We’re actually a little surprised by the ASUS ENGTX560 DirectCU II TOP. Despite a fairly aggressive factory overclock and a not-too-steep price hike, this mid-range card struggles to separate itself from the pack of mid-range GeForce GTX 560 graphics cards. Then again, with most vendors eschewing the GTX 560’s stock speeds for some degree of factory overclocking (this is one GPU that’s especially hard to find in its standard guise), perhaps that’s what we should have expected.
The fact remains that this card is marginally disappointing at its current price. Performance is acceptable at 1080p — clearing 30fps on all of our test games, including Crysis at very high settings — but hardly ground-breaking (it’s maybe a frame ahead of MSI’s $220 Twin Frozr II equivalent at higher resolutions). Compared to similarly priced offerings in both the AMD and Nvidia camps, it’s also a little behind the pack. AMD’s Radeon HD 6950 1GB, for instance, offers faster performance at stock speeds, while the slightly higher-end GTX 560 Ti ponies up more processor cores at the same cost, with readily available overclocked versions coughing up more grunt for only a little additional outlay.
This isn’t a terrible price gouge by any means; all of these cards operate at roughly the same level (fine for 1080p gaming, but a little too underpowered for action on bigger screens), though if we were to choose a GTX 560 card, the ENGTX560 wouldn’t be our first pick.
