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 : Introduction
Home Theater PC (HTPC) enthusiasts keep close tabs on launch of discrete GPUs which don't need a PCIe power connector. Such cards make it easy to upgrade an old PC with a low-wattage PSU into a multimedia powerhouse. Over the last decade or so, GPUs have implemented HTPC functionalities in response to consumer demand as well as changing / expected market trends. In the beginning, we had hardware acceleration for decode of MPEG-2. This was followed by H.264 / VC-1 acceleration (thanks to the emergence of Blu-rays), HD audio bitstreaming and 3D video support. More recently, we had support for playback and decode of videos in 4K resolution.
4K presents tangible benefits to consumers (unlike 3D), and market adoption is rapidly growing. In many respects, this is similar to how people migrated to 720p and 1080i TV sets when vendors started promoting high definition (HD). We know that these early adopters were stuck with expensive CRT-based TVs when the LCD-based 1080p sets came to the market at very reasonable prices. While there is no 'CRT-to-LCD'-like sea-change in the horizon, the imminent launch of HDMI '2.0' (The HDMI consortium wants to do away with version numbers for reasons known only to them) with 4Kp60 capability and display sinks fully compliant with that standard needs to be kept in mind by end users.
In the near future, it is expected that most of the 4K material reaching consumers will be encoded in H.264. Consumer devices such as the GoPro cameras still record 4K in that codec only. From a HTPC GPU perspective, it is imperative that we have support for 4K H.264 decoding. In fact, most real-time encoding activities would utilize H.264, but, a good HEVC (H.265) encoder would definitely be more efficient in terms of bitrate. The problem is that it is very difficult to make a good HEVC encoder operate in real-time. Archiving content wouldn't be a problem, though. So, it can be expected that content from streaming services / local backup (where the encoding is done offline) will move to HEVC first. A future-proof HTPC GPU would be capable of HEVC decode too.
Where does the Maxwell-based 750Ti stand when the above factors are taken into account? Make no mistake, the NVIDIA GT 640 happens to be our favourite HTPC GPU when 4K-capability is considered an absolute necessity. On paper, the 750Ti appears to be a great candidate to take over the reins from the GT 640. In order to evaluate the HTPC credentials, we put the 750Ti to test against the Zotac GT 640 as well as the Sapphire Radeon HD 7750.
In our HTPC coverage, we first look at GPU support for network streaming services, followed by hardware decoder performance for local file playback. This section also covers madVR. In the third section, we take a look some of the miscellaneous HTPC aspects such as refresh rate accuracy and hardware encoder performance.
The HTPC credentials of the cards were evaluated using the following testbed configuration:
| NVIDIA GT 750Ti HTPC Testbed Setup | |
| Processor / GPU | Intel Core i7-3770K - 3.50 GHz (Turbo to 3.9 GHz) |
| NVIDIA GT 750Ti / Zotac GT 640 / Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 | |
| Motherboard | Asus P8H77-M Pro uATX |
| OS Drive | Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB |
| Secondary Drive | OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB SSD + Corsair P3 128 GB SSD |
| Memory | G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) F3-10666CL7D-4GBECO CAS 9-9-9-24 |
| Case | Antec VERIS Fusion Remote Max |
| Power Supply | Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W |
| Operating System | Windows 8.1 Pro |
| Display / AVR | |
| Sony KDL46EX720 + Pioneer Elite VSX-32 | |
| Acer H243H | |
| Graphics Drivers | GeForce v334.69 / Catalyst 14.1 Beta |
| Softwares | CyberLink PowerDVD 13 |
| MPC-HC 1.7.3 | |
| madVR 0.87.4 | |
All the three cards were evaluated using the same hardware and software configuration. The Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 has an advantage in the power consumption department thanks to its passive cooling system. Other than that, we are doing apples-to-apples comparison when talking about power consumption numbers for various activities in the next few sections.
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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.