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.
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Mondozai - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
Wait for 800 series budget cards if you have the patience. Hopefully no more than 4-5 months if TSMC does very well on 20.Jeffrey Bosboom - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
I understand the absolute hashrate on these cards will be low, but I'm interested to know how the focus on power consumption improves mining performance per watt. (Though I can't imagine this lowish-end cards would be used, even if efficient, due to the fixed cost of motherboards to put them in.)Antronman - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
Nvidia's best cards have tiny hash rates compared to 95% of every AMD GPU ever released.JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
Apparently you're not up to speed on the latest developments. GTX 780 Ti as an example is now hitting about 700 KHash in scrypt, and word is the GTX 750 will be pretty competitive with 250-260 KHash at stock and much lower power consumption. Some people have actually put real effort into optimizing CUDAminer now, so while AMD still has an advantage, it's not nearly as large as it used to be. You could even make the argument that based on perf/watt in mining, some of NVIDIA's cards might even match AMD's top GPUs.darthrevan13 - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
Why did they chose to retire 650 Ti Boost and replace it with 750Ti? 650 Ti B is a much better card for high end games because of the memory interface. They should have marketed 750Ti as 750 and 750 as 740.And why on earth did they not include full support for HEVEC and DX11.2? You're limiting the industry's adoption for years to come because of you're move. I hope they will fix this in the next generation 800 cards or when they will transition to 20nm.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
Not speaking for NV here, but keep in mind that 650 Ti Boost is a cut-down GK106 chip. All things considered, 750 Ti will be significantly cheaper to produce for similar performance.NVIDIA really only needed it to counter Bonaire, and now that they have GM107 that's no longer the case.
FXi - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
No DX 11.2 or even 11.1 support? For THAT price??Pass...
rish95 - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
According to GeForce.com it supports 11.2. Not sure what's up with this:http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/gefor...
willis936 - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
You don't need to be compliant to support something. Compliance means you meet all required criteria. Support means you can run it without having necessarily all the bells and whistles. If console hardware has DX compliance then the devs will take advantage of that and when they're ported you'll lose some of the neat graphics tricks. They might still be able to be done in software, you'll just need a bigger GPU to get the same frame rates :p Some things might not be able to be done in software though. Idk enough about DX to say.sourav - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
does it will support on a pci v2?