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 ESTFinal Words
Bringing this review to a close, NVIDIA’s latest product launch has given us quite a bit to digest. Not only are we looking at NVIDIA’s latest products for the high volume mainstream desktop video card market, but we’re doing so through the glasses of a new generation of GPUs. With the GeForce GTX 750 series we are seeing our first look at what the next generation of GPUs will hold for NVIDIA, and if these cards are an accurate indication of what’s to follow then we’re being setup for quite an interesting time.
Starting from an architectural point of view, it’s clear from the very start that Maxwell is both a refresh of the Kepler architecture and at the same time oh so much more. I think from a feature perspective it’s going to be difficult not to be a bit disappointed that NVIDIA hasn’t pushed the envelope here in some manner, leaving us with a part that as far as features go is distinctly Kepler. Complete support for Direct3D 11.1 and 11.2, though not essential, would have been nice to have so that 11.2 could be the standard for new video cards in 2014. Otherwise I’ll fully admit I don’t know what else to expect of Maxwell – the lack of a new Direct3D standard leaves this as something of a wildcard – but it means that there isn’t a real marquee feature for the architecture to evaluate and marvel at.
On the other hand, the lack of a significant feature changes means that it’s much easier to evaluate Maxwell next to Kepler in the area where NVIDIA did focus: efficiency. This goes for power efficiency resource/compute efficiency, and space efficiency. Utilizing a number of techniques NVIDIA set out to double their performance per watt versus Kepler – a design that was already power efficient by desktop GPU standards – and it’s safe to say that they have accomplished this. With a higher resource efficiency giving NVIDIA additional performance with less hardware, and power optimizations bringing that power consumption down by dozens of watts, NVIDIA has done what in previous generations would have taken a die shrink. The tradeoff is that NVIDIA doesn’t have that die shrink, so die sizes grow in the process, but even then the fact that they packed so much more hardware into GM107 for only a moderate increase in die size is definitely remarkable from an engineering perspective.
Efficiency aside, Maxwell’s architecture is something of an oddity at first, but given NVIDIA’s efficiency gains it’s difficult to argue with the outcome. The partitioning of the SMM means that we have partitions that feel a lot like GF100 SMs, which has NVIDIA going backwards in a sense due to the fact that significant resource sharing was something that first became big with Kepler. But perhaps that was the right move all along, as evidenced by what NVIDIA has achieved. On the other hand the upgrade of the compute feature set to GK110 levels is good news all around. The increased efficiency it affords improves performance alongside the other IPC improvements NVIDIA has worked in, plus it means that some of GK110’s more exotic features such as dynamic parallelism and HyperQ are now a baseline feature. Furthermore the reduction in register pressure and memory pressure all around should be a welcome development; compared to GK107 there are now more registers per thread, more registers per CUDA core, more shared memory per CUDA core, and a lot more L2 cache per GPU. All of which should help to alleviate memory related stalls, especially as NVIDIA is staying on the 128-bit bus.
With that in mind, this brings us to the cards themselves. By doubling their performance-per-watt NVIDIA has significantly shifted their performance both with respect to their own product lineup and AMD’s lineup. The fact that the GTX 750 Ti is nearly 2x as fast as the GTX 650 is a significant victory for NVIDIA, and the fact that it’s nearly 3x faster than the GT 640 – officially NVIDIA’s fastest 600 series card without a PCIe power plug requirement – completely changes the sub-75W market. NVIDIA wants to leverage GM107 and the GTX 750 series to capture this market for HTPC use and OEM system upgrades alike, and they’re in a very good position to do so. Plus it goes without saying that compared to last-generation cards such as the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, NVIDIA has finally doubled their performance (and halved their power consumption!), for existing NVIDIA customers looking for a significant upgrade from older GF106/GF116 cards.
