Great things often have humble beginnings and the same may be said for NVIDIA’s new Maxwell architecture. This new architecture debuts with the new GTX 750Ti and GTX 750 cards that launch worldwide on February 18, 2014.
One would find it rather odd that a new architecture is being launched on a Mid-Range Card instead of a Top-End card like the GTX 780, but one only needs to look at the Steam Hardware Survey results to see the justification for such a move. The card is intended to be THE upgrade option for owners of the GTX 550 and GTX 550Ti cards which are powering majority of the gaming machines in the survey. The recent announcement of Steam Machines that bring PC gaming to the Living Room via small form factor quiet and power efficient PCs is also a factor in this odd debut.
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What is Maxwell?
Maxwell or GM107 as NVIDIA calls it internally, is a new architecture that’s designed to be extremely power efficient while delivering more performance per watt. The first generation Maxwell chip in the GTX 750Ti can output performance comparable to the 4 year old GTX 480 at a quarter of the TDP, just to put things in perspective. The 60W TDP of the GTX 750Ti means it does not even require a discrete power connector as it can draw all its power direct from the PCI-E slot. Maxwell achieves this kind of power efficiency through a new design for the Streaming Multiprocessor(SM) which allows for more SMs per die with only a 25% increase in die area with the same 28nm manufacturing process as the previous Kepler parts. The performance per watt given out by Maxwell is twice that of its predecessor.
NVIDIA plan to introduce High-End Cards based on second generation Maxwell parts in due time. But for now the GTX 750 Ti and the GTX 750 remain our only taste of this new architecture.
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Specifications of the GTX 750Ti
As is clearly seen, the GPU is designed to run with a basic 300W PSU as can be found in prebuilt Home PCs and Small form Factor ITX PCs. It’s designed to be a plug-in Performance upgrade in a budget. While the reference piece sent by NVIDIA has a basic 1 fan cooling solution, GPU manufacturers do offer 2 fan solutions covering more of the board area. The card is available in 1 or 2GB GDDR5 memory variants. The single slot back of the reference card came with 2 DVI ports and a mini-HDMI port.
The launch price for the GTX 750Ti is ₹11,990 and for the GTX 750 is ₹9900 which suggests direct competition with the AMD R7 260X and R7 260 respectively.
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Testing Methodology
We tested the GTX 750Ti not only for the average Frames per Second(FPS) but also for the 99th Percentile Frame time which tells us about the performance of the GPU within the second. Within the second testing is useful to understand micro-stutter which can render a game unplayable despite FPS being high. Fraps 3.5.99 allowed us to calculate both.
Since the card is a Mid-range GPU, we decided to use High or Very High settings in our benchmark games. We only pushed to Ultra where the game gave playable FPS. We tried to disable CPU dependent settings or minimise their impact where possible. VSync and frame buffering were disabled for testing. All tests were run at 1920×1080 on a single monitor configuration.
Test System:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE C3 @ 3.8GHz
Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme 3
RAM: 2x4GB G.Skill Sniper CL9 1600MHz, 2x2GB G.Skill Ripjaws CL9 1600MHz
PSU: Seasonic S12II Bronze 620W
HDD: 2xSeagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB, 1xWesten Digital Red 3TB
OS: Windows 8.1 x64
NVIDIA WHQL Drivers: 334.69 (unreleased GPU specific Beta Driver)
While this system may not look like a purpose built test rig, we decided to use a normal usage PC so as to better reflect real world scores of the card. The games were also tested with a few applications like Antivirus, Browser, VOIP tool and others running in the background to get a realistic usage scenario. All HDDs were thoroughly defragmented prior to usage.
3DMark 11 Firestrike
3Dmark is an artificial Benchmarking tool whose Firestrike Test is very thorough on DirectX 11 cards powering High-end PCs. The full test run for Firestrike includes 2 GPU only tests, a CPU dependent Physics Test and a Combined Graphics and Physics Test. The Tool is also useful for stress testing a GPU when run on loop.
Given that we are looking for the performance of the GPU itself, one should look at the Graphics score and the FPS for Graphics tests 1 and 2. Had the test utilised PhysX, the scores for the Physics and combined tests would have been much higher. Note that the GPU temps never exceeded 62°C even under full load.
