The GeForce GTX 760 Gets Unleashed
Another week means yet another launch for the folks at NVIDIA and this time we start getting into the really affordable side of things, as the new GTX 760 makes its debut. Gaming cards that are at this price point usually sell very well due to that fact that many more a buyer can shell out a couple of hundred dollars in comparison to paying the premium price that comes with getting one of those cards. The thing is, and users will appreciate this, is that at resolutions of 1920 x 1080p, everybody is competing to be the best bang for the buck card and this translates into saving at the counter and cards that will perform just fine for many gamers.
NVIDIA has the brass ring in some areas, and if things like CUDA, Advanced PhysX and the new NVIDIA GeForce Experience , which keeps everything up to date as far as drivers and game patches are concerned, there is only 1 player in the game. Another thing is that if you are an avid Adobe software user the NVIDIA cards offer better support and performance than the AMD series of cards due to the technology NVIDIA uses in their design. AMD cards can however do PhysX, it is just strictly run off the CPU and not the GPU and a standard, not advanced PhysX solution. The new GeForce GTX 760 is the latest of the 7 series cards to hit the market and there will be both reference and non-reference cards available. This launch there will be many partners making non-reference based products, which is good news for the gamer.
We were able to get a hold of a few different models to show you fine folks on launch day via various means both written and video. The reference designed card looks just like the previous generation 6 series cards and offers the same black shroud single blower fan design that they have been using for quite awhile now. We will show you in today’s morning review both the NVIDIA reference designed card as well as the MSI Twin Frozr version that is based on a non-reference design and you will be able to clearly see the differences in how the cards look. MSI has made a solid name for themselves via the Twin Frozr lineup as their after market cooling solutions are know to work well at keeping your card cool even with the card overclocked and pushed to its maximum capabilities. Lets first take a visual look at the 2 cards and how they vary from each other in just about every way.
Layout And Design
Lets first take a look at NVIDIA’s reference model that features their black shroud and single blower style fan apparatus to cool the GPU and its surrounding components and has two 6-pin power connections.
The reference card is what it is and with this launch and I do not see too many companies just slapping a sticker on it and calling it a day.
I cannot say that no companies will as I am sure we will see a few hit the market, but they will also be at the lowest price point and only geared for very moderate beyond factory spec overclocking.
You can see the back of the card features a black PCB and only actually takes up about 75% of the actual length of the card.
The MSI Twin Frozr Gaming Edition features an open-air design that dissipates and then blows the heat away from the GPU into the system and relies upon your systems airflow to get rid of the hot air away from the computer itself.
The card has a color scheme of a Ferrari, but with a Dragon for the emblem design as seen in the center of the card. There are 2-fans on the top of the card hence the nomenclature Twin Frozr and underneath the fans we can see the aluminum heat fins that work in conjunction with the copper Heatpipes to take the heat away from the GPU. MSI is now using a direct to copper connection to help improve the efficiency of the cooling system.
On the bottom side of the MSI Twin Frozr Gaming Edition you can see the heatpipes and the aluminum cooling fins that make up the cooling solution of the card, which is entirely different than the design used on the reference designed card from NVIDIA in every way.
The PCB of the MSI card is also different and sports a root beer brown color in respect to NVIDIA’s solid black design.
Another difference between the two cards is the power requirements needed to power them, as the NVIDIA reference model has dual 6-pin power connectors, while the MSI Twin Frozr has an 8-pin and 6-pin connection. The MSI card is 100% aimed at the overclocking crowd and is right out of the box overclocked and cooled to remain stable even when pushed beyond standard specs.
