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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Harag - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Not true at all. The release of the Titan showed they could unlock FP64 performance on a specific architecture. The Titan Black also has amazing FP64 performance. You may also want to look into their Quadro line.kwrzesien - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Cards are available on Newegg! Check out this EVGA Superclocked (1268MHz) with a dual-fan ACX cooler and 6-pin PCIe power connector: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...Frenetic Pony - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Maxwell is designed for mobile gaming, in which case who cares? Broadwell looks to improve performance per watt at least as much as Maxwell if Intel's initial hints of 30% power improvement for 14nm and 40% improvement for gpu power efficiency pan out. And they were already damned good.But Maxwell isn't designed for high end, in which case GCN 1.1 and AMD are already beating them for price for performance. Congrats Nvidia, you're second place in both categories if this card is anything to go by. I hope to hell your Titan 2 or whatever kicks more ass than this card.
varad - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
@FreneticPony, statements like "Maxwell is designed for mobile gaming" and "But Maxwell isn't designed for high end" tell us you know precious little. Maxwell is an architecture that will span across all of Nvidia's products [Tegra, GeForce, Quadro and Tesla].Frenetic Pony - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
Err... they intend to produce as such yes. But it's obvious the architecture itself is targeted squarely at mobile. Power constraints don't actually get in the way as much as other constraints do on the high end. Who really cares if it's 150+ tdp if it's gaming? You get constrained by memory latency and other things no matter how high you can clock it up.This appears to be Nvidia's version of Haswell, concentrated solely on improving performance per watt rather than performance at all. Which is bad timing as Intel is doing the same, but integrates it's GPUs right onto the chip, making them cheaper and smaller than any dedicated card for a laptop is going to be. Meanwhile AMD is crushing Nvidia in both compute and high end gaming performance on the desktop for performance per $.
True, this will help mitigate electricity cost. for compute based work. But as others pointed out not by much. Meaning Nvidia stuck itself with the wrong focus at the wrong time. Maybe it will help with their Tegra SOCs, if they're lucky they'll get back into the game, as Qualcomm soundly crushed the Tegra 4 for third party ARM Socs over the last year.
So, no, it's designed for high end. Doesn't mean they're not going to do it anyway.
Frenetic Pony - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
I.E. it really doesn't matter how well they did at what they're doing. Because Intel has done just as well and has built in advantages for its market, what their doing doesn't help that much against AMD in the high end market, and this leaves their only chance for financial success with it being next years Tegra SOCs.ninjaquick - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
Plus, AMD is easily capable of taking Nvidia on at the low end with better hardware across the board, more integrated designs, etc.willis936 - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
Pro tip: you're always TDP limited. Increasing performance per watt IS increasing performance.Harag - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Broad statements like "AMD is crushing Nvidia..." only proved @Varad correct. you know precious little.HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
nVidia fits a lot more performance in a little more space at a lot less power and you think they're doing poorly? This is on the same node.Imagine what they'll pack into a smaller node.
Their focus is probably the right one, given the fact they want to migrate these cores into Tegra.