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 ESTHTPC Aspects : Miscellaneous Factors
In this section, we cover some miscellaneous HTPC aspects that are too short to warrant a separate section. These include a discussion of various display refresh rates supported, a short look at the hardware encoder (NVENC) in action and a summary of our thoughts on the GT 750Ti as a HTPC GPU.
Refresh Rate Accuracy:
NVIDIA provides an easy way to customize refresh rates. The process remains the same as what we explained in our review of the GT 640. The 23 Hz setting gives us a refresh rate of 23.971 Hz. With Intel providing rock-solid 23.976 Hz support in Haswell, it is time NVIDIA got the out-of-the-box refresh rate support correct.
NVIDIA also allows setting of refresh rates not reported as available by the display's EDID. On the Sony KDL46EX720, it allowed driving of 1080p50 without any issues. The flexibility is definitely appreciated, though it would be nice to have better accuracy without all the tweaking.
Hardware Encoder: NVENC
We used CyberLink MediaEspresso v6.7 to evaluate the hardware encoder block. Our test clip was a 3-minute long 1080p24 H.264 stream at 36 Mbps and the target was a 720p24 H.264 stream at 6 Mbps. The time taken for conversion and the power consumption at the wall during the conversion process are provided in the table below.
| GPU Video Encoding Performance | ||||||
| Conversion Time | Power | |||||
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti | 2:54 | 88.97W | ||||
| NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 | 0:36 | 108.18W | ||||
| AMD Radeon HD 7750 (VCE) | 1:06 | 76.84W | ||||
| Intel HD 4000 QuickSync (Better Quality/Fast Conversion) | 0:24 | 63.91W | ||||
It appears as if the 750Ti is using the CUDA path rather than NVENC, while the 640 seems to use NVENC fine. We had readied ourselves for some quality comparison using objective metrics for the new NVENC. It looks like we have to wait for this issue to be resolved before proceeding down that path. [Update: NVIDIA got back to us indicating that this is a Maxwell-related driver issue. We are waiting for new drivers]
HTPC Verdict - Wait and Watch
We have taken a look at the HTPC credentials of the 750Ti and compared it with the GT 640 and the HD 7750. In terms of power efficiency, it is hard not to recommend the 750Ti. With a 60W TDP, it is amenable to passive cooling also. However, it comes to the market at a time when the HEVC standard has just been ratified (preventing it from having a full-blown hardware accelerated decoder) and HDMI 2.0 with 4Kp60 support being right around the corner. The perfect HTPC GPU would include support for both, but the 750Ti, unfortunately, is a bit early to the game. More troublesome is the fact that CyberLink's MediaEspresso seems unable to take advantage of the new NVENC and the fact that some of our 1080p60 H.264 clips are showing decoding artifacts (considering they play perfectly using the GT 640).
We would suggest HTPC enthusiasts to adopt a wait-and-watch approach to the GT 750Ti, particularly with respect to driver bugs specific to the 750Ti and also the extent of HEVC decode support that will be available. Depending on the requirements, it might also be prudent to wait for a Maxwell GPU with HDMI 2.0 support.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
177 Comments
View All Comments
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.