In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Gainward Phantom 2GB Edition.

The GTX 680 has a 288 MHz higher core clock speed and 64 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 560 Ti. This results in the GTX 680 providing 89.5 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 680 has a 288 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 560 Ti and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 680 providing 9.2 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 680 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 560 Ti, and so the GTX 680 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 560 Ti.

The GTX 680 has 2048 MB more video memory than the GTX 560 Ti, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 680 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 680 has 64 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 560 Ti, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 680 is much better than the GTX 560 Ti.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti Gainward Phantom 2GB Edition has 384 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition has 1536. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 560 Ti is 631 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 680 is 1806. The GTX 680 having 1175 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 680 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 560 Ti.

The GTX 680 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 560 Ti. This means that the GTX 680 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 560 Ti.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti Gainward Phantom 2GB Edition requires 170 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition requires 195 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 560 Ti and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 680. The GTX 680 requires 25 Watts more than the GTX 560 Ti to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GTX 680 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the GTX 560 Ti.