NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Review: The New Enthusiast Kepler
by Ryan Smith on June 25, 2013 9:00 AM ESTMeet the GeForce GTX 760
As we mentioned earlier, due to its 170W TDP the GTX 760 is essentially a drop-in replacement for the GTX 670 in board designs. Even NVIDIA’s reference design reflects this, with the reference GTX 760 being based on the reference GTX 670’s cooler and PCB. Consequently there’s not much to say about the GTX 760’s design that we haven’t said before. If you’ve seen a GTX 670 then you’ve seen a GTX 760, down to the last screw. For consistency we’ll quickly go over the GTX 760’s design, but this is generally a rehash of what we’ve already said about the GTX 670.
Like GTX 670 before it, GTX 760 is another “small” GK104 design. The complete card is 9.5” long, however the actual PCB is far shorter at only 6.75” long, 3.75” shorter than the GTX 770’s PCB. In fact it would be fair to say that rather than strapping a cooler onto a card, NVIDIA strapped a card onto a cooler. Meanwhile we see that once again NVIDIA is using Hynix R0C (6GHz) GDDR5 RAM here.
The cooler itself is fairly simple, utilizing an aluminum heatsink melded with a copper base plate. A separate heatsink covers the VRM circuitry – once again mounted at the front of the card – while the fan hangs off of the rear of the card. This unfortunately is the same fan as on the GTX 670, which means it makes a faint grinding sound at low RPMs. This design has proven more than adequate for the GTX 670s, though it does leave some room for NVIDIA’s partners to improve on overall cooling performance, especially with open air coolers.
Elsewhere at the top of the card we’ll find the PCIe power sockets and SLI connectors. Two 6-pin PCIe sockets provide the necessary external power, while a pair of SLI bridge connectors at the other end allow for up to 3-way SLI. NVIDIA’s standard I/O configuration also makes an appearance here, offering 2x DL-DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort 1.2.
Looking at clockspeed bins for a moment, it comes as no great surprise that like the GTX 770, the GTX 760 operates at 1.2v at its highest stock clockspeed bin. The higher voltage versus the 1.76v limit on the 600 series causes power consumption to jump up more rapidly at the highest bins, but is necessary to unlock the 1100MHz+ clockspeeds the card is capable of.
| GeForce Clockspeed Bins | ||||
| Clockspeed | GTX 770 | GTX 760 | ||
| 1162MHz | N/A | 1.212v | ||
| 1149MHz | 1.212v | 1.2v | ||
| 1136MHz | 1.2v | 1.187v | ||
| 1123MHz | 1.187v | 1.162v | ||
| 1110MHz | 1.162v | 1.15v | ||
| 1097MHz | 1.15v | 1.137v | ||
| 1084MHz | 1.137v | 1.125v | ||
| 1071MHz | 1.125v | 1.112v | ||
| 1058MHz | 1.112v | 1.1v | ||
| 1045MHz | 1.1v | 1.087v | ||
Finaly, for overclockers there is one further bin (1162MHz) available via overvolting to 1.212v. The maximum power target meanwhile is 115%, for a final power limit of 195W.
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JlHADJOE - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
The GTX670 still looks like a better configuration. Having two disabled SMs and trying to make up the performance difference with clock speed means the 760 is slightly slower than the 670, all the while using more power. There's likely less performance to be gained from overclocking too.I can only guess that they are heavily binning GK104s and every good chip is going into the 770, and with the product line being cut down the 760 has to accept all the rejects so its spec calls for up to two non-functional SMs.
intercede007 - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
EVGA lists a 4GB part (04G-P4-2766-KR) and an overclocked 4GB part (04G-P4-2768-KR ). The review only covers the reference 2GB design.Is there any reason to think the additional 2GB of memory at the same clock rate as a 2GB part will be worth the additional cost? The price difference appears to be $40.
monkeydude66 - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
Thank you so much for including GTX 460, 560 Ti in the review! Anandtech delivers once again. I find it absolutely ridiculous when major GPU Review sites only compare new GPUs to the last generation or completely unrelated GPUs unworthy of comparing to to a mainstream card. Good work.mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
I'll probably get a 700 series card next month, in which case I'll start adding data to my
site, which already has a lot of 460 info. Do you have a 460? (or two?) If so, which models?
Ian.
monkeydude66 - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
Yeah, I have the Gigabyte GV-N460OC-1GI with 1GB. Planing to upgrade to GTX760 after seeing the +100% performance change.mapesdhs - Monday, July 1, 2013 - link
So is your 460 the version that has a 715MHz core clock? In that case yes indeed, the 760
should give you a major performance bump. Btw, what CPU/mbd do you have? CPU needs
to be reasonably decent to feed something like a 760.
Ian.
SilverBack - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
Ryan the GTX 760 4 gb is out can we get a comparison?slickr - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
Too expensive for me, $250 is still quite a lot, especially since the GTX 460 1GB was $200, then the GTX 560 was $200.I'm going to wait for competition from AMD and see if they offer better value for money.
rs2 - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
How did the 660Ti score so highly on the Crysis 3 benchmark @ 2560x1440? Seems like an invalid result?Ryan Smith - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Good catch. That was a data entry error; that was supposed to be 34, not 44. It has been corrected. Thanks.