During the 2012 CES I started piecing together components for an X79 build to replace my P67/Z68 test rig. I say during because I picked up several components for the build while at the show thanks to some gracious sponsors and the luck of the draw during some party raffles. Once I settled in back at home, I gathered the remaining components needed for the build, save for a couple of items that played hard to get. Cooler Master agreed to send over their new Cosmos II chassis but it was the CPU that ultimately held up the entire process for several weeks. You see, Intel's Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E was a hot commodity up until just a few weeks ago and was sold out everywhere except eBay. I ended up biting the bullet and paying well over retail for the chip, but I couldn't afford to waste any more time waiting for it to come back in stock at retail.

We plan to highlight many of the build components via individual reviews and started with Gigabyte's X79-UD3 motherboard. Today we will be taking a look at a mainstream graphics solution from Zotac, a GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Sure, this isn't the most powerful card on the market but the truth of the matter is I'm not a diehard gamer like many so a more powerful card would likely go to waste. When I build a system, I want something that is extremely fast in day to day use but graphics aren't a major concern. On paper, the Zotac card appears to be a good fit for this type of build and we will find out just how much power it packs shortly when paired with an enthusiast-class system.


The Zotac 560 Ti arrived in the smaller-than-anticipated orange and black box shown above. The company advertises multiple features on the front including the 1024MB of GDDR5 memory, 256-bit memory interface, HDMI support as well as several software suites bundled with the card. Some DirectX 11 information fills the backside.

Included in the retail box is the card itself, two dual 4-pin Molex to 6-pin PCIe power adapters, an HDMI adapter, user manual and software disc.

Below is a complete list of features, borrowed from Zotac's website.




Let's move ahead and have a closer look at this 560 Ti from Zotac.