Batman Arkham Origins
Batman Arkham Origins is a game that’s been supported by NVIDIA and utilises their PhysX technology to handle physics. We used DX11 Normal settings for most options with FXAA high for antialiasing. PhysX was also set to Enhanced. We ran the inbuilt benchmark tool with a FRAPS timed run of 120 seconds.
Average FPS: 48.4
99th Percentile Frame Time: 31.7
The Frame time spikes that can be seen to occur took place while the benchmark transitioned between scenes and could be attributed to load times from the HDD. The card lets you play the game with significant eye candy enabled with quite a smooth framerate.
Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4 uses the Frostbite 3 engine to push the visual processing boundaries of current hardware. Since Mantle is only for AMD cards, we ran the DX11 version with the Very High setting. The game offers no benchmark tool, so we used areas from the first single player campaign mission for the FRAPS run.
Average FPS: 53.7
99th Percentile Frame Time: 25.38
The game seems to show quite a bit of stuttering despite having a high average FPS and a low 99th Percentile frame time. These spikes were not quite so noticeable ingame and the game ran fluidly. The Multiplayer of this graphically demanding game may require lowering the settings to get a higher FPS.
Bioshock: Infinite
The Unreal Engine 3 powered Bioshock Infinite really pushed the boundaries of visual effects achievable with the ageing engine. It comes with a built in benchmark mode which runs for a lower time period than the standard 120s we used in other tests.
Average FPS: 43.95
99th Percentile Frame Time: 36.33
We ran the benchmark multiple times with various settings and were surprised by how easily the card let us push to Ultra Settings with DOF off while providing playable framerates. This came at the cost of immense stuttering though, which was noticeable in the test run as well.
Company of Heroes 2
Relic’s Company of Heroes 2 is a tough nut to crack for quite a few GPUs, though it’s dependent on CPUs to a great degree as well. We used Medium Settings with Physics turned off and Low AA for the short 45s benchmark run the game offers.
Average FPS: 31.25
99th Percentile Frame Time: 75.5
Because of the Game’s CPU dependence, we noticed dips when action on screen heated up but the visuals were smooth for the most part. Frametime spikes were quite masked by the game’s snow effects and weren’t noticeable. We do not feel this game reflects the card’s true potential though due to its CPU dependence.
Crysis 3
CryEngine 3 was built to push the PC Hardware to its limits with Crysis 3 and deliver Maximum Eye Candy. We were able to run the game at SMAA x1 and Very High settings. The test run consisted of a section of the first mission for 120s as the game surprisingly offers no benchmark tool.
Average FPS: 49.08
99th Percentile Frame Time: 28.76
The gameplay was extremely smooth as can be seen from the frametime graph while allowing us to turn on significant amounts of eye candy. The card performs surprisingly well in the game given the settings it allowed us to push it to.
Far Cry 3
Far Cry 3 is a visually impressive game that lacks a benchmark mode. We used Very High Settings with 2xMSAA and the test run consisted of a 120s sample from the game’s single player campaign where we spent some time goofing off in the open world.
Average FPS: 43.31
99th Percentile Frame Time: 35.27
While there were some areas where the stutter was noticeable, the game ran smoothly for the majority of the test run. The card performs admirably in squeezing out the visual goodness offered by Far Cry 3.
GRID 2
GRID 2 from Codemasters is one of the few games in our test suite that has no allegiance to either NVIDIA or AMD, which makes it a neutral candidate to better judge the GPU’s performance. We used Very High Settings to run the benchmark tool offered by the game.
Average FPS: 45.54
99th Percentile Frame Time: 31.82
The game did struggle in a few areas during the test run as can be seen from the Frametime graph which is not quite as smooth as we would like. However the visuals are not so bad as to render the game unplayable. What is clearly visible though is the lack of GPU vendor optimisation that goes into other sponsored titles.
Sleeping Dogs
While the game is ageing, Sleeping Dogs is still a stunner when it comes to running benchmarks. We pushed the settings to Very High with low AA and ran the game’s built in benchmark run.
Average FPS: 48.19
99th Percentile Frame Time: 36.94
The Frametime Spikes that are seen are a result of the benchmark transitioning between scenes and the game runs quite crisp while churning out significant eye candy, especially in the open world areas. Curiously the Framerate drops in the closed spaces in interior areas.
