NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 - The Gaming Card for the Masses?

The Gaming Card for the Masses?

The newly launched GeForce GTX 760 graphics card today will be the last new entrant to the GTX 700 series lineup, at least till the end of the year. In a press conference call, a NVIDIA spokesperson confirmed this statement and said that it is positioned as the replacement for the GTX 660 Ti.

While the NVIDIA GTX 770 was positioned as a high-end graphics card for the gaming enthusiasts, the GTX 760 also sings a slightly similar tune, but we understand its performance levels would be more realistically pegged to the GTX 660 Ti. In terms of technical specifications, the GTX 760 sports the same GK104 GPU as the GTX 770 and the GTX 660 Ti. It however retains the 256-bit memory bus interface often associated with high performance cards and brought this feature to the performance-mainstream class. With a total memory bandwidth of 192.26GB/s, it's far more than the GeForce GTX 660 series had to offer and matches the throughput of the pricier GTX 670. Meanwhile, video frame buffer size is pegged at 2GB of GDDR5 memory and the card has a TDP rated at 170W.

In terms of physical size, the card measures 241mm in length, and is identical to the GTX 670. As a matter of fact, the TDP of the GTX 760 is also the same as the GTX 670. Coincidentally some of its other hardware specifications are similar to the GTX 670 as they share the same GK104 GPU. However the GTX 670 features 1344 CUDA cores, which is 16 per cent higher than the GTX 760. On the other hand, the GTX 760 is clocked faster at 980MHz, when compared to GTX 670's rated clock speed of 915MHz. In addition, being the newer card, the GTX 760 features the new adaptive temperature controller that is touted to reduce fan noise. In terms of video connectivity options, the card features the expected two DVI ports, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort output.

Another feather in its hat is its attractive price point of US$249. This makes the card cheaper than the GTX 670, which had a launch price of US$399. However given the card's positioning, messaging and specifications, its main comparisons would be the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, Radeon HD 7870 and the Radeon HD 7950.

Evidently, the GTX 760's price point also automatically positions it as the gaming card for the masses due to the prohibitive prices of the higher-end GeForce GTX 780 and GTX 770 cards. According to the company, despite this price point, NVIDIA was quick to point out its positive performance. It even stated the card was powerful enough to tackle the demands of new game titles. Hence, we shall put the card through our slew of benchmarks to determine if this card of mass market appeal will deliver.

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Test Setup

For those who've been following our reviews, take note that we've replaced our old test rig with a brand new one for 2013. Here are the new specs we'll be running with:

• Intel Core i7-3960X (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P9X79 Pro (Intel X79 chipset) Motherboard
• 4 x 2GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill Ripjaws Memory
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive (OS)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB SATA hard drive (Benchmarks + Games)
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

For many of the comparisons, we had to use add-on partner cards to act as reference ones. They were downclocked to the clock speeds of their reference counterparts in order to gauge their performance with updated drivers. Here's the list of cards we've used for testing:-

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.39)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.18) - Stand-in card: Palit GeForce GTX 670 JetStream
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.18) - Stand-in card: ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP 2GB GDDR5
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 320.18) - Stand-in card: MSI GeForce GTX 660 Twin Frozr III OC 
• AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.4) - Stand-in card: XFX R7950 Black Edition
• AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.4) - Stand-in card: ASUS Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II TOP

Note 1: In our performance testing, we left the default temperature ceiling at 80 degrees Celsius as most users would leave it as default. Only at our overclocking exercise did we increase the power target at 104 per cent and our temperature target was automatically increased to 89 degree Celsius.

Benchmarks

Here's the full list of benchmarks that we'll be using for our initial GTX 760 assessment:-

• Futuremark 3DMark 11
• Futuremark 3DMark 2013
• Unigine 4.0 "Heaven"
• Unigine "Valley" 1.0
• Crysis 2
• Tomb Raider
• Assassin's Creed 3
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
• Hitman: Absolution
• Far Cry 3
• Crysis 3

3DMark 11 Results

The first benchmark that we ran on the GeForce GTX 760 was 3DMark 11. This synthetic benchmark evaluates the DirectX 11 performance of the card, including the tessellation and DirectCompute aspects of the DirectX technology.

Peering at the performance figures, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 managed to outpace the GTX 660 and the Radeon HD 7870 by a nice margin of up to 20%, about rivaled the GeForce GTX 660 Ti and the AMD Radeon HD 7950 and was trailing the old GeForce GTX 670 by a margin of 13%. 

3DMark 2013 Results

3DMark (2013)'s Fire Strike benchmark  consists of two tests with extreme levels of tessellation and volumetric illumination, as well as complex smoke simulation using compute shaders and dynamic particle illumination. The first test called Fire Strike is designed for enthusiast-level graphics cards and dual-GPU setups; while the second, called Fire Strike Extreme, ramps up the difficulty with more tessellation, more particle effects and more taxing DirectCompute calculations.

Similar to the earlier 3DMark 11 results, we can see the various graphics cards bunched in tiers. This time round, the new GeForce GTX 760 card managed to lead the GeForce GTX 660 Ti and the Radeon HD 7870 by a margin of 11 to 14% and the discrepancy grew to 25% when compared to the GeForce GTX 660. While it trailed both the GeForce GTX 670 and the Radeon HD 7950, you can see that the margin of difference is small and it's in the 6 to 8% range.

