GeForce GTX 750 Ti NVIDIA & ASUS Designs
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,017 words · ~5 min read
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The Cooler Master Glacer 240L CPU cooler delivers the convenience of an
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all-in-one and the performance of a custom water cooler. Click now to learn
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more. We've actually got a double feature today. A GTX 750Ti with a
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reference design from NVIDIA and a spoiler alert by the way kick asses
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one. But first, the introduction. The GTX 750Ti is not on the surface the most
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exciting card from NVIDIA that we've ever reviewed. Performance is solid,
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sure, and power consumption is extremely low due to the GM 107 GPU GPU cores use
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of NVIDIA's allnew Maxwell architecture, but it's not exactly a Titan challenger
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in terms of raw horsepower. No, this
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product is for tier 1 PC upgraders, uh,
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small form factor enthusiasts, folks who are upgrading from older something 50
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class cards like the 550Ti, or basically anyone who's looking to get solid 1080p
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performance in modern titles without expecting to crank the details up to
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maximum. Now, NVIDIA spent a fair bit of time in their press briefing talking
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about the technologies around the card like G-Sync gameream and GeForce
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experience with Shadow Play, uh, gameplay recording, and streaming to
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Twitch. And these technologies are great and a key differentiator for NVIDIA
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compared to their competition, but we've covered most of this stuff in a fair bit
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of depth in the past. So, I will refer you instead to our G-Sync video, our
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Shield streaming latency test, and our GTX 780 Ti review, which I have all
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linked below if you can't click on the annotations, where you can learn more
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about all of that stuff. One other interesting thing to note about G-Sync
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in particular, that technology, is that neither of the cards in our showcase
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today support it due to their lack of DisplayPort output. But don't worry,
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there will be 750Ti cards that do. Instead, today I want to focus on what
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exactly NVIDIA has done in order to achieve a 4x improvement in efficiency
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over three generations with only one process shrink. Instead of using a
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single control logic block for all 192
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cores in its SM or streaming multipprocessors, NVIDIA has created
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smaller control logic blocks for 32 cores each. That makes the task of
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routing and scheduling traffic easier for each control logic block and allows
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Maxwell to improve performance per core by about 35% leading to NVIDIA's best
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performance per watt GPU ever. It is so efficient it needs only a tiny little
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cooler for its 640 CUDA cores and 2 gigs
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of 5.4 GHz DDDR5 RAM running on a 128
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bit bus. and it doesn't even require a
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six pin PCI Express power connector due to its 60W TDP. The second focus point
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for me is overclocking. The way NVIDIA has locked down overclocking over the
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last few generations with respect to maximum voltages and power limits has
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been frustrating. So, it's refreshing to see them come out and say this card is a
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great overclocker. And I'm excited that we get to show you results from both of
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these cards at the same time because they represent two very different
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approaches to graphics card design. The
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reference card is very, very small and requires no power connector, so it'll be
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compatible with pretty much any PC with a PCI Express slot. ASUS's nonreference
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benefits list continues to be the same as ever. 10 extra bucks gets you
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slightly increased stock clock speeds, a better IO layout, although no display
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port still. A better cooler, better PCB design with ASUS's SAP um super alloy
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power components promising cooler operation, longer lifetime, better
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efficiency, and reduced coil wind. But there's more this time. The 750Ti
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normally doesn't have that connector, while the ASUS 1 has a PCI Express 6 pin
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connector. However weird the positioning of this connector might be, unless
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you're installing it in a small form factor PC where that's closer to the
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power supply than the back of a card, it'll be interesting to see how more
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power affects a card like this when it comes to overclocking and performance.
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Spoiler alert, a lot. Stay tuned for exactly how much. These two itty bitty
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graphics cards pack quite a punch. They come on top of both my Far Cry 3 and
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Bioshock Infinite benchmarks. And you can tell by looking at these numbers
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that that ASUS aftermarket card does gain a lot by having that additional six
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pin power on top of there. If you want to see how much it helps, you can check
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out my overclocking doc in the description of the video down below where you can see all of my settings for
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both of the cards and their core clock actual so you can see exactly how fast
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they are running. Maybe you're someone who wants the additional power and wants
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to be able to overclock it even more. This card has tons of headroom. And even
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if you don't want that additional power and maybe just want to go with the reference design, it still has a bunch
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of headroom there. This is a very easy card to overclock. I got to run, guys.
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As it is 4:00 a.m. Tuesday and I've been up since Sunday morning working on
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different forum stuff and whatnot. This video has to be edited, uploaded, and
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released by 6:00 a.m. So, we're going to see how I can accomplish that. But, we
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will see. Like and favorite and dislike the video and share and subscribe to the
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channel and all of those things. And in addition, I'm not giving up yet. I want
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that second place position for organizations. Uh, check out the PC
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gaming section of the linesttips.com forum. Look at the Star Citizen thread
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and join the organization. We will be number two. We can make it. I'll talk to
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you guys later.
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Heat.