Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/5048/evgas-geforce-gtx-560-ti-2win-the-raw-power-of-two-gpus
EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win: The Raw Power Of Two GPUs
by Ryan Smith on November 4, 2011 11:00 PM ESTBack at CES 2011 EVGA showed off an interesting concept card featuring 2 GF104 GPUs on a single board. NVIDIA has long designed multi-GPU cards using their high-end GPUs to carve out a market segment above their top single-GPU cards, but while NVIDIA promotes SLI across almost the entire GeForce spectrum it’s promoted as a multi-card option for anything other than those halo cards. Over the years a handful of AMD and NVIDIA’s board partners have struck out on their own and designed their own multi-GPU boards, and at CES 2011 EVGA joined that club.
The resulting product was the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win, which combined 2 overclocked GTX 460s onto a single board. Unfortunately for EVGA, NVIDIA launched the GTX 560 Ti and its associated GF114 GPU mere weeks after CES 2011. GF104 was (and still is) a very capable GPU, but at the end of the day GF114 allowed the GTX 560 Ti to offer a 30% performance improvement for only a very slight increase in power consumption. The GTX 460 2Win did well enough for EVGA to continue with the design, but like the GTX 460 itself, it was clear that the 2Win design was never going to reach its full potential with GF104.
So now in November of 2011 EVGA is back with their next 2Win card: the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win. Having replaced the GF104 GPUs with GF114 and tweaked the board to handle the extra power consumption, EVGA is giving it another shot. And this time they’re gunning for NVIDIA’s flagship single-GPU card, the GTX 580. Their proposition? For only a little more than the GTX 580 they can offer 30% better performance.
EVGA GTX 560 Ti 2Win | GTX 580 | GTX 570 | GTX 560 Ti | |
Stream Processors | 2 x 384 | 512 | 480 | 384 |
Texture Address / Filtering | 2 x 64/64 | 64/64 | 60/60 | 64/64 |
ROPs | 2 x 32 | 48 | 40 | 32 |
Core Clock | 850MHz | 772MHz | 732MHz | 822MHz |
Shader Clock | 1700MHz | 1544MHz | 1464MHz | 1644MHz |
Memory Clock | 1002MHz (4008MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1002MHz (4008MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 950MHz (3800MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1002Mhz (4008MHz data rate) GDDR5 |
Memory Bus Width | 2 x 256-bit | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit |
VRAM | 2 x 1GB | 1.5GB | 1.25GB | 1GB |
FP64 | 1/12 FP32 | 1/8 FP32 | 1/8 FP32 | 1/12 FP32 |
Transistor Count | 2 x 1.95B | 3B | 3B | 1.95B |
Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm |
Price Point | $519 | $489 | $329 | $229 |
EVGA advertises the GTX 560 Ti 2Win as a dual GTX 560 Ti card, and true to their word that’s what it is. It’s an important distinction to make between the 2Win and ultra high end mutli-GPU cards like the GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990, as both of those are a best effort to squeeze two high-end GPUs into a single card while staying within a 375W power budget under normal operation. The end result is that NVIDIA and AMD have to heavily bin GPUs to find those that will perform at a suitably low voltage, and even then these cards aren’t clocked as high as the single-GPU behemoths they’re based on.
The 2Win on the other hand is exactly what it says on the label. Composed of 2 GF114 GPUs, the 2Win is a GTX 560 Ti SLI setup on a single card, with all of the specs and none of the compromises we see in ultra high end cards. In fact the 2Win is a factory overclocked card, if only slightly – its 850MHz core clock is a mild 3% higher than the 822MHz core clock of the baseline GTX 560 Ti, while the memory clock is identical at 1002MHz (4008MHz data rate). This is paired with 2GB of GDDR5, which is reduced to 1GB of effective VRAM due to the dual-GPU nature of the card.
When it comes to power consumption EVGA doesn’t officially specify a TDP for the 2Win, but given that it’s designed to be a true dual GTX 560 Ti its power requirements closely trend the GTX 560 Ti SLI. In this case that puts the load TDP around 340W, not accounting for any efficiencies gained from having 2 GPUs on a single card or the power consumption of a PCIe bridge chip. As a result this is fairly close to the GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990, both of which are heavily binned to stay under 375W.