MSI has gone beyond reference design specifications to bring a better GTX 760 to the table and the cooling and high-end Military Class 4 components set it apart from the reference design by a wide margin. Both cards have the same PCIe 3.0 interface as that is something that remains the same throughout all of the cards and both share the same rear output connectivity. Almost every card I have seen in the last few launches from NVIDIA have featured the same output layout of 2 DVI, a standard DisplayPort and a standard HDMI connection. They’re are some benefits however that I must in all fairness discuss, and that is using aftermarket liquid cooling solutions. If you plan on using a liquid cooled system most of them are built around the reference designed card as that usually all the available specs that those companies have at launch day and making a kit for every company usually does not happen.
Speeds and Feeds
All variations of the new GeForce GTX 760 will ship with 6 SMX units providing 1152 CUDA Cores that are the powerhouse components behind NVIDIA’s technology.
The memory subsystem of GeForce GTX 760 consists of four 64-bit memory controllers (256-bit) and comes loaded with 2GB of GDDR5 memory.
This is actually the same as almost every card in the 7 series albeit the extreme high-end bad boys like the GTX 780 with 3GB and the Titan and GTX 690 with 6.GB that also carry a very high price tag as well.
The base clock speed of the GeForce GTX 760 is 980MHz. The MSI Twin Frozr is set at 1022MHz. The typical Boost Clock speed for the reference card is 1033MHz, while the Boost on the MSI card is at 1085Mhz.
The Boost 2.0 clock speed is based on the average GeForce GTX 760 heat pattern that we see averaged around 81 Celsius under full load and limiting the headroom of the cards overclocking capabilities.
The Boost speed can vary depending on system configurations and game title. We see the GeForce GTX 760’s memory speed is set at a 6008MHz data rate.
Reference GTX 760 GPU Z Shot
MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr GPU Z Shot
Reference based cards will have a total memory bandwidth of 193.26GB/s and a memory clock speed of 1502MHz. Both the reference based card and the MSI Twin Frozr Gaming Edition card will have a memory clock speed of 1502MHz.
There is usually not too much of a variation on the basic design of the cards component list and the changes we usually see are in the company that manufactures the parts and the cooling apparatus used to cool the card down. Speeds and feeds only change in how fast one element or another is clocked on different manufactures cards.
Features and Applications
NVIDIA offers the use a variety of features inherit to their brand of cards and these features are some of the unique things NVIDIA brings to the table.
NVIDIA TXAA, Advanced PhysX and HBAO are all things that are only available on the NVIDIA series of cards. Many new titles including Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Watch Dogs, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and Batman: Arkham Origins all will support NVIDIA’s special features and take advantage of those technologies to bring forth a better gaming experience.
The NEW 1.5 version of the GeForce Experience is also a trusty tool for the gamer as it keeps your drivers up to date automatically if you want as well as letting you know if there is a new patch for your installed games keeping everything current.
GPU Boost 2.0 and Overclocking
For the reference card, we were only able to get the Boost speeds that were available at the temperatures that the card ran at. GPU Boost 2.0 works differently than the 1.0 solution does as GPU Boost 1.0 works off a power target that is limited when compared to 2.0 that uses the cards GPU temp to determine the Boost capability.
The reference card ran between 75-81 Celsius locking at the Boost clock of 1033MHz. Being that the reference card is a plug it in and forget about it solution the Boost clock although modest is still pretty fair.
The MSI Twin Frozr Gaming Edition card however has a much better cooling solution that keeps the card running much cooler in all circumstances and showed between 18-20% better cooling than the reference card. The card comes overclocked out of the box, but we were able to increase the card by 100MHz and get an easy better overclock than the reference card by quite a decent margin and being able to obtain a Boost clock of 1241MHz with temps only at 66 Celsius leaving a lot of additional headroom to push the MSI card much further before getting into dangerous temperature zones.
MSI also has their patented and very well loved After Burner overclocking software GUI that allows real time adjustments to the different aspects of the card. Things such as voltage as well as fan rotation speeds plus clock and memory parameters can all be adjusted within the After Burner GUI. We left everything, but the core clock speed at its default state and only increased the core clock by 100MHz for a very quick down and dirty overclock. With the MSI card running as cool as it did with a little more tinkering I am sure much better results could be obtained by someone really wanting to push the envelope. I will increase the voltage and see how far the card will go in another article, for now the results looked pretty damn good.
