Three new mid-range graphics cards compared

Another month, another batch of mid-range graphics cards are launched. For most gamers, a mid-range card provides the performance you need at around half the price of a high-end card, so it's hardly surprising it's a popular and crowded market. Here, we've reviewed three new cards: An AMD Radeon HD 6950 model from MSI, and two Nvidia GTX 560 cards from ASUS and Palit, the first we've seen from the latter vendor for some time.

ASUS ENGTX560 DirectCU II reviewed

By Dominik Krupinski – August 12, 2011

Graphics cards, Reviews

Rating:

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.

Palit GTX 560Ti 2GB reviewed

By Dominik Krupinski – August 12, 2011

Graphics cards, Reviews

Rating:

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a graphics card from Palit, which makes this GeForce GTX 560 Ti a little bit of a let-down. Despite having double the usual amount of memory in a GTX 560 card, and a price premium, there’s little additional performance on offer here.

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition reviewed

By Dominik Krupinski – August 12, 2011

Graphics cards, Reviews

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition/OC

Rating:

Asking A$350 for an AMD Radeon HD 6950 model with a mere 50MHz overclock is pretty brave, especially when a standard 6950 graphics card can be had for as little as A$270 online. To be fair, the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition/OC offers additional voltage regulation hardware and a substantial overclock to be had if you’re willing to mess around with clock speeds, voltages and so forth. But at the same time, there’s no actual guarantee of additional performance and for the extra $80, we’d want a performance increase out of the box.