In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition are massively better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 EVGA DS SSC 1GB Edition.

The GTX 680 has a 210 MHz higher core clock speed and 72 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 560. This results in the GTX 680 providing 91.7 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 210 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 560 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 680 providing 6.7 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 less than a year after the GTX 560, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The GTX 680 has 3072 MB more video memory than the GTX 560, 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 59.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 560, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 680 is much better than the GTX 560.

The GeForce GTX 560 EVGA DS SSC 1GB Edition has 336 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition has 1536. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 560 is 605 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 680 is 1806. The GTX 680 having 1201 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.

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

The GeForce GTX 560 EVGA DS SSC 1GB Edition requires 150 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 680 Galaxy Edition requires 195 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the GTX 560 and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 680. The GTX 680 requires 45 Watts more than the GTX 560 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 680 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 560.