But the real story here of course is the performance for the price. We’ve seen the performance of the GTX 560 Ti SLI in the past, and the performance is quite remarkable. For some time now a pair of NVIDIA’s mid-tier video cards in SLI have been able to surpass a single high-end card, and this performance is the basis of the 2Win. EVGA promotes the 2Win as being more than 30% faster than the GTX 580 and this is something that’s easily achieved in games where SLI scales well.
At the same time the 2Win is priced close to the GTX 580 to further cement its competitive status. EVGA has put the MSRP of the 2Win at $519, which is anywhere between $50 more expensive than the very cheapest GTX 580 to roughly the same price as factory overclocked models. Ostensibly this makes the 2Win more expensive than the GTX 580, but not significantly so given that we’re talking about the high-end video card market. Overall this puts the 2Win in a very good position versus the GTX 580, so long as it can deliver on its 30% performance claims over the GTX 580.
Next to its performance against the GTX 580, the other uses EVGA are using to promote the 2Win are the benefits derived from having multiple GPUs on a single card: namely NVIDIA Surround support. As with the GTX 590, by having 2 GPUs on a single card EVGA can team together the display outputs on the GPUs to drive up to 4 displays, versus 2 displays on a single GPU. This gives the 2Win the ability to drive a triple monitor surround setup on its own, and with 2 GTX 560 Ti GPUs should have the horsepower to do so in most cases. 3D Vision Surround is also a viable possibility thanks to the 3 DL-DVI ports, but the performance hit from 3D Vision is likely more than the 2Win can handle.
Ultimately the 2Win’s status as a multi-GPU card composed of GTX 560 Tis puts it in a unique place. Next to the GTX 580, its only other meaningful competitors are the Radeon HD 6950 CF, and the regular GTX 560 Ti in SLI. The bad news for the 2Win is that these are both cheaper options than the 2Win – you’re paying a price premium to get it on a single card.
Meet The EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win
As one would expect for a dual GPU card, the GTX 560 Ti 2Win is quite large. At 11.5” long we’ve seen larger cards, but not many. This is actually .5” longer than the dual-GF110 GTX 590, with EVGA eschewing a compact design for cooling. Similarly, while the card is technically only 2 slots wide the fans and shroud sit well above the card, and as a result the card is closer to 2.5 slots wide, making it a de facto triple-wide card.
Tearing apart the card we find the two GF114 GPUs sitting on top of EVGA’s custom PCB. Interestingly EVGA has rotated them 90 degrees each, which is a notable decision since the complete GF114 package is quite rectangular. 16 Hynix 1Gb GDDR5 modules are located on the PCB, 4 surrounding each GPU on both the front and back sides. These modules are rated for 5GHz, well over both the stock speed (4GHz) of the 2Win and what the hardware itself would be capable of. Meanwhile PCIe bridging for each GPU is provided by the ubiquitous NVIDIA NF200 bridge chip. NF200 is capable of providing each GPU with a full PCIe x16 connection, although the card as a whole is still limited to a single x16 link for communicating with the rest of the system.
Direct cooling for the GPUs and for the NF200 bridge chip is provided by a pair of individual aluminum heatsinks, with each one featuring a pair of heatpipes running out to the far edge of the heatsink. I’m not sure whether it’s intentional or not, but these heatsinks are very similar in design to the reference GTX 560 Ti heatsink, which is a good sign given the 560 Ti’s impressive cooling attributes.
Sitting above the heatsinks and mounted into the shroud are the 2Win’s 3 75mm fans, which results in an “all fan” design that has fans running virtually the entire length of the card. These fans are independently controlled, with 2 fans attached to one GPU and the last fan attached to the other GPU, allowing the 2Win to adjust its fan speeds based on the needs of the active GPU(s). In practice this means that when only 1 GPU is in use (e.g. a game that doesn’t support SLI), the 2Win doesn’t need to rev up unnecessary fans. The design of the fans and the shroud means that this is a completely open design with only a small amount of warm air being ejected outside through the PCIe bracket. So buyers will need a particularly airy case to handle the heat the 2Win will be dumping into the surrounding environment.
Looking towards the rear of the card we see that power is provided by 2 8pin PCIe power sockets. This means the 2Win can safely draw up to 375W of power, although without overvolting we’d estimate that the card draws no more than 330W. EVGA’s official specs call for a 700W power supply, which is the same as the GTX 590.