Unigine 4.0 "Heaven" Results

The latest version of Unigine’s longstanding “Heaven” benchmark tests GPUs with extreme tessellation, dynamic sky with volumetric clouds, real-time global illumination, and screen-space ambient occlusion among others.

At both screen resolutions, with anti-aliasing disabled, the GTX 760 was able to maintain its lead over the GTX 660 Ti and the AMD Radeon HD cards. However, its lead over them, especially its NVIDIA counterpart, was very thin.

With anti-aliasing set at 8x, and at the highest resolution of 2560 x 1600, the GTX 760 was outclassed by the AMD Radeon HD 7950, by a margin of less than a single frame per second. Other than that, the GTX 760 performed as within expectations, while the GTX 670 maintained its winning margins, between 15- 17 per cent, over the GTX 760, at the same settings. 

Unigine 1.0 "Valley" Results

Unigine's Valley benchmark renders a highly detailed seamless landscape, which covers a total land area of 64,000 square kilometers. It also utilizes dynamic sky effects, volumetric clouds, sun shafts, DOF, and ambient occlusion.

The performance of the GTX 760 here, was more in-line with the results of 3DMark 2013 benchmark, whereby it was beaten by the GTX 660 Ti at lower settings. However, with Fire Strike Extreme, the stronger graphics compute capabilities of the GTX 760 allowed it to pull ahead of the GTX 660 Ti. Additionally, it's also a tad faster than the Radeon HD 7950 all throughout this benchmark.

Crysis 2 Results

Crysis is our one of our older real world game-based test. At Ultra settings, this benchmark is still able to put GPUs through their paces with a grueling test of tessellation, Parallax Occlusion Mapping, water rendering, particle motion blur and shadowing.

The GTX 760 barely kept ahead of the GTX 660 Ti and AMD Radeon HD 7870, with winning margins that ranged from roughly 4- to 7 per cent. The card was outclassed by the AMD Radeon HD 7950 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670. 

Tomb Raider Results

Tomb  Raider is our one of our latest gaming benchmark, and it replaces Dirt3. This title has been updated to feature the heavily-modified Crystal Engine, with support for DirectX 11. Besides hardware tesellation and DirectCompute, other render technologies like depth of field, high definition ambient occlusion, and contact-hardening shadows are accessible during the benchmark. Last of all, Tomb Raider features the AMD's real-time hair physics system called TresFX.

On the lower resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, the GTX 760 performed well by churning out frame rates that were above 40fps. Its closest competitor was the AMD Radeon HD 7950. However, at the resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, the average frame rates of all the cards, with the exception of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670, fell below the 30fps mark.

Assassin's Creed 3 Results

Assassin’s Creed 3 uses the all-new AnvilNext game engine, which was designed from ground up. This new game engine features enhanced graphic effects such as deferred lighting and ambient occlusion. The engine is currently exclusive to this title as previous games in this franchise didn't feature it.

The GeForce GTX 760 managed to maintain its lead over the GTX 660 Ti and AMD Radeon HD 7950, but only by a small margin. Fortunately it was still about 20% ahead of the GeForce GTX 660 and the AMD Radeon HD 7870. Once more, the GeForce GTX 670 outgunned the newcomer by more than 13%. Clearly, the GeForce GTX 760 is poised to be next new mainstream performance card. We'll run through more results and compare its value standings at the end of the article to see if it's worthwhile.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Results

One of the most popular first-person shooter titles is Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. It employs the use of a heavily modified version of Infinity Wards IW 3.0 engine, which includes upgraded water and lighting effects, lens flare effect, HDR and bounce lighting.

On the resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution, the GeForce GTX 760 managed to beat all the cards, including the GeForce GTX 670!

Far Cry 3 Results

Far Cry 3 features heavy tessellation, high amounts of volumetric lighting, and deferred radiance transfer volumes (global illumination). This is because the game is running on the Dunia 2 Engine, a modified version of Crytek's CryEngine.

With anti-aliasing disable, the GeForce GTX 760 was beaten by a a few points, in terms of average frame rates per second, by both the NVIDIA GTX 670 and GTX 660 Ti. It only fared better at 8X MSAA, as it managed to turn the tables on the GTX 660 Ti; however, its average frame rate per second fell below the 30fps mark for both resolutions. 

Hitman: Absolution Results

Running on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier2 engine, Hitman: Absolution is a challenging benchmark. It features a very hardware intensive engine that is able to render up to 1200 NPCs simultaneously. The benchmark tool used to test this game is extremely intensive, besides the massive crowd of NPCs, it also features Reflective Shadow Mapping (RSM), Direct Compute accelerated Bokeh Depth of Field, extreme tessellation and Ambient Occlusion.

The GTX 760 managed to keep its lead over the GTX 660 and GTX 660 Ti cards; its performance level was almost on par with the GTX 670, when anti-aliasing was set at 8x. However, at this particular setting, none of the cards managed to generate more than the 30fps average frame rate and this made gameplay rather jerky. 