Tomb Raider (2013)
Tomb Raider introduced us to a new Lara with fabled TressFx hair that behaves a lot more realistically than the prerendered mop we were used to. However the card does not seem to cope well with this technology and we had to drop it in our test run. We used Very High settings with TressFX off. The Test run was shorter since the benchmark tool offered by the game runs for less than out 120s target time.
Average FPS: 46.61
99th Percentile Frame Time: 26.62
The run was pretty smooth with a few spikes in between but having TressFx turned off almost doubled the framerate. It seems the price of realistic hair is a significant performance hit on this GPU.
Total War: Rome II
Total War: Rome II is another CPU heavy game that offers significant visual goodness. It offers a benchmark tool that focuses more on GPU power though and that is what we used for our test run of 120s. We set the game to Very High and Unit Size to Small so as to reduce the impact of the CPU. Antialiasing was off and so was Unlimited Video Memory so the game could scale down visual settings if it reached a bottleneck.
Average FPS: 45.19
99th Percentile Frame Time: 36.65
The frametime graph shows a lot of spikes but that is more due to the game’s CPU dependence than due to the GPU not able to churn out the frames. The game is a RTS/TBS hybrid that shows a large amount of units on screen at once.
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Acoustics
While we were unable to conduct detailed acoustics testing on the card due to lack of equipment, we were able to get a rough idea of how quiet the card is even at full load. We found that the GPU made significantly less noise than our HDDs on idle and was barely audible over them at full load. We kept the case at 1m distance with the side panel open.
Temperatures
The card runs quite cool and we barely managed to get it to breach 65°C even after stress testing at full load for 15 minutes. That could be in part due to the somewhat lower ambient temperatures in our test environment. On idle the card runs at a mild 32°C. The small die only cooling solution offered by NVIDIA on the reference card does a good job of keeping the card cool though it leaves the RAM chips exposed.
Power
While Maxwell’s biggest selling point is its insane power efficiency, we were unable to test due to lack of equipment. However, we were really amazed by the performance it delivered in our tests without requiring a discrete power source and its 60W TDP should be really appealing to those conscious of their Electricity Bills.
Overclocking
The Card is an admirable overclocker being able to reach stable overclocks of 250MHz over the base clock. Expect vendors to supply factory overclocked variants that take advantage of this. All our tests however, were conducted in the stock configuration.
Feature Set
NVIDIA is keen to stress that the new GPU is compatible with a host of their proprietary technologies and programmes like GSYNC which will minimise the effects of the Frametime stutter by synchronising the GPU output and Monitor frequencies. The GTX 750Ti also supports Shadowplay though the driver did not seem to support it when we were reviewing. This has been rectified and the latest NVIDIA drivers come with Shadowplay support. It also supports Game Streaming to Shield Devices and Gameworks, which is NVIDIA’s new developer support programme.
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Conclusion
We were thoroughly impressed by the GTX 750Ti in terms of the never-before-seen Performance per Watt on offer. The card may look modest with its slot only power requirement but it let us push quite a few games to Very High settings at 1080p. This only serves to raise our expectations for the High-End Maxwell parts that are sure to be coming along in the future.
The target applications for the card such as Mini ITX PCs, Steam Machines and Mid-Range Gaming Rigs are quite well satisfied by it. Maxwell’s efficiency also makes it a suitable candidate for a powerful laptop GPU that’s not quite so power hungry. The GTX 750Ti may seem an odd option to launch a new architecture but it acquits itself well and is a brilliant demonstration of the efficient design of the new architecture.
The price point is quite sweet and the GPU will also save on Electricity Bills in the long run. Given its level of performance, we would say the pricing is a tad higher than the Value for Money Sweet Spot, but very close nonetheless.
Looking at the competition (the AMD R7 260X), the GTX 750Ti does a fine job of outperforming them in benchmarks as well as in the power consumption making it a highly attractive proposition for gamers on a budget. It heralds a new era of efficient plug and play GPUs that provide performance gains without crossing power thresholds. For this we award it the iLLGaming Bronze and Penny Pincher awards.
We are extremely grateful to NVIDIA for providing us with a test sample before the product was officially launched.
What’s iLL
- New Architecture offers more performance per watt
- Powered solely though PCI-E slot
- Good for Mid-Range 1080p gaming
- Small form factor makes it suitable for cramped cases for Living Rooms
What’s Not
- For the first time, we can’t think of any negatives whatsoever!
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If you’re looking for some graphics cards in the upper price segment, we have some great recommendations. Do check out our reviews:
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