Gaming and Performance Results
Many of the time when we test video cards we see an average of usually around 10-20 FPS difference between the reference models we test and this card showed on average the same results.
The cards were able to beat the overclocked HD 7870, but were a bit slower than the 7950GHz Edition, which consideration should be taken, as it was an overclocked GHZ and not a standard 7950 card from the AMD camp.
All the games were ran high or better settings with the AA turned on and the card showed no problems at 1080p gaming and showed decent scores even at a resolution of 2560X1440 that shows the GTX 760 has some balls and is a solid contender at the price point it is aimed at.
Even the latest and most demanding game titles can be played on the GTX 760 and if SLI scaling goes as well at is should we should see a 25-100% improvement in performance per added card.
Test Bench
Gaming & Performance Results
Temperatures
AMD still wins in Open CL, but there are more Adobe applications out there than programs that use Open CL, so in the desktop environment. NVIDIA is continuing to fill the gap as far as card variations go and now have real gaming solutions coming in at more affordable price ranges. You can see from the benchmarks that the GeForce GTX 760 has enough power to play your favorite games with FPS, which in average beat anything within a $50.00 difference in price making the GTX 760’s a very appealing product SKU.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
I have to say right off the bat in my conclusion that I was very impressed with how well this card did in gaming, especially in the higher 2560X1440 resolutions where the card was not even really aimed to be played at.
We all know that at 1920X1080 is where this card is targeted at and for the price range it does one hell of a bang up job playing all the latest titles with ease and many of them at their highest setting as well.
NVIDIA wants to stay very competitive as seen by this release and its price point of $249.00. The GeForce GTX 670 can be used either for SOHO productivity or gaming and is an all around well-rounded solution that offers better performance in Adobe applications due to its CUDA core technology that accelerates the performance in many software programs.
The reference card was almost silent even when playing games and the cooling ramped up as the card compensated for the heat so the acoustic aspect of the reference card is solid in that department as well as having lower power requirements, but it ran at max of 81 Celsius.
The MSI Twin Frozr card also runs very silent and had a much better GPU Boost as at stock setting we saw a maximum of 61 Celsius in temperature and with 100MHz Boost we saw a max temperature of 66 Celsius, which leaves plenty of headroom for much father overclocking.
BecauseGPU Boost 2.0 goes by the GPU temperature the better the cooling the better the Boost and from that we saw a maximum Boost clock speed of 1241MHz. MSI has done an excellent job with their Twin Frozr cooling solution that offers a minimum of nearly 20% better cooling than the stock cooling of the reference designed card.
For those gamers who need to stay in the under $300.00 price range the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 is a very interesting product to put in your minds eye as it offers solid gaming at 1080p resolutions as well as accelerated performance in video editing, and other applications that many use in their daily life.
MSI has taken an already robust design found in the GTX 760 and taken it to the next level by adding the Twin Frozr cooling solution that works much better than your reference designed cards by quite a margin. Using higher than spec parts and designing their own cooling worked out very well for MSI as the card gives overclockers chance to push the card far beyond what the card comes shipped already at 1020Mhz with Boost of 1085MHz (Reference Card Is Clocked at 980MHZ W/Boost at 1033MHZ).
The new GeForce GTX 760 is really just replacing the 660 Ti, but at $50-$60 cheaper and a bit faster overall as was to be anticipated and if you are not really interested in serious overclocking a reference card may do you fine, for others there are cards like the Twin Frozr Gamin Edition card that is well worth the small price difference in my eyes. At the end of the testing week, the GeForce GTX 760 reference wins a Top Value Award and the MSI Twin Frozr wins an Editor’s Choice for its design, overclocking headroom and cool running capabilities.
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