But on a competitive basis things are not so solidly in NVIDIA’s favor. NVIDIA does not always attempt to compete with AMD on a price/performance basis in the mainstream market, as their brand and retail presence gives them something they can bank on even when they don’t have the performance advantage. In this case NVIDIA has purposely chosen to forgo chasing AMD for the price/performance lead, and as such for the price the GeForce GTX 750 cards are the weaker products. Radeon R7 265 holds a particularly large 19% lead over GTX 750 Ti, and in fact wins at every single benchmark. Similarly, Radeon R7 260X averages a 10% lead over GTX 750, and it does so while having 2GB of VRAM to GTX 750’s 1GB.
On a pure price/performance basis, the GTX 750 series is not competitive. If you’re in the sub-$150 market and looking solely at performance, the Radeon R7 260 series will be the way to go. But this requires forgoing NVIDIA’s ecosystem and their power efficiency advantage; if either of those matter to you, then the lower performance of the NVIDIA cards will be justified by their other advantages. With that said however, we will throw in an escape clause: NVIDIA has hard availability today, while AMD’s Radeon R7 265 cards are still not due for about another 2 weeks. Furthermore it’s not at all clear if retailers will hold to their $149 MSRP due to insane demand from cryptocoin miners; if that happens then NVIDIA’s competition is diminished or removed entirely, and NVIDIA wins on price/performance by default.
Wrapping things up, as excited as we get and as focused as we are on desktop cards, it’s hard not to view this launch as a preview of things to come. With laptop sales already exceeding desktop sales, it’s a foregone conclusion that NVIDIA will move more GM107 based video cards in mobile products than they will in desktops. With GK107 already being very successful in that space and GM107 doubling NVIDIA’s performance-per-watt – and thereby doubling their performance in those power-constrained devices – it means that GM107 is going to be an even greater asset in the mobile arena. To that end it will be very interesting to see what happens once NVIDIA starts releasing the obligatory mobile variants of the GTX 750 series, as what we’ve seen today tells us that we could be in for a very welcome jump in mobile performance.
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EdgeOfDetroit - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
This card (Evga 750 Ti OC) is replacing a 560Ti for me. Its slower but its not my primary game machine anymore anyways. I'll admit I was kinda bummed when the 700 series stopped at the 760, and now that the 750 is here, its like they skipped the true successor to the 560 and 660. I can probably still get something for my 560Ti, at least.rhx123 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
I wonder if we'll get the 750Ti or even the 750 in a half height config.It would be nice for HTPCs given the power draw, but I'm not optimistic.
There's still nothing really decent in the half height Nvidia camp.
Frenetic Pony - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
"it is unfortunate, as NVIDIA carries enough market share that their support (or lack thereof) for a feature is often the deciding factor whether it’s used"No this time. Both the Xbone and PS4 are fully feature compliant, as is GCN 1.1 cards, heck even GCN 1.0 has a lot of the features required. With the new consoles, especially the PS4, selling incredibly well these are going to be the baseline, and if you buy a NVIDIA card without it, you be SOL for the highest end stuff.
Just another disappointment with Maxwell, when AMD is already beating Nvidia price for performance wise very solidly. Which is a shame, I love their steady and predictable driver support and well designed cooling set ups. But if they're not going to compete, especially with the rumors of how much Broadwell supposedly massively improves on Intel's mobile stuff, well then I just don't know what to say.
Rebel1080 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Can we all come to a consensus by declaring the 8th console generation an a epic bust!!! When the Seventh console generation consoles (PS3/XB360) made their debut it took Nvidia and AMD 12-18 months to ship a mainstream GPU that could match or exceed thier performance. This generation it only took 3 months at 2/3rds the price those cards sold at (3870/8800GT).It's pretty condemning that both Sony and MSFT's toy boxes are getting spanked by $119-149 cards. Worst of all the cards are now coming from both gpu companies for which I'm sure gives Nvidia all smiles.
