NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Review: The New Enthusiast Kepler

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• Nfarce - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link

  Last year I was debating going 570 SLI and buying a second one, or selling it and going for a single 680. I went with the latter and am glad. I spent a lot of research on the decision, and 570 SLI is slightly lower than a single 680, within 90-95% depending on game. So if the 770 beats the 680 by a solid 5-10% (again, depending on games), it's going to really beat 570 SLI.

• Kutark - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link

  Yeah. Im thinking i might stick with a single card. Maybe i should hold off and wait for the 760 Ti that will inevitably come. Really the GTX570 is a great card, its just getting a little long in the tooth, and frankly im kind of spoiled, I always want to make sure any game i can play runs at max settings as far as shadows/textures, etc. I'm apparently the only person on the planet who hates AA (makes things fuzzy), so i typically play most games at 1920x1080 with all settings maxed, 0xAA and 8xAnisotropic. The 570 is doing fine in that respect on everything i play now, i'm just worried about some of the upcoming games like BF4, Witcher 3, etc.
  
  I usually prefer to stay with single cards, i've just seen way too many situations where SLI didnt work (i.e. game didnt support it), produced poor results, etc. Not to mention the heat, and power consumption issues.
  
  Regardless, thanks guys for your responses, really helped me clarify the issue.
  
  Off Topic, im currently running an i7-2600k @ 4.1ghz stable, do you think im fine as far as CPU goes for these future games? Haswell doesn't seem to be a huge jump over Gen3 i7.

• mapesdhs - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link

  
  Kutark writes:
  > Yeah. Im thinking i might stick with a single card. ...
  
  Nfarce is spot on about 570 SLI, though 580 SLI can definitely beat a 680
  (1.5GB 580s are quite cheap on eBay these days, eg. I've seen them go for
  as little as 190 UKP total for two). Assuming you're familiar with the
  difference between a 570 and 580 performance-wise, then with respect to
  Firestrike Extreme, see the lower graph on this page:
  
  http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2201/9/
  
  and compare to the following 580 SLI results I obtained (check the
  Graphics scores; the overall scores are skewed against me a bit as my
  system is just a quad-core, though in this case I end up with better
  overall scores anyway vs. a 680, even with the 580s @ stock):
  
  Stock: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/588100
  Oc'd: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/518352
  
  For reference, here's just one 580 at stock, showing that it's Graphics
  score matches the article's 580 quite nicely:
  
  http://www.3dmark.com/fs/588046
  
  Also, my oc'd 580 SLI Graphics score matches a 780. :D (4506 vs. 4483)
  However, as many would rightly point out, the 780 has a huge VRAM advantage
  which is ideal for games like heavily modded Skyrim (though of course there
  are 3GB 580s, but they tend to cost more - mine was 170 UKP total whereas
  1.5GB 580s normally go for around 100 to 125 UKP), and further differences
  mean a 780 would likely be quicker in other cases, especially if you wanted
  to run a multi-screen setups with AA, etc.
  
  I haven't bothered running normal Firestrike until now, so here are stock
  and oc'd runs for comparing to the upper graph on the legit page:
  
  Stock: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/588907
  Oc'd: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/588883
  
  At stock, 580 SLI easily beats a 680. Oc'd, the Graphics score is well
  ahead of a 780 (infact it's higher than the Titan). This suggests, as one
  might expect, that as the visual load becomes more complicated, a single
  better card like a 780 will shows its strengths, ie. SLI'd 570/580s are
  good at typical HD res, but at resolutions like 2560x1440 a newer card
  would be more sensible.
  
  There's also the issue of power consumption if you added a 2nd 570; in
  the long term, would the additional electricity cost end up being not that
  much less than the cost difference compared to just upgrading to a single
  newer card? Hard to answer this as elec prices vary wildly by location.
  There's also the extra heat, and as you say the issue of which games run
  well in SLI since not all do.
  
  Btw, here's an oddity: changing the SLI rendering mode can have a
  dramatic effect on Firestrike Extreme scores, eg. while still at stock
  speed, here are my two 580s using Alternate Frame Rendering 1 (AFR1),
  compared to the earlier link which uses NVIDIA Recommended (examine the
  individual test results):
  
  http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/588100/fs/588603
  
  Graphics Test 1 doesn't change, but Graphics Test 2 increases by some
  36%, hence the Graphics score shoots up 20% from 3625 to 4363. On the
  other hand, the Combined Test drops by about 10%. I notice this test uses
  a lot of VRAM, so perhaps AFR1 doesn't handle heavy VRAM loading so well.
  I checked by running normal Firestrike with the two different SLI modes,
  the result was identical, suggesting that AFR1 may be better if a game is
  taxing VRAM resources a lot, ie. it may be worth manually experimenting
  with one's games to see if a different SLI mode gives higher performance.
  
