NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Review: The New Enthusiast Kepler
by Ryan Smith on June 25, 2013 9:00 AM ESTDiRT: Showdown
As always, starting off our benchmark collection is our racing benchmark, DiRT: Showdown. DiRT: Showdown is based on the latest iteration of Codemasters’ EGO engine, which has continually evolved over the years to add more advanced rendering features. It was one of the first games to implement tessellation, and also one of the first games to implement a DirectCompute based forward-rendering compatible lighting system. At the same time as Codemasters is by far the most prevalent PC racing developers, it’s also a good proxy for some of the other racing games on the market like F1 and GRID.
Though NVIDIA’s goal is to surpass the 7950 – something they generally accomplish – in some titles AMD’s parts still hold such an innate advantage as to hold off the GTX 760, and this is one such case. Performance of the GTX 760 trails the 7950 by 18% here, with the GTX 760 falling just short of averaging 60fps at 1920 with advanced lighting. But as we’ve seen with other reviews, this is the only game where AMD holds an advantage quite this great.
It’s interesting to note though that this is also one of the only games the GTX 760 struggles to beat the GTX 660 Ti, owing to the heavy shader load placed on these cards by the advanced lighting system. The two are essentially tied with that lighting turned off, while the GTX 760 takes a small lead with it off.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
The 8800 Ultra was a $650 card. Ignoring the Titan we're back where we were 7 years ago.nsiboro - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
AMD delaying Sea Island until Q3'2013...I just feel someone over @AMD is crazy and didn't think thru end users' point of view.
With the release of Haswell, many will be putting together new boxes and the "new" GPU they'll get will be gtx760/770/780. AMD losing fans and revenue... *sigh*
silverblue - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
I'm not sure I follow. Haswell doesn't appear to have amazed that many people - you could get away with an SB or IB build which overclock enough to make up the performance difference. If you already have one of those, with proper cooling you don't need to save money for a marginally better CPU - spend it on graphics instead.DanNeely - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
It's not the SB/IB people upgrading; it's those of us with first generation i5/i7 systems or even older core 2 quads pulling the trigger now. AMD is out of the race except at the bottom and it's probably going to be two more years before Intel offers anything else worth mentioning on the desktop. (No socketed Broadwell chips, and assuming IVB-e and Haswell-e are as underwhelming at the $3xx pricepoint as SB-e is.)Dark_wizzie - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
I wished it included a benchmark with Skyrim on 2560x1440, with the hardcore texture mods on, AA/AS on pretty high with Ultra. Debating between this ($250), 7970... ($310!!!), 770 ($400)Ryan Smith - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
You request will be taken under consideration, but I'll tell you right now that you shouldn't expect it to happen. One of the tenets of our testing methods is that we don't test with mods; they're often not optimized (or worse, optimized only for the developer's system) and frequently updated (making our benchmarks useless). Plus the number of users on any given mod is very low, which would mean our benchmarks wouldn't be very applicable to most of our readers.edlee - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
something tells me if you SLI two GTX 760 it would destroy the GTX 780 at a lesser pricexTRICKYxx - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
Google some benchmarks. It goes toe-to-toe with the GTX 690 and Titan in every game I've seen. All for $500... Good deal!GTan - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Hopefully I will be building my first PC ever in a few weeks, I'm glad that Nvidia released the 760, since the 770 at $400+ is too expensive for me. My budget for my PC is $800-900. I was originally 90% sure I was gonna buy the GTX 760, $250 is a great price, but now since I've seen deals for the 7970 for as low as $300, I'm wondering is it worth it for pay a extra $50 for the 7970 (plus the 4 games). End question, what is a better value for the newb PC builder: a $250 GTX 760 or a $300 7970? Thanks!thesavvymage - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
if you want the games, 7970. If not, id go wit hthe 760 for being quieter and using less power