FearfulSPARTAN - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Really an epic bust.... Come on now we all knew from the start they were not going to be bleeding edge based on the specs. They were not going for strong single threaded performance they were aiming for well threaded good enough cpu performance and the gpus they had were average at their current time. However considering the ps4 and x1 are selling very well calling the entire gen a bust already is just stupid. You dont need high performance for consoles when you have developers coding to scrape every bit of performance they can out of your hardware, thats something we dont have in the pc space and why most gamers are not using those cards that just met last gen console performance seven years ago.Rebel1080 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
They're selling well for the same reasons iTards keep purchasing Apple products even though they only offer incremental updates on both hardware and less on software. It's something I like to call "The Lemming Effect".Developers code to the metal but that only does so much and then you end up having to compromise the final product via lower res, lower fps, lower texture detail. Ironcially I was watching several YouTube videos of current gen games (BF3&4, Crysis 3, Grid 2, AC4) running at playable fps between 720p & 900P on a Radeon 3870.
oleguy682 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Except that unlike Apple, Sony and Microsoft are selling each unit at a loss once the BOM, assembly, shipping, and R&D are taken into consideration. The PS3 was a $3 billion loss in the first two years it was available. The hope is that licensing fees, add-ons, content delivery, etc. will result in enough revenue to offset the investment, subsidize further R&D, and leave a bit left over for profit. Apple, on the other hand, is making money on both the hardware and the services.And believe it or not, there are a lot more console gamers than PC gamers. Gartner estimates that in 2012, PC gaming made up only $14 billion of the $79 billion gaming market. This does include hardware, in which the consoles and handheld devices (likely) get an advantage, but 2012 was before the PS4 and Xbone were released.
So while it might be off-the-shelf for this generation, it was never advertised as anything more than a substantial upgrade over the previous consoles, both of which were developed in the early 2000s. In fact, they were designed for 1080p gaming, and that's what they can accomplish (well, maybe not the Xbone if recent reports are correct). Given that 2160p TVs (because calling it 4K is dumb and misleading) are but a pipe dream for all but the most well-heeled of the world and that PCs can't even come close to the performance needed to drive such dense displays (short of spending $1,000+ on GPUs alone), there is no need to over-engineer the consoles to do something that won't be asked of them until they are near EOL.
Rebel1080 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
PC Gaming is growing faster globally than the console market because purchasing consoles in many nations is extremely cost prohibitive due to crushing tariffs. Figure that in 3yrs time both Intel and AMD will have IGPs that will trounce the PS4 and will probably sell for under $99 USD. PC hardware is generally much more accessible to people living in places like Brazil, China and India compared to consoles. It would actually cost less to build a gaming PC if you live there.The console market is the USA, Japan and Western Europe, as the economies of these nations continue to decline (all 3 are still in recession) people who want to game without spending a ton will seek lower cost alternatives. With low wattage cards like the 750Ti suddenly every Joe with a 5yr old Dell/HP desktop can now have console level gaming for a fraction of the cost without touching any of his other hardware.
Rebel1080 - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-says-brazil-...oleguy682 - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
Brazil is only Brazil. It does not have any bearing on China or India or any other developing nation as they all choose their own path on how they tax and tariff imports. Second, throwing a 750Ti into a commodity desktop (the $800-1,200 variety) from 3 years ago, let alone 5, is unlikely to result in performance gains that would turn it into a full-bore 1080p machine that can run with the same level of eye-candy as a PS4 or XBone. The CPU and memory systems are going to be huge limiting factors.As far as the PC being a faster growing segment, the Gartner report from this fall thinks that PC gaming hardware and software will rise from the 2012 baseline of 18.3% of spending to 19.4% of spending in 2015. So yes, it will grow, but it's such a small share already that it barely does anything to move the needle in terms of where gaming goes. In contrast, consoles are expected to grow from 47.4% to 49.6% of spending. The losing sectors are going to be handheld gaming, eaten mostly by tablets and smartphones. PCs aren't dying, but they aren't thriving, regardless of what Brazil does with PS4 imports in 2014.