  I tested with 3 cards aswell; the variation in results depending on SLI
  mode is even more pronounced (not checked with 4 cards yet, need to move
  them into the 3930K case). For the sake of completeness, here's the link
  (done with rather low 825 core clocks as the M4E mbd used has no spare
  slots to permit decent oc'ing with 3 cards):
  
  http://www.3dmark.com/fs/518524
  
  > ... Maybe i should hold
  > off and wait for the 760 Ti that will inevitably come. ...
  
  I read a piece yesterday which suggested NVIDIA wasn't going to release
  any more cards this year, but who knows, that could easily change. It
  would certainly be unusual if they didn't come out with a 760 Ti at some
  point, or something equivalent.
  
  > im kind of spoiled, I always want to make sure any game i can play runs
  > at max settings as far as shadows/textures, etc. ...
  
  :D:D Me too.
  
  > ... I'm apparently the only
  > person on the planet who hates AA (makes things fuzzy), ...
  
  That can certainly happen with some games. Best to experiment with the
  various options. Back when I was playing Oblivion on a 22" CRT at
  2048x1536, I indeed found it better to leave AA off (because the dot
  pitch was so small, no AA at the high res looked quite good). However,
  with the games I'm playing now (FC2, Crysis2), turning on AA does look
  better, but yes some modes are better than others.
  
  > ... The 570 is doing fine in that respect on everything i play now, i'm
  > just worried about some of the upcoming games like BF4, Witcher 3, etc.
  
  If you don't plan on upgrading your display to a higher res, then adding
  a 2nd 570 would work quite well performance-wise, but on the other hand...
  
  > situations where SLI didnt work (i.e. game didnt support it), produced
  > poor results, etc. Not to mention the heat, and power consumption issues.
  
  ... those are all very valid points to consider. Mind you, your CPU is
  running at quite a low clock, so extra heat shouldn't affect your CPU config,
  unless you have a very simple cooler.
  
  > Off Topic, im currently running an i7-2600k @ 4.1ghz stable, do you think
  > im fine as far as CPU
  
  A 2600K will easily run at 4.5 to 4.8 depending on the chip, and many will
  run at 5.0+, so you have plenty of scope for boosting your CPU performance
  should you feel that necessary. The limitation on how high it can go is more
  likely to be determined by your PSU, mbd, RAM, CPU cooler config and of course
  just general luck of the draw re the particular 2600K you have.
  
  Ian.

• Artas1984 - Sunday, August 16, 2015 - link

  You have done your research very wrong.
  
  I had GTX570 and GTX670 in the past. The performance gap was a consecutive 33 % in favor of GTX670 in 20 different games. Documented that in the forums.
  
  Meaning GTX680 is 50 % faster than GTX570.
  
  So SLI GTX570, if scaling is from 50 to 100 %, should be always ahead of GTX680.

• skgiven - Sunday, August 4, 2013 - link

  Comparing against last years reference GTX660Ti (915MHz) has little merit - most (>90%) of 660Ti's are non-reference and boosting to 1200MHz is fairly standard (22% more than 980MHz)! The most recent 660Ti's are even sweeter on the power.
  Including a recent FOC 660Ti and some lesser cards in SLi (GTX 650 ti Boost, which wins hands down and 460) would have made for a very nice review.
  The 760 wins in high bandwidth games, but not low memory dependent games and apps, and not in terms of Performance/Watt.
  BTW. I'm not seeing the price comparison, even now the GTX660Ti is still much less expensive.

• AlucardX - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link

  doesn't look like much of an improvement compared to my overclocked 7850 that i bought for $250 over a year ago..

• Parablooper - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link

  Wow. On 1080p Battlefield it beats a 7970... $270 price point vs. $400.... I like AMD but they better make a move soon or they're off the market.

• king-dubs - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link

  It doesn't. Anandtech is still using 7950/7970/7970GHz results from pre-12.11 drivers.
  
  http://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_760/i...
  
  Also the 7970 dropped briefly to ~$300 two days ago, and the 7950 (Sapphire Dual-X) is still at $259 after MIR @ Newegg.

• king-dubs - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link

  Guru3D results are consistent with TPU:
  http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?ct=articles&ac...

• Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link

  The 7970 results are with Catalyst 13.5 B2 (freshly composed for the GTX 780/770 reviews).
  
  The 7950 results are with Catalyst 13.6 B2 (freshly composed for this article)