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 ESTThe Test
For this review we’re using the latest drivers from both NVIDIA and AMD. NVIDIA’s launch drivers are 334.69, which add support for the GTX 750 series but are otherwise identical to the 334.67 drivers currently available as a public beta for existing cards. The release 334 drivers include a fairly impressive tune up of NVIDIA’s OpenCL stack, so we’re finding that OpenCL performance is significantly improved in some of our benchmarks, which helps to close the gap with AMD. On the other hand these tune-ups have not come bug free (as Ganesh has found), and while our compute benchmarks are fine, Ganesh has run into some issues with some of his OpenCL based video utilities. Other than that, we have not encountered any stability problems with these drivers.
Meanwhile for AMD’s cards we’re using the recently released Catalyst 14.1 beta v1.6 drivers.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Ti Zotac GeForce GTX 750 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 640 NVIIDA GeForce GTX 550 Ti AMD Radeon R7 265 AMD Radeon R7 260X AMD Radeon R7 250 AMD Radeon HD 7750 AMD Radeon HD 5770 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 334.67 Beta NVIDIA Release 334.69 Beta (GTX 750 Series) AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta v1.6 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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RealiBrad - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
If you were to run the AMD card 10hrs a day with the avg cost of electricity in the US, you would pay around $22 more a year in electricity. The AMD card gives a %19 boost in power for a %24.5 boost in power usage. That means that the Nvidia card is around %5 more efficient. Its nice that they got the power envelope so low, but if you look at the numbers, not huge.The biggest factor is the supply coming out of AMD. Unless they start making more cards, the the 750Ti will be the better buy.
Homeles - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Your comment is very out of touch with reality, in regards to power consumption/efficiency:http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...
It is huge.
mabellon - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Thank you for that link. That's an insane improvement. Can't wait to see 20nm high end Maxwell SKUs.happycamperjack - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
That's for gaming only, it's compute performance/watt is still horrible compared to AMD though. I wonder when can Nvidia catch up.bexxx - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - link
http://media.bestofmicro.com/9/Q/422846/original/L...260kh/s at 60 watts is actually very high, that is basically matching 290x in kh/watt ~1000/280watts, and beating out r7 265 or anything... if you only look at kh/watt.
ninjaquick - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
To be honest, all nvidia did was increase the granularity of power gating and core states, so in the event of pure burn, the TDP is hit, and the perf will (theoretically) droop.The reason the real world benefits from this is simply the way rendering works, under DX11. Commands are fast and simple, so increasing the number of parallel queues allows for faster completion and lower power (Average). So the TDP is right, even if the working wattage per frame is just as high as any other GPU. AMD doesn't have that granularity implemented in GCN yet, though they do have the tech for it.
I think this is fairly silly, Nvidia is just riding the coat-tails of massive GPU stalling on frame-present.
elerick - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Since the performance charts have 650TI Boost i looked up the TDP of 140W. When compared to the Maxwell 750TI with 60W TDP I am in awe of the performance per watt. I sincerely hope that the 760/770/780 with 20nm to give the performance a sharper edge but even if they are not it will still give people with older graphics cards more of a reason to finally upgrade since driver performance tuning will start favoring Maxwell over the next few years.Lonyo - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
The 650TI/TI Boost aren't cards designed to be efficient. They are cut down cards with sections of the GPU disabled. While 2x perf per watt might be somewhat impressive, it's not that impressive given the comparison is made to inefficient cards.Comparing it to something like a GTX650 regular, which is a fully enabled GPU, might be more apt of a comparison, and probably wouldn't give the same perf/watt increases.
elerick - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - link
Thanks, I haven't been following lower end model cards for either camp. I usually buy $200-$300 class cards.bexxx - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - link
Still just over 1.8x higher perf/watt: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...