As for display connectivity, thanks to having 2 GPUs on board EVGA is able to drive up to 4 displays rather than the usual 2 for an NVIDIA card. EVGA has broken this up into 3 DL-DVI ports and a mini-HDMI port. This should efficiently cover triple monitor setups, but if you want a 4th monitor it will be limited to 1920 @ 60Hz. Meanwhile the SLI connector next to the PCI bracket is a bit of a red herring – 4-way SLI is not supported for the 2Win; given the hardware this is presumably an NVIDIA limitation as they have only ever supported 3 and 4-way SLI on their high-end GPUs.
Furthermore there’s a catch as to what motherboards the 2Win will work with. As the 2Win presents itself as a pair of GTX 560 Tis, in keeping with NVIDIA’s SLI licensing requirements NVIDIA’s drivers will only enable SLI if it’s plugged into an SLI certified motherboard. So on non-SLI motherboards the 2Win would only function as a single GTX 560 Ti in spite of the presence of both GPUs on the same card. This shouldn’t be a big issue given that most enthusiast boards are SLI certified, but it’s something that needs to be checked before purchasing the card.
Update 11/07: While there were some issues with this on the GTX 460 2WIn, this has apparently been resolved (the presence of NF200 shouldsatisfy all SLI license requirements in the first place). EVGA has said that the 2Win will work on non-SLI mobos, making it fully compatible with every motherboard.
Rounding out the hardware side of the package, EVGA has included the usual assortments of dongles and converters. 2 2x6pin to 1x8pin PCIe power adaptors are included for any buyers that don’t have a PSU with 8pin PCIe power plugs. Meanwhile a mini-HDMI to HDMI adaptor is provided to better utilize the HDMI port on the card, and a single DVI-to-VGA dongle is also provided.
As for the software side of the package, EVGA includes their customary overclocking & monitoring tools: EVGA Precision, and the EVGA OC Scanner. These tools haven’t significantly changed since the last time we’ve seen them, but then they don’t need to. Precision is still one of the best monitoring and overclocking utilities available thanks to its RivaTuner heritage, meanwhile the OC Scanner is a nice addition to EVGA’s tools to make it easier to test whether an overclock is suitable by looking for rendering artifacts. In practice I’m not sure how much use these tools will get with the 2Win – GF114 has a lot of headroom, but dual-GPU cards are known to be fickle about overclocking.
Finally, for warranty service our retail sample is a KR part, indicating that it comes with a 3 year warranty. Typically EVGA offers multiple warranties, and on a historical basis the GTX 460 2Win was available with both a 3 year and lifetime warranty.
The Test, Power, Temperature, & Noise
CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
Motherboard: | Asus Rampage II Extreme |
Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3x2GB (7-7-7-20) |
Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win |
Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA GeForce Driver 285.62 AMD Catalyst 11.9 |
OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
As the gaming performance of the GTX 560 Ti 2Win is going to be rather straightforward – it’s a slightly overclocked GTX 560 Ti SLI – we’re going to mix things up and start with a look at the unique aspects of the card. The 2Win is the only dual-GPU GTX 560 Ti on the market, so its power/noise/thermal characteristics are rather unique.
GeForce GTX 560 Ti Series Voltage | ||||
2Win GPU 1 Load | 2Win GPU 2 Load | GTX 560 Ti Load | ||
1.025v | 1.05v | 0.95v |
It’s interesting to note that the 2Win does not have a common GPU voltage like other dual-GPU cards. EVGA wanted it to be 2 GTX 560 Tis in a single card and it truly is, right down to different voltages for each GPU. One of the GPUs on our sample runs at 1.025v, while the other runs at 1.05v. The latter is a bit higher than any other GF114 product we’ve seen, which indicates that EVGA may be goosing the 2Win a bit. The lower power consumption of GF114 (versus GF110 in the GTX 590) means that the 2Win doesn’t need to adhere to a strict voltage requirement to make spec.
Kicking things off as always is idle power. Unfortunately we don’t have a second reference GTX 560 Ti on hand, so we can’t draw immediate comparisons to a GTX 560 Ti SLI setup. However we believe that the 2Win should draw a bit less power in virtually all cases.
