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 : Decoding & Rendering Benchmarks
Our decoding and rendering benchmarks consists of standardized test clips (varying codecs, resolutions and frame rates) being played back through MPC-HC v1.7.3 (which comes with LAV Filters 0.60.1.5 in-built). GPU usage is tracked through GPU-Z logs and power consumption at the wall is also reported. The former provides hints on whether frame drops could occur, while the latter is an indicator of the efficiency of the platform for the most common HTPC task - video playback. Starting with this review, we have added two new streams to our benchmark suite. The first one is a 1080p24 H.264 clip (the type of content that most HTPC users watch), while the second one is a 2160p30 (4Kp30) H.264 clip (which will give us a way to test the downscaling performance of various codec / renderer combinations).
In the course of our testing, we found that our standard 1080p60 H.264 clip played with lots of artifacts on the GT 750Ti. This happened with both MPC-HC and CyberLink PowerDVD13. Using the same drivers on the GT 640 resulted in perfect playback. [Update: NVIDIA got back to us indicating that this is a Maxwell-related driver issue. We are waiting for new drivers]
It will be interesting to determine the reason behind this issue. Not all 1080p60 clips had this problem, though. On the positive side, both the GT 750Ti and the GT 640 (as expected) were able to decode UHD / 4K streams using the GPU. The 7750 fell back to software decode (avcodec) for those streams despite the relevant setting being ticked in the LAV Video Decoder configuration.
Before proceeding to the renderer benchmark numbers, it is important to explain the GPU loading numbers in the tables below. It goes without saying that the GPU loading of NVIDIA cards must obviously not be compared directly to the AMD card. Even amongst the NVIDIA cards, the loading numbers don't signify the same thing. The GPU load numbers reported by GPU-Z don't take into consideration the core clock. Maxwell GPUs have more fine-grained clock control. For example, when playing back 4Kp30 material, the 750 Ti's core clock is around 824 MHz, but, when playing 1080p24 material, it scales down to 135 MHz. Kepler, on the other hand, seems to use 824 MHz when playing back both 4Kp30 and 1080p24 material. For 480i, it goes down to 324 MHz. In terms of GPU loading on the GTX 750 Ti, we find 4Kp30 playback reporting a load of 2.65%, while 1080p60 reports 46% under EVR. The 2% loading is under much higher core clocks compared to the clock being used for 1080p60 playback. For the GT 640, this 'disconnect' is much harder to observe, since the clocks are same for most HD material. However, in the GT 640 segment of the screenshot below, it is possible to observe a higher GPU load of 34% for 480i60 material (the third part) compared to a lower value at higher clocks for 1080p24 material.
GPU-Z 0.7.7 Sensor Readings - Fine-grained clock control in Maxwell (4Kp30 and 1080p24 playback) compared to Kepler (4Kp30, 1080p24 and 480i60 playback). Core-clock / Load numbers 'disconnect' can be observed in both cases for Maxwell, but only in the 480i60 case for Kepler.
In any case, if the GPU usage is hovering above 95%, it is likely that the playback suffered from dropped frames. In terms of apples-to-apples comparison for efficiency purposes, the power consumption at the wall reigns supreme.
Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR)
The Enhanced Video Renderer is the default renderer made available by Windows 8.1. It is a lean renderer in terms of usage of system resources since most of the aspects are offloaded to the GPU drivers directly. EVR is mostly used in conjunction with native DXVA2 decoding. The GPU is not taxed much by the EVR despite hardware decoding also taking place. In our evaluation, all video post processing steps were left for MPC-HC to decide (except for the explicit activation of inverse telecine). In all our tests, we used the native DXVA2 decoder provided by MPC-HC's internal LAV Video Decoder. Deinterlacing mode was set to aggressive in the LAV Video Decoder setting. The GT 750Ti's VPU loading barely went above 40% even when decoding 1080p60 or 4Kp30 clips.
| Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR) Performance | ||||||
| Stream | GTX 750 Ti | GT 640 | HD 7750 | |||
| GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | |
| 480i60 MPEG2 | 44.67 | 57.15 W | 20.92 | 68.74 W | 14.76 | 68.42 W |
| 576i50 H264 | 55.57 | 57.25 W | 19.28 | 69.37 W | 12.16 | 69.01 W |
| 720p60 H264 | 38.91 | 56.75 W | 36.05 | 61.08 W | 9.90 | 68.16 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG2 | 80.92 | 59.53 W | 32.76 | 71.27 W | 15.06 | 69.03 W |
| 1080i60 H264 | 55.87 | 63.34 W | 35.79 | 73.11 W | 18.78 | 71.21 W |
| 1080i60 VC1 | 79.29 | 60.69 W | 35.07 | 72.63 W | 18.91 | 70.97 W |
| 1080p60 H264 | 45.53 | 57.67 W | 39.29 | 61.91 W | 11.87 | 69.02 W |
| 1080p24 H264 | 15.69 | 55.06 W | 15.61 | 58.26 W | 4.62 | 67.47 W |
| 4Kp30 H264 | 2.65 | 63.89 W | 24.21 | 67.33 W | 11.36 | 76.90 W |
Enhanced Video Renderer - Custom Presenter (EVR-CP)
EVR-CP is the default renderer used by MPC-HC. It is slightly more resource intensive compared to EVR, as some explicit post processing steps are done on the GPU without going through DXVA post processing API calls provided by the driver.