For mid-range graphics cards, it's always advisable not to push the quality levels to the extremes that we test. For example, you can choose a lower resolution like 1080p and don't set 8x MSAA. But if you insist on having some form of anti-aliasing, go for FXAA or TXAA which are both based on post-processing anti-aliasing techniques and consume much lower processing overhead.

Crysis 3 Results

Crysis 3, the much anticipated sequel to Crysis 2 and continues to be an absolute beast of a game, , much like its predecessors. It utilizes CryEngine 3, with extreme amounts of tessellation, per-pixel per-object motion blur, Bokeh Depth of Field, displacement mapping on small terrain, particle and volumetric lighting and fog shadows, improved dynamic cloth and vegetation, dynamic caustics and diffuse shadows. 

On this benchmark, the GeForce GTX 760's performance was the worst, even falling behind the GTX 660 Ti (without anti-aliasing). Its overall performance was rather similar to the AMD Radeon HD 7950; while compared with the GTX 670, it was trailing behind, with margins that ranged from 12- to 22%.

Overclocking

We managed to overclocked the reference NVIDIA GeForce  GTX 760 card to a high of 1093MHz for its GK104 GPU; while for its video memory, it was overclocked to 6456MHz. This translated to perform gains that ranged from 13- to 15% as opposed to its default clock speeds and took the GeForce GTX 760 that was hovering about the GeForce GtX 660 Ti levels to that of a GeForce GTX 670 (non overclocked). 



On as a side note, take note that with the exception of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670, we didn't have time to obtain new overclocked results on a more recent driver set.

Temperature

Coincidentally, the maximum recorded temperature, at 65 degrees Celsius, of the GTX 760 was the same as the GTX 670. Take note that the temperature results of the GeForce GTX 660 and the GTX 660 Ti are taken from add-in board partner cards. The recorded temperatures of the AMD Radeon cards and that of the GeForce GTX 670 were taken from reference cards. 

Power Consumption

Updated on 9th July: The original graph had presented comparison test card results from an older test-bed and thus the differences between the GTX 760 and the rest were more pronounced. We've since rectified the graph, but the conclusion remains that the GTX 760 draws more power than ideal.

The GTX 760 idled with a system power draw of 148W, but its load power consumption was the highest at 350W. While it's in-line with the higher power consumption figures that we've seen from the new GeForce GTX 770 and 780 cards, the GeForce GTX 760 is still a fair bit higher than its competitors. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 has the closest power consumption profile to the GTX 760 as both cards have a similarly rated TDP of 170W. What's unfortunate is that the actual performance levels of the GeForce GTX 760 are more in-line with that of the GeForce GTX 660 Ti - thus the newcomer's performance-per watt is below expectations.

The New Mainstream Gaming Card That Could Have Been Much More

On the get-go, the GeForce GTX 760 seemed to be a promising new card to look forward to. After all, the GeForce GTX 780 leapfrogged the GTX 680 by a margin large enough that it managed near GTX Titan level of performance. Likewise, the GeForce GTX 770 did the same as it outclassed the GTX 670 and was even faster than the GTX 680 marginally. No doubt these new cards were somewhat expensive, the improvement in performance was a rather big leap.

Running through our results compiled, we couldn't really say the same for the GeForce GTX 760. Priced at US$249, it was supposed to be a replacement for the GeForce GTX 660 Ti that debuted at US$299, which is still hovering at that price point. Our tests showed that the GeForce GTX 760 was marginally better than the older GeForce GTX 660 Ti, but only in selective games. For example, it showed a good lead of 12  to 30% in the Hitman:Absolution game, but in elsewhere the advantage is less than 10% and there are even scenarios where it's slower than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti by a small margin. All things considered, it's only marginally better than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti when you consider its GPU Boost 2.0 and a new adaptive temperature controller and that you're getting this level of performance at a lower price point.

For those hoping it would reach the levels of a GeForce GTX 670, this card isn't the missing link, but you can overclock it to reach those levels as we've found out. Another sore point is that power consumption figures of the GeForce GTX 760 left us wondering if there's probably a driver issue as its power readings are much higher than its competitive playing field. In fact, for a card that doesn't perform better than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, it draws more power than the GeForce GTX 670!

Against the AMD Radeon counterparts, the GTX 760 was a clear winner over the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition card. The AMD Radeon HD 7950 card proved to be a tougher challenge as we witnessed at actual gaming benchmarks, their average frame rate scores were rather close. That said, the Radeon HD 7870 cards are now available from US$200, much lower than their US$299 introductory price and thus make them ideal for their performance and price point. On the other hand, we expect AMD to reassess the price points for the Radeon HD 7950 to make them more lucrative to the GeForce GTX 760.

The missing link now is to find out how much do the add-in board partners charge for their editions for the local market and how they fare. For that, tune in to our shootout across four custom designed GeForce GTX 760 cards from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Palit.

As for our preliminary conclusion of the GeForce GTX 760, we think it could have made a better impact if its performance was more convincing. For now, it's main advantage would be its value proposition for the mainstream gamer seeking reasonable performance without a big price penalty - at least for the US market.

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