In any case, as to be expected with 2 GPUs the 2Win draws more power than any single GPU, even with GF114’s low idle power consumption. At 180W it’s 7W over the GTX 580, and actually 9W over the otherwise more powerful Radon HD 6990. But at the same time it’s below any true dual-card setup.
Moving on to load power, we start with the venerable Crysis. As the 2Win is priced against the GTX 580, that's the card to watch for both power characteristics and gaming performance. Starting there, we can see that the 2Win setup draws significantly more power under Crysis – 496W versus 389W – which again is to be expected for a dual-GPU card. As we’ll see in the gaming performance section the 2Win is going to be notably faster than the GTX 580, but the cost will be power.
One thing that caught us off guard here was that power consumption is almost identical to the GTX 590 and the Radeon HD 6990. At the end of the day those cards are a story about the benefits of aggressive chip binning, but it also means that the 2Win is drawing similar amounts of power for not nearly the performance. Given the 2Win’s much cheaper pricing these cards aren’t direct competitors, but it means the 2Win doesn’t have the same aggressive performance-per-watt profile we see in most other dual-GPU cards.
As NVIDIA continues to use OverCurrent Protection (OCP) for their GTX 500 series, FurMark is largely hit or miss depending on how it’s being throttled. In this case we’ve seen an interesting throttle profile that we haven’t experienced in past reviews: the 2Win would quickly peak at over 500W before retreating to anywhere between 450W and 480W before once again rising to over 500W and coming back down, with the framerate fluctuating with the power draw. This is in opposition to a hard cap, where we’d see power draw stay constant. 510W was the highest wattage we saw that was sustained for over 10 seconds. In this case it’s 40W less than the Radeon HD 6990, 50W more than the heavily capped GTX 590, and only 20W off of the GTX 580. In essence we can see the throttle working to keep power consumption not much higher than what we see with the games in our benchmark suite.
Thanks to the open air design of the 2Win, idle temperatures are quite good. It can’t match the GTX 560 Ti of course, but even with the cramped design of a dual-GPU card our warmest GPU only idles at 36C, below the GTX 580, and just about every other card for that matter.
Looking at GPU temperatures while running Crysis, the open air design again makes itself noticed. Our warmest GPU hits 81C, 10C warmer than a single GTX 560 Ti, but only 2C warmer than a GTX 580 in spite of the extra heat being generated. This also ends up being several degrees cooler than the 6990 and GTX 590, which makes the open air design apparent. The tradeoff is that 300W+ of heat are being dumped into the case, whereas the other dual-GPU cards dump only roughly half that. If we haven’t made it clear before we’ll make it clear now: you’ll need good case ventilation to keep the 2Win this cool.
Because of the OCP throttling keeping power consumption under FurMark so close to what it was under Crysis, our temperatures don’t change a great deal when looking at FurMark. Just as with the power situation the temperature situation is spiky; 85C was the hottest spike before temperatures dropped back down to the low 80s. As a result 85C is in good company when it comes to FurMark.
We haven’t reviewed very many video cards with 3 (or more) fans, but generally speaking more fans result in more noise. The 2Win adheres to this rule of thumb, humming along at 43dB. This is slightly louder than a number of single-GPU cards, but still quiet enough that at least on our testbed it doesn’t make much of a difference. All the same it goes without saying that the 2Win is not for those of you seeking silence.
At 56dB the load noise chart makes the 2Win look very good, and to be honest I don’t entirely agree with the numbers. Objectively the 2Win is quieter than the GTX 580, but subjectively it has a slight whine to it that blowers simply don’t have. The 2Win may technically be quieter, but I’d say it’s more noticeable than the GTX 580 or similar cards. With that said it’s definitely still quieter and less noticeable than our lineup of multi-GPU configurations, and of course the poor GTX 480. Ultimately it’s quite quiet for a dual-GPU configuration (let alone one on a single card), but it has to make tradeoffs to properly cool a pair of GPUs.
Crysis: Warhead, BattleForge, & Metro 2033
As we mentioned previously, the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win is a one-off product. At $520 It doesn’t have any specific competition – at least none that’s reciprocal – but EVGA likes to call it a GTX 580 competitor it’s definitely priced close enough to the GTX 580 to make that a meaningful comparison. As a multi-GPU product it also competes with multi-GPU multi-card setups, primarily the regular GTX 560 Ti SLI and the Radeon HD 6950 CF.