| Enhanced Video Renderer - Custom Presenter (EVR-CP) Performance | ||||||
| Stream | GTX 750 Ti | GT 640 | HD 7750 | |||
| GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | |
| 480i60 MPEG2 | 61.58 | 58.99 W | 18.97 | 69.22 W | 11.99 | 69.93 W |
| 576i50 H264 | 55.45 | 57.93 W | 17.97 | 68.81 W | 9.93 | 69.85 W |
| 720p60 H264 | 54.18 | 58.88 W | 47.97 | 63.17 W | 12.54 | 70.93 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG2 | 17.69 | 68.38 W | 39.84 | 73.85 W | 22.82 | 72.01 W |
| 1080i60 H264 | 16.92 | 70.14 W | 42.62 | 74.35 W | 21.97 | 73.43 W |
| 1080i60 VC1 | 17.45 | 69.77 W | 41.79 | 73.99 W | 22.03 | 73.56 W |
| 1080p60 H264 | 56.5 | 60.07 W | 19.80 | 70.64 W | 13.36 | 71.61 W |
| 1080p24 H264 | 25.61 | 56.83 W | 23.80 | 60.36 W | 9.68 | 69.20 W |
| 4Kp30 H264 | 5.52 | 67.11 W | 27.51 | 70.76 W | 26.10 | 84.03 W |
Experimenting with madVR
madVR provides plenty of options to tweak. For our evaluation, we considered two main scenarios. Our first run was with the default settings ( Chroma upscaling: Bicubic with Sharpness 75, Image upscaling: Lanczos 3-tap and Image downscaling: Catmull-Rom). With these settings, both the GT 640 and 750Ti processed all our test clips without dropping frames. The HD 7750 failed with the 720p60 and 1080p60 clips.
| madVR (Default Settings) Performance | ||||||
| Stream | GTX 750 Ti | GT 640 | HD 7750 | |||
| GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | |
| 480i60 MPEG2 | 76.02 | 62.27 W | 28.77 | 73.68 W | 20.91 | 74.76 W |
| 576i50 H264 | 73.21 | 62.10 W | 30.93 | 74.24 W | 20.88 | 75.40 W |
| 720p60 H264 | 19.34 | 69.89 W | 35.18 | 75.42 W | 25.11 | 78.46 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG2 | 23.16 | 71.08 W | 49.53 | 77.78 W | 27.74 | 78.22 W |
| 1080i60 H264 | 24.87 | 71.79 W | 52.27 | 78.26 W | 28.13 | 79.67 W |
| 1080i60 VC1 | 24.47 | 71.06 W | 51.48 | 77.74 W | 27.88 | 79.18 W |
| 1080p60 H264 | 20.49 | 70.43 W | 42.30 | 76.45 W | 29.72 | 79.16 W |
| 1080p24 H264 | 41.70 | 59.20 W | 43.98 | 63.41 W | 14.03 | 72.08 W |
| 4Kp30 H264 | 27.51 | 73.24 W | 66.72 | 81.54 W | 23.06 | 100.94 W |
The second run was with our stress settings (Chroma and image upscaling : Jinc 3-tap with anti-ringing filter activated, Image downscaling : Lanczos 3-tap with anti-ringing filter activated). With these settings, the GT 750Ti was able to process all test clips without dropping frames. However, the GT 640 failed the 576i50 / 720p60 / 1080i60 / 4Kp30 clips. The HD 7750 failed the 720p60, 1080p60 and 4Kp30 clips.
| madVR (Stress Settings) Performance | ||||||
| Stream | GTX 750 Ti | GT 640 | HD 7750 | |||
| GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | GPU Load (%) | Power | |
| 480i60 MPEG2 | 50.53 | 76.35 W | 90.48 | 88.77 W | 70.38 | 89.99 W |
| 576i50 H264 | 55.08 | 76.92 W | 95.09 | 92.75 W | 80.21 | 91.65 W |
| 720p60 H264 | 63.65 | 84.37 W | 96.82 | 93.72 W | 92.64 | 95.85 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG2 | 51.29 | 76.43 W | 95.93 | 89.86 W | 63.32 | 88.58 W |
| 1080i60 H264 | 52.65 | 77.06 W | 94.9 | 90.63 W | 64.26 | 89.64 W |
| 1080i60 VC1 | 51.71 | 77.33 W | 96.86 | 90.31 W | 64.28 | 89.09 W |
| 1080p60 H264 | 54.43 | 77.92 W | 96.63 | 91.71 W | 73.20 | 92.09 W |
| 1080p24 H264 | 76.58 | 62.23 W | 38.04 | 75.26 W | 24.82 | 77.68 W |
| 4Kp30 H264 | 77.52 | 99.33 W | 99 | 101.13 W | 95.71 | 117.07 W |
As entry level HTPC GPUs become more and more powerful, madVR keeps pushing the bar higher too. Recently, NNEDI3 was added as an upscaling algorithm option. In our experiments with a 1080p display output, NNEDI3 and Jinc 3-tap (for chroma and luma upscaling) work for 1080p24 or lower resolution / frame rate clips in the 750Ti and 7750, but not in the GT 640. With NNEDI3, the NVIDIA driver is a bit buggy, with a greenish tinge all through. Any higher resolution / frame rate immediately chokes. Jinc 3-taps works fine, though. 4K to 1080p downscaling results in greenish screens intermittently, finally ending up with a resetting Direct 3D Device failure. The downscaling path seems to be buggy, either due to driver issues or bugs in madVR v0.87.4.
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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.