The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750 Review: Maxwell Makes Its Move
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on February 18, 2014 9:00 AM ESTThe Test
For this review we’re using the latest drivers from both NVIDIA and AMD. NVIDIA’s launch drivers are 334.69, which add support for the GTX 750 series but are otherwise identical to the 334.67 drivers currently available as a public beta for existing cards. The release 334 drivers include a fairly impressive tune up of NVIDIA’s OpenCL stack, so we’re finding that OpenCL performance is significantly improved in some of our benchmarks, which helps to close the gap with AMD. On the other hand these tune-ups have not come bug free (as Ganesh has found), and while our compute benchmarks are fine, Ganesh has run into some issues with some of his OpenCL based video utilities. Other than that, we have not encountered any stability problems with these drivers.
Meanwhile for AMD’s cards we’re using the recently released Catalyst 14.1 beta v1.6 drivers.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Ti Zotac GeForce GTX 750 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 640 NVIIDA GeForce GTX 550 Ti AMD Radeon R7 265 AMD Radeon R7 260X AMD Radeon R7 250 AMD Radeon HD 7750 AMD Radeon HD 5770 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 334.67 Beta NVIDIA Release 334.69 Beta (GTX 750 Series) AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta v1.6 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
177 Comments
View All Comments
formulav8 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Overall their drivers have been fine for a long time. NVidia and AMD run into bugs time to time. I'm sure you know NVidia has bugs as well. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean there are none and that NVidia is perfect.dgingeri - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
yeah, well, I've never had bugs with my Nvidia cards to the degree of the bugs with my two AMD/ATI video cards. I had that 4870X2 for over a year and a half, quietly waiting for them to fix the bugs in the drivers to get it to properly use the second GPU, only to have them completely abandon me at the 10.1 driver and beyond.extide - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
So, really, not even a single mention of Maxwell's marquee feature, "Unified Virtual Memory?" I think you guys got a little bit caught up in the power/watt increase, and entirely forgot about that!kwrzesien - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
It will probably be unveiled with the 800 series cards. It might be baked into the die but not enabled in this revision or it might be there but not enabled in the drivers. What we want to wait for is the 860/880 which will have the muscle to do something amazing with UVM.jwcalla - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
I don't think UVM will provide much in the way of benefits other than making some CUDA programming [marginally] easier.doubledeej - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Is anybody ever going to produce a decent single slot video card again? I'm getting a little tired of either having low-end, slow cards, or having all of my PCIe slots being covered up.DanNeely - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Probably not. Making a quiet card is much easier in a 2 slot form factor; and the number of people who care about performance and need the slot immediately below their GPU is a very small fraction of the total.On a tangent, legacy PCI is facing extinction because it's been removed from Intel's current chipsets and is only available via a bridge chip. If you have a long term need for it; I'd advise buying a current generation mobo with an unobstructed slot while they're still on the market.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
you mean like the geforce 680 single slot edition that never came out? yeah, I wish companies would actually make those things.FelixDraconis - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
I really like the direction this card is going in. Especially if there's a DisplayPort variant coming. It's tough building a low power ITX system with DP without using onboard graphics.But what's up with the 750 name? That's just blatantly misleading, as the 760 has been out for almost a year now and is an older process, while originally Maxwell was slated to be called 8XX. Nothing new, but boy is this confusing. I guess it makes short term sense for marketing, as it always does.
jwcalla - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Obviously they're reserving the 800 series for the 20nm parts.