Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Review

And the Kepler onslaught continues! Nvidia has just announced its latest addition to the GTX 700 series, the GeForce GTX 760. This GPU will replace the GTX 660 Ti and will compete with AMD’s HD 7950. Let’s see what sort of damage it can deliver.

Design and build

We have the reference card from Nvidia this time around and compared to the GTX 770 and GTX 780, it has a simpler design with a standard aluminium and copper-based cooler. There is a plastic shroud covering the whole card so the heat does not escape in the chassis. While the reference design is functional, it’s not exactly eye-catching, which is why we feel most board partners will choose to go with their own custom coolers. The GTX 760 requires two 6-pin power connectors and also supports SLI. The card measures about 9.5-inches in length, so it should easily fit in most mid-tower chassis. The ports on the back include two dual-link DVI, an HDMI and DisplayPort connector.  

Smaller than the GTX 770

Features

The GTX 760 is based on the same GK104 core like the GTX 770 and the GTX 670. The new chip packs in six SMX units, bringing the shader count to a grand total of 1152 and 32 ROP units. The GTX 760 has lesser number of shaders as compared to the GTX 660 Ti, but it makes up for that with a wider 256-bit memory bus as compared to the 192-bit bus on its predecessor. We still have the full 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 6GB/s (effective). The core speed has also been bumped up to 980MHz along with a Boost clock of 1033MHz.

The GTX 760 will continue to support all the features of the previous GTX 700 series cards such as GPU Boost 2.0, GeForce Experience, Shadow Play, TXAA and GPU-based PhysX.

Good connectivity

Testbench

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz

Motherboard: GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (4GB x 2) @1600MHz

Storage: Plextor PX-256M2S SSD (boot drive), WD Velociraptor 300GB (secondary)

PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000W

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

3DMark 11

3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer's 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the "Performance" preset for this benchmark.

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and is based on the new Frostbite 2 game engine. The game only supports DX10 and DX11, which enables enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0, creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-realtime radiosity using Geometrics' Enlighten technology. The game is a visual treat and a nightmare for graphics cards, which makes it perfect for our test. We used the "Ultra High" preset, Post AA – High, Blur – Full, Field of View – 90, Level – "Fear no Evil".

Crysis 2

Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek and is based on the new CryEngine 3. Just like the first iteration of the game, Crysis 2 continues to be one of the best looking shooters to date. The settings used for this benchmark were "Ultra High" preset in Adrenalin, DX11 and High-resolution texture patch. 

Dirt 3 

Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. The game is extremely scalable and features DX11 tessellation effects. We used the built-in benchmark tool, along with "Ultra" quality preset. 

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter video game that continues to bring even the toughest graphics cards down to their knees. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the “Tower” level for our test. 

Verdict and price in India

Nvidia’s GTX 700 series is shaping up to be another success story and the GTX 760 is another feather in its hat. The new mid-range GPU is consistently faster than its predecessor, the GTX 660 Ti, in all the games we tested. The best part is that it manages to pull this off despite having a lesser shader count. What’s really impressive though, is the launch price, which starts at just Rs 19,499 for the reference design, while overclocked versions are expected to cost a bit more. This is really aggressive pricing from Nvidia and automatically makes the GTX 760, the best performing and value-for-money mid-range GPU.