Starting as always with Crysis, we get a good setup for the rest of the benchmarks to come. The 2Win is well ahead of the similarly priced GTX 580, turning in a score 30% better than the 580. At the same time its performance relative to the GTX 560 Ti SLI is almost identical, owing to the 2Win’s 3% higher core clock. At no point here will the GTX 560 Ti SLI and 2Win ever separate by an appreciable margin; it’s really only faster on paper.
Looking at raw performance, we see that the 2Win turns in a solid performance at 2560 and is well above 60fps at 1920. SLI doesn’t change the fact that AMD and NVIDIA will regularly jockey for position depending on the game, so even with a strong showing here, the 6950 CF still ends up being quite a bit faster.
The Crysis minimum framerate test is one of the handful of tests we have right now that pays much attention to more than 1GB of VRAM. The fact that the 2Win does worse than the regular GTX 560 Ti SLI is not a mistake here – it’s a telltale sign of swapping into VRAM. The 2Win is generally capable of handling 2560 in terms of rendering power, but with 1GB of effective VRAM it can run into other bottlenecks first, as we see here.
Given that it’s a good deal more powerful than the GTX 580, the 2Win has no problem breezing through Battleforge. Even at 2560 it hits 88fps, 35% better than the GTX 580.
When it comes to SLI scaling Metro has always been a challenge, and as a result the 2Win loses some of its advantage here. It’s still ahead of the GTX 580 at 2560, but only by 16%. Again we’re looking at a potential lack of VRAM, but also the result of Metro’s significant workload at 2560. This is one of the only titles we currently use that is still a struggle for every card we have, and as a result it’s one of the few titles than the 2Win just isn’t cut out for at 2560. It’s only at 1920 that the 2Win can pick up enough speed to be playable, at which point its lead over the GTX 580 grows slightly to 20%.
HAWX, Civ V, Battlefield BC2, & STALKER
HAWX, in spite of its high framerates on modern cards , is still rather GPU limited. As a result of that limitation and superb SLI scaling the 2Win manages to generate 165fps even at 2560. In fact it’s second only to the GTX 570 SLI, and is a solid 30% ahead of the GTX 580.
NVIDIA has continued to work on their Civilization V performance since the last time we’ve taken a look at the high end, and as a result SLI scaling is looking really good. The 2Win nearly doubles the performance of a GTX 560 Ti, and even the GTX 580 has to take a backseat by 33%. Thanks to these further driver improvements the 2Win is capable of cracking 60fps, even at 2560.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is another title that scales well with SLI, further vaulting it over the GTX 580. At 74.5fps at 2560 it’s not only an extremely smooth experience, but 36% ahead of a GTX 580. At the same time this is another title where the Radeons give us a strong showing, leading to the 6950 CF passing the 2Win. Meanwhile our Waterfall benchmark shakes things up slightly, but not for the better for the 2Win. All of our results have a much narrower spread, and as a result the 2Win gives up much of its advantage.
STALKER is our other VRAM-hungry benchmark. The 2Win still beats a single GTX 580 by 17%, but it loses to the 6950 CF and GTX 570 by more than usual. Both of these setups have additional VRAM (2GB and 1.25GB respectively), allowing them to get the best of the 2Win.
The significance of this situation is that with the STALKER benchmark approaching 2 years old, it’s in many ways a taste of things to come. We’re not done with the subject of VRAM, but it’s clear we’re already seeing situations where the 2Win is being held back by a lack of VRAM.
DIRT 2, Mass Effect 2, Wolfenstein, & Compute Performance
DIRT 2 is another title modern cards can power on through. Even at 2560 the 2Win gets better than 100fps, turning in another large lead over the GTX 580.
Mass Effect 2 is a rather interesting test because it above all else appears to be texture bound rather than shader bound, which is a very fortunate scenario for the GTX 560 Ti, as it has nearly as much texture throughput as the GTX 580. As a result the 2Win with its two GPUs does exceptionally well here. At 2560 it offers 92fps, and more importantly it surpasses a GTX 580 by a hair over 50%. This is the exception rather than the rule of course, but it’s also a prime example of why dual-GPU cards can be a threat to high performance single-GPU cards like the GTX 580.
