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 |
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EdgeOfDetroit - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
The EVGAs have Displayport, but they might be the only ones. I ordered the Superclocked 750 Ti with the $5 rebate from Newegg because it had a DisplayPort and the competitors did not.Death666Angel - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
"the 760 has been out for almost a year now and is an older process" -> Still the same 28nm process for the 760 and 750 alike. :)MrPoletski - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
This jump in cache for 128k to 2mb... I wonder what that does for cryptocurrency mining?The Von Matrices - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Unless the integer shift operation has been improved, not much.g101 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Nothing, nividia is fundamentally deficient with integer compute, these are architectural decisions that NVidia made in hopes of squeezing out slightly better FPS. Think: anti-gpgpu, or more of a classic asic.So no, this arc isn't going to change their position with regards to the actual algorithms. Perhaps there will be a moderate increase in sCrypt sha2 performance (due to the memory-hard nature of that implementation), however, nvidia's extreme (and sometimes intentional) incompetence with gpgpu leads me to believe that they still do not understand that GPGPU is the reason AMD's cards are above MSRP. It's not due to one specific hashing function, it's due to their superiority in over 11 specific functions, superior general opencl performance and comparatively greater performance for many SP compute intensive CUDA applications. For instance, cross-comparison between cuda and opencl raycasting yields some very interesting results, with the opencl/AMD solutions outperforming cuda 2:1, often with greater accuracy.
CUDA is easy, NVidia has zero compute advantage beyond 'ease'.
oleguy682 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
AMD receives nothing for their cards being sold over MSRP. Their channel partners likely have agreements in place for this generation of processors that is locked in at a specific price or price range. Perhaps if they signed new partners, or revised their processors substantially enough to warrant a new agreement, they can take advantage of the higher-than-MSRP situation, but I doubt it. And even the ASUS and Gigabytes of the world are likely unable to capitalize much on the demand. At best, they are able to sell boards to retailers as fast as they come off the line.Only the Neweggs are profiting handsomely off of this.
HighTech4US - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
Von and g101 you are both wrong as Maxwell has now greatly improved integer compute. Check out the following review page from Tom's:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-75...
Quote: Historically, Nvidia's cards came up short against competing Radeons, which is why you see R9 290X boards selling for $700 and up. But the Maxwell architecture's improvements allow the 60 W GeForce GTX 750 Ti to outperform the 140 W GeForce GTX 660 and approach AMD's 150 W Radeon R7 265, which just launched, still isn't available yet, but is expected to sell for the same $150. On a scale of performance (in kH/s) per watt, that puts Nvidia way out ahead of AMD. Today, four GM107-based cards in a mining rig should be able to outperform a Radeon R9 290X for less money, using less power.
Yojimbo - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
Which is good for NVidia, maybe just lucky. Increasing gamer market share in exchange for some short-term profits is probably a good trade-off for Nvidia. If AMD can't maintain their market share, they'll have less muscle behind their Mantle initiative.hpvd - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Does this first small Maxwell brings Support for Unified Virtual Memory Management IN HARDWARE? If yes: would be really interesting to see how efficient it could work...details see:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7515/nvidia-announce...
willis936 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
I would like very much to see a comparison of GM107 in SLI to other $300 graphics card options. Us 560 Ti owners are in a tough position because it's upgradin' time and there's no decent, quiet solution. SLI is still a bit of a hack and from what I can tell can be more of a compatibility headache than a performance gain. These cards may be the exception though.