be fine.
 
SpeedyVV said:
A question I have, can this card do 4x1 and 2560x1600 on the extra monitor?

This would be an amazing productivity setup. A centre 20"x2 + 30"x1 + 20"x2
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Yes, the DVI port is dual-link, so it supports 2560x1600. DVI has a separate RAMDAC from the 4x HDMI ports. So you can run 4x1 on HDMI and leave DVI dedicated to separate 2560x1600 display, or the DisplayPort. But the DP and DVI share, so you can't use both separately like that. I have tried this, and had success, 4x1 on HDMI and 30" on DVI at 2560x1600, all working together.

BTW Brent, well done. One of the best Graphic card articles in a long time.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I think we also did a really good job on our Sapphire Toxic review too though, in fact I think we've done a lot of really good graphic card articles lately.
 
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Derangel said:
I have to agree with you Fail. Nvidia should have pushed Surround on a single card with the 5-series. Surround still feels like a last minute addition to their feature set while AMD is pushing it heavily. SLI and CFX still have their own set of issues which can only be more obvious when dealing with multi-monitor gaming. I would love to see Galaxy put this tech on higher end cards, cards that could perform even better in games.
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That's why I have a 5870, in case I ever want to go with multi-monitor gaming, LCD panels are really really affordable now, you can buy most 16:9 1920x1080 resolution panels in the 22-24 inch range for a mere $150-200 for a quality one, and it's really becoming more and more affordable.

Figure $300 for the 5870, and we're really talking about $750-$1000 here for the video card plus the monitors to take advantage of Eyeinfinity, and this is becoming the time to acquire and take advantage of this technology. I think the 7000 series will come out this year sometime before the end of the year (hopefully), and hopefully Nvidia has their answer to that ready and we have a good head to head by the 2 big players and come out ahead.

I'd like to see multi monitor gaming not just be a gimmick anymore (it's slowly creeping more and more into the mainstream, before it was really the most niche of niches, but with more and more games coming out these days deciding to throw some support for it in your Display Configuration options, there is even more reason to support this technology with your dollars.).

Towards that end, I like how Galaxy decided,"If Nvidia won't do it, we will."

Shouldn't need to be like that, Nvidia should decide to make their cards support multi-monitor gaming right out of the box like AMD's cards do.

I think that going forward it'll be standard and it'll be a smart business decision, and we will be all the better for it.

I think what really convinced me about this was the fact that a vendor took it on themself to offer a card with this kind of multimonitor support out of the box instead of waiting on their supplier to do it.

In either case, I'm hoping to adopt a multimonitor setup within the next year once I see how the 7000 series and Nvidia's answer shake out, as well as the rest of the system hardware. I can ride what I have untill then, a 5870 is nothing to sneeze at.
 
I like it, mainly because of its looks(brushed aluminum!) and Galaxy for adding a feature that Nvidia and its partners haven't yet put out in the market.

Only issue I have is that it is a GTX 560, although the performance is admirable in the games reviewed. Make it a GTX 580 with a nice brushed aluminum backplate and it would be a definite winner in my book.
 
Kyle and Brent; helluva a job on this one.

This card is a huge step forward for the green team. I have never really cared for the half-assed-dongle display port option of one card running multi-monitors, but it is very cool that Nvidia can now compete in that arena. Yes, Nvidia still has a long way to go, but ATI just lost one of their biggest selling points.

I own a couple Galaxy 470GTX's and have been very happy with their performance, but I have to admit I am surprised it is Galaxy who made this breakthrough. I would have bet on MSI or ASUS (RoG). Way to go Galaxy.

Now it is only a matter of time until we see a 570/580/590 doing this; competition is a wonderful thing.
 
Notleh said:
Kyle and Brent; helluva a job on this one.

This card is a huge step forward for the green team. I have never really cared for the half-assed-dongle display port option of one card running multi-monitors, but it is very cool that Nvidia can now compete in that arena. Yes, Nvidia still has a long way to go, but ATI just lost one of their biggest selling points.

I own a couple Galaxy 470GTX's and have been very happy with their performance, but I have to admit I am surprised it is Galaxy who made this breakthrough. I would have bet on MSI or ASUS (RoG). Way to go Galaxy.

Now it is only a matter of time until we see a 570/580/590 doing this; competition is a wonderful thing.
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No AMD didn't lose one of their biggest selling points. This is one card that can do it and if the only reason you're buying this card is to run multi-monitor gaming and you don't want to deal with DP adapters you're better off with a 6950 Flex or even a couple 6870 Flex cards. If every Nvidia card could do this than yes I'd agree that that selling point was lost.
 
Xac, one thing I think you will find about Kyle is that even though he is not shy about talking-the-talk, he is one of the few out there who publicly backs it up by walking-the-walk.

You do not have to accept it on blind faith, because over the years there is well documented evidence to support the fact that these guys do know what they are doing.
 
