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 : Network Streaming Performance
Windows 7-based HTPCs need hardware acceleration in both Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight for optimal streaming performance with YouTube and Netflix. The move to Windows 8.1 has made Silverlight unnecessary. The Netflix app on Windows 8.x brings a HTPC's capability on par with dedicated streaming consoles, with support for Super HD (6 Mbps) streams as well as Dolby Digital Plus bitstreaming support. The latest app also renders the video in such a way as to make taking screenshots an exercise in frustration.
As the above photograph shows, the Netflix app can be set to bitstream Dolby Digital Plus to the AV receiver and the 750Ti supports it. The video and audio streams are at 5.8 Mbps and 192 kbps respectively. It is not immediately evident as to whether GPU acceleration is being utilized. However, tracking the GPU / VPU loading and PC power consumption numbers make it obvious that it is not software decode at work in the Netflix app.
Unlike Silverlight, Adobe Flash continues to maintain some relevance right now. YouTube continues to use Adobe Flash to serve FLV (at SD resolutions) and MP4 (at both SD and HD resolutions) streams. YouTube's debug OSD indicates whether hardware acceleration is being used or not.
Similar to our Netflix streaming test, we recorded GPU / VPU loading as well as power consumption at the wall when streaming the 1080p version of the sample YouTube clip. The table below presents the relevant numbers for various configurations and streaming services.
| Streaming Video Performance | ||||||
| Netflix | YouTube | |||||
| GPU/VPU Load | Power | GPU/VPU Load | Power | |||
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti | 11.95/12.65% | 56.44 W | 16.26/15.74% | 55.45 W | ||
| NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 | 5.99/25.80% | 58.89 W | 15.57/25.72% | 58.93 W | ||
| AMD Radeon HD 7750 | 0.72% | 66.79 W | 3.57% | 67.11 W | ||
NVIDIA has been touting Maxwell's low power nature, and it proves to be the best of the three candidates in terms of power efficiency when it comes to GPU support for streaming services.
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TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Look at sapphire's 7750. superior in every way to the 6570, and is single slot low profile. and overclocks like a champ.dj_aris - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Sure but it's cooler is kind of loud. Definitely NOT a silent HTPC choice. Maybe a LP 750 would be better.evilspoons - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Thanks for pointing that out. None of my local computer stores sell that, but I took a look on MSI's site and sure enough, there it is. They also seem to have an updated version of the same card being sold as an R7 250, although I'm not sure there's any real difference or if it's just a new sticker on the same GPU. Clock speeds, PCB design, and heat sink are the same, anyway.Sabresiberian - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
I'm hoping the power efficiency means the video cards at the high end will get a performance boost because they are able to cram more SMMs on the die than SMXs were used in Kepler solutions. This of course assumes the lower power spec means less heat as well.I do think we will see a significant performance increase when the flagship products are released.
As far as meeting DX11.1/11.2 standards - it would be interesting to hear from game devs how much this effects them. Nvidia has never been all that interested in actually meeting all the requirements for Microsoft to give them official status for DX versions, but that doesn't mean the real-world visual quality is reduced. In the end what I care about is visual quality; if it causes them to lose out compared to AMD's offerings, I will jump ship in a heartbeat. So far that hasn't been the case though.
Krysto - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Yeah, I'm hoping for a 10 Teraflops Titan, so I can get to pair with my Oculus Rift next year!Kevin G - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
nVidia has been quite aggressive with the main DirectX version. They heavily pushed DX10 back in day with the Geforce 8000/9000 series. They do tend to de-emphassize smaller updates like 8.1, 10.1, 11.1 and 11.2. This is partially due to their short life spans on the market before the next major update arrives.I do expect this to have recently changed as Windows it is moving to rapid release schedule and it'll be increasingly important to adopt these smaller iterations.
kwrzesien - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Cards on Newegg are showing DirectX 11.2 in the specs list along with OpenGL 4.4. Not that I trust this more than the review - we need to find out more.JDG1980 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
The efficiency improvements are quite impressive considering that they're still on 28nm. TDP is low enough that AIBs should be able to develop fanless versions of the 750 Ti.The lack of HDMI 2.0 support is disappointing, but understandable, considering that it exists virtually nowhere. (Has the standard even been finalized yet?) But we need to get there eventually. How hard will it be to add this feature to Maxwell in the future? Does it require re-engineering the GPU silicon itself, or just re-designing the PCB with different external components?
Given the increasing popularity of cryptocoin mining, some benchmarks on that might have been useful. I'd be interested to know if Maxwell is any more competitive in the mining arena than Kepler was. Admittedly, no one is going to be using a GPU this small for mining, but if it is competitive on a per-core basis, it could make a big difference going forward.
xenol - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
I'm only slightly annoyed that NVIDIA released this as a 700 series and not an 800 series.DanNeely - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
I suspect that's an indicator that we shouldn't expect the rest of the Maxwell line to launch in the immediate future.