Wrapping up our gaming benchmarks is Wolfenstein multiplayer. The game is CPU limited at much beyond 120fps, and even at 2560 the 2Win nearly hits that mark.
Our final benchmark is the Civilization V leader texture compression benchmark, a compute performance benchmark measuring the ability of a DirectCompute program to decompress textures. While not a game in and of itself, it does a good job highlighting the 2Win’s biggest weakness: it’s only as good as SLI is. Texture compression isn’t something that can be split among GPUs, and as a result the 2Win is suddenly no better than a regular GTX 560 Ti. At these performance levels it isn’t an issue, but it’s not the only game using this kind of system. Rage is similar in application and in SLI limitations, which becomes an issue because Rage’s CUDA accelerated texture decoder really needs a GTX 570 or better.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve read our GPU reviews for any length of time then you’re probably familiar with our editorial stance on multi-GPU configurations: multi-GPU is nice to have, but only after you’ve exhausted single-GPU performance. Normally this is an easily defensible position, as dual-GPU cards are priced well above single-GPU cards and multi-GPU otherwise involves the hassle of dealing with multiple video cards.
EVGA’s GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win makes that a much harder position to defend. Technically speaking it’s pricier than a GTX 580, but not significantly so; it’s a GTX 580 competitor instead of something that comes after the GTX 580. Furthermore as we already know from the regular GTX 560 Ti SLI, a pair of GTX 560 Tis can beat a single GTX 580 by 30% if not more under the right circumstances. On a pure performance per dollar basis the 2Win is considerably faster than the GTX 580, and that’s a fact that’s very hard to argue with.
Ultimately the existence of the 2Win is a major vote of confidence in SLI by EVGA. If you believe as they do – that NVIDIA will continue to quickly add SLI support to games, that SLI scaling will always be strong, and that multi-GPU timing issues are easily overcome – then the 2Win makes the GeForce GTX 580 redundant at current pricing. It’s that simple.
On the other hand if you don’t share EVGA’s confidence in SLI, then very little has changed. If you believe that new games will have teething issues with SLI, that microstutter will continue to exist, and that not every game will scale well with SLI, then the 2Win is a poor choice in light of the more consistent performance of the GTX 580. Certainly the performance of the 2Win is phenomenal when SLI is working, but if SLI falters that means the performance of the 2Win is reduced to that of a $220 GTX 560 Ti. It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but it’s a real concern that must be evaluated when buying any dual-GPU card, including the 2Win. We’re going to continue to be conservative and recommend the consistency of a single-GPU card over the performance of a dual-GPU card, but for the individual buyer the 2Win’s performance makes a very good argument to throw caution into the wind.
Moving beyond the scope of SLI it’s clear that the 2Win is a solid product. EVGA’s use of an open air cooler is definitely an interesting choice. It’s not the only card using this style of a cooler – a number of overclocking focused vendor custom cards do so – but it’s more surprising to see it on a multi-GPU card. The end result is that given a suitable case this cooler allows the 2Win to dissipate as much heat as it does for relatively little noise. It’s subjectively noisier than a GTX 580, but just barely.
Wrapping things up, the only aspect I feel that EVGA has left underdeveloped on an otherwise very strong card is VRAM. As a result of SLI 2Win is a $520 card with 1GB of effective VRAM. We’ve already seen 1GB of VRAM pose limitations in a couple of our tests, and going forward it’s only going to get worse. Case in point: Battlefield 3, which we’re currently looking at. In a technical presentation DICE has stated that the combined memory consumption at 1920x1080 for the gbuffer, Z-buffer, and MSAA resolve data is 158MB; and this is before other buffers let alone textures. As a $200 card meant for 1920 and lower resolution, 1GB of VRAM makes sense for the GTX 560 Ti. But as a $500 dual-GPU card meant for higher performance, higher quality, and higher resolutions, 1GB of effective VRAM is the biggest bottleneck going forward for the 2Win. Realistically EVGA is in a hard place since using higher density GDDR5 would drive up the price of the card and make it even more expensive than the GTX 580, but at the end of the day I think the 2Win needs 2GB of effective VRAM to spread its wings through 2012.