Derangel said:
No AMD didn't lose one of their biggest selling points. This is one card that can do it and if the only reason you're buying this card is to run multi-monitor gaming and you don't want to deal with DP adapters you're better off with a 6950 Flex or even a couple 6870 Flex cards. If every Nvidia card could do this than yes I'd agree that that selling point was lost.
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Derangel, I agree with you in principle, but you are making my point for me. This card may not be "the one" (I would not buy it) but it has broken through the barrier and opens the door for others. AMD has lost the single card/multi display competitive edge. They definitely still have a lead, but no longer have this distinct competitive selling point.
 
Notleh said:
Derangel, I agree with you in principle, but you are making my point for me. This card may not be "the one" (I would not buy it) but it has broken through the barrier and opens the door for others. AMD has lost the single card/multi display competitive edge. They definitely still have a lead, but no longer have this distinct competitive selling point.
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You're right and wrong at the same time.

Nvidia did NOT adopt this themselves, a VENDOR took it upon themselves to make this kind of card possible.

It's NOT a Nvidia standard technology, and it's particular to Galaxy at the moment.

Before you ask, yes, there is a distinction, and it's an important one that is the basis for the whole review of this card.

Quite frankly that's something a lot of people who have read this review remain ignorant of somehow.

Simply clicking on the Conclusion and thinking you've read the whole review is doing yourself a disservice (not directed at you Notleh).
 
Fail said:
You're right and wrong at the same time.

Nvidia did NOT adopt this themselves, a VENDOR took it upon themselves to make this kind of card possible.
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You have a point there. Still standard Nvidia tech foundation, but I can acknowledge the distinction.

Fail said:
Simply clicking on the Conclusion and thinking you've read the whole review is doing yourself a disservice (not directed at you Notleh).
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I am glad you made the distinction on your last sentence, because I read the whole review :D and stand by my opinion that this card is a big deal.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
No offense kyle but what can this card do that a 6950 can't

Both can run up to 5 monitors
Both can game on 3 screens
Both have 3d gaming capabiliies
Both can do FXAA
6950 can run higher resolutions and IQ since it has more vram & is more powerful in general
6950 can crossfire, all while doing those things I mentioned
6950 can game on 5 screen too.

I'm sure you know all this already, but your post left me to believe you needed to be reminded.

In fact it looks like the 6950 can do more than this card and costs less even.

I absolutely enjoyed your review. The card IS a good product and it is creative and galaxy (a really cool company) deserves a pat on the back, but a gold award is pushing it IMHO. That's why I said I agree when you overrated this card. It's not a piece of crap you guys liked it's a pretty good card you guys say is fantastic.
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My bad, I was thinking he said 6850, which made no sense to me. SORRY.
 
Notleh said:
You have a point there. Still standard Nvidia tech foundation, but I can acknowledge the distinction.


I am glad you made the distinction on your last sentence, because I read the whole review :D and stand by my opinion that this card is a big deal.
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It's a very big deal and it will be a bigger deal if Nvidia pull its head out of its ass for the 600-series and enables multi-monitor gaming on one card or if other AIBs follow Galaxy's example.
 
Hey, if you don't like us giving it an Gold, you feel free to give it a Silver on your own site. It is worth a Gold at HardOCP, whether you like it or not. The innovation alone makes this card Gold-worthy in my eyes. If you we do not hold AIBs in high regards in these types of situations, we will be destroying a lot going forward. And trust me, Galaxy has come to me with a LOT of stuff in the past that was innovative, that was not any use to the enthusiast community, this is not one of those products. While it might be a niche, it is not a gimmick, and gives a really big choice to those that want an NVIDIA GPU in their box, and there are a BUNCH of those people out there.

Also, make sure you check out the 4-head 210 GPU based card that is linked on the last page. This is somewhat of a game changer in that end of the business world unless there are a bunch of multi-display solutions I am not aware of on the cheap.
 
Did the review mention that you won't be needing a tangled mess of expensive and pointless display port adapter cables? Dont forget you have to add that cost, hassle, and eyesore to any amd setup you compare. (even the sapphire flex uses an adapter cable)
 
yellowflower said:
Did the review mention that you won't be needing a tangled mess of expensive and pointless display port adapter cables? Dont forget you have to add that cost, hassle, and eyesore to any amd setup you compare. (even the sapphire flex uses an adapter cable)
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You will still need adapters since the card uses Mini-HDMI.
 
Dang good point. I'm sure cheap chinese ones are only like $1 but that is still a little annoying imo.
 
I like how Galaxy has managed to do something Nadia has been dragging butt on. I am curious as to how long before Galaxy can drop the price on it. If it only added $40-50 to the price of a card it would be in a very envious spot, More then it already is anyways.
 
I liked the review.

However, I think the card is not very suitable for productivity, because of the limited resolution. Who in his right mind will use four 1280x800 monitors for productivity? Three times 1680x1050 sounds more interesting, but still that's not the native resolution of today's 1080p monitors.

Also the Nvidia multi-monitor thing is not new, the Zotac GTX 460 3DP http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500174 has been able to do this for some time already. There is even a successor, the 560 Ti Multiview, but that is not available in all markets.
 
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