NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti to be upgraded to 448 CUDA cores

Word out on the cyber street is that NVIDIA reportedly is preparing to ship the GeForce GTX 560 Ti (448 Core), a new card that uses the GF110 GPU instead of the GF114 from the original GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

The card is basically a GeForce GTX 570 with 1 SM disabled, and likely lower clockspeeds. 

Unlike the GTX 560 Ti, which is based on a fully enabled GF114 die, the GTX 560 Ti (448 Core) will be based on the GF110 die. In essence, it is GTX 570 with 1 SM disabled, and likely underclocked. It features 14 active SMs, which include 448 SP / CUDA Cores and 56 TMUs; 320-bit memory and 40 ROPs - a very similar configuration to the old GTX 470. Along with increased performance, power consumption is expected to rise over the 384 SP GTX 560 Ti. A benefit to using GF110 means the revised 560 Ti will feature 2 x SLI connectors, enabling 3-way SLI. In terms of display outputs, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort are included. Visually, the reference GTX 560 Ti (448) is expected to look identical to the reference GTX 570.

The revised GTX 560 Ti is expected to compete with overclocked SKUs of the HD 6950 2GB, and fill in the gap between HD 6950 2GB (~$280) and GTX 570/HD 6970 (~$340). Priced right, the GTX 560 Ti (448) could be an enticing option until the next-gen GPUs hit.

Guess this new model is designed to boost holiday season sales as the next-gen GPUs aren't expected until Q1 2012, or even later if you don't want to pay top buck.