Wednesday 2 October 2013

GTX TITAN, GTX 770 & GTX 760 Roundup, Latest 7 series offerings from Nvidia


This was long overdue, even some of the cards tested were under the older drivers, 320.18. But nevertheless, better late than never, eh lads? tongue.gif 



Here we have Nvidia's strongest single GPU contender, the mighty GTX TITAN. It is based on the bigger GK110 chip, boasting 2688 CUDA cores, 224 texture units and 48 ROPs. For this review, we have Asus' version of the GTX TITAN, which is literally the official Nvidia reference design. It clocks in at 837 MHz, with GPU Boost 2.0 boosting the speeds up to 876 MHz. Memory speed clocks in at 1502MHz (6008MHz effective GDDR5). All this comes enclosed in a very stylish and elegant industrial design cooler. Thumbs up to Nvidia for such a classy design. thumbup.gif 





On the other side, we have the GTX 770. Upon initial impressions, this card is nothing new as it's also based on the same GK104 chip found in the previous generation flagship, the GTX 680. However, it does come clocked higher at 1046 MHz (with boost up to 1085 MHz). Memory speed is now at an all time high of 7012 MHz. With a slightly higher clock and memory speed, I'm sure we will see some performance gain over the GTX 680. For this review, we have Palit's Jetstream version of the GTX 770, which comes factory overclocked at 1150 MHz (with boost up to 1202 MHz). Memory speed is left untouched, running at stock.




Lastly, we have Nvidia's latest release, the GTX 760. This is also another card based on the GK104 chip, but with lesser 1152 CUDA cores. We have here Zotac’s GTX 760 AMP! Edition, which is a factory overclocked version of the GTX 760. It clocks in at 1111 MHz (1176 MHz boost clock), with memory speed also slightly overclocked to 1552MHz (6208MHz effective GDDR5). Without further ado, let's move on to some snippets of the respective cards shall we? And then we can get to work on the testing. biggrin.gif 


:: TITAN-nic ::

:: Three fans you say? ::

:: Size matters not ::

P.S: Bear with me as there are no DSLR-quality images here tongue.gif 


Test Setup
Hardware
• Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.4 GHz


• Mainboard: Intel DZ68DB

• HSF: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

• RAM: Team Elite DDR3 1333MHz RAM (2 X 4GB)

• GPU: Asus GTX TITAN 6GB GDDR5 / Palit GTX 770 Jetstream 2GB GDDR5 / Zotac GTX 760 AMP! Edition 
• SSD: Intel 330 Series 120GB
• HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
• PSU: Corsair GS600 600W
• Casing: Thermaltake V3 Black Edition
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit
• Monitor: Dell U2312HM 23” Monitor
• Driver: Nvidia 320.18 (GTX Titan & GTX 770), 320.49 (GTX 760)
• Softwares: MSI Afterburner, GPU-Z, FRAPS

Game Settings


• Metro Last Light: DX11, 1920 x 1080, Very High, 2 x SSAA, 16 x AF, Physx On


• Crysis 3: DX11, 1920 x 1080, Very High, 4 x SMAA, 16 x AF

• Tomb Raider: DX11, 1920 x 1080, Ultimate, 4 x SSAA, 16 x AF

• Hitman Absolution: DX11, 1920 x 1080, 4 x MSAA, FXAA, Ultra Quality

• Batman Arkham City: DX11, 1920 x 1080, 8 x MSAA, Extreme, Tessellation High, Physx Off
• Unigine Heaven 4.0: DX11, 1920 x 1080, 8 x AA, Ultra Quality, Tessellation Extreme




Testing is carried out in a non air-conditioned room.
GPU-Z screenshots

Testing 
All tests are carried out at the card’s default speed and no overclocking is done.



Conclusion

Overall, we can see that the GTX TITAN is on average 28% faster than the GTX 770 and 57% faster than the GTX 760. I would say the GTX 770, which is basically a 680 on steroids, did a pretty good job here. Gaming with both cards is basically lag free. The TITAN is likely held in reins here under an 1080p resolution monitor. On a 1440p monitor, I believe this is where the TITAN's true potential lies, due to the larger memory bandwidth. On the cooling solution, having tested the previous two flagships; GTX 580 and 680, I would say that the cooler on the TITAN is simply fantastic. Besides doing an awesome job thermally and acoustically, it simply looks stunning. The only card that I can think of which looks as good is only GTX 690. Kudos to Nvidia for an excellent job done in this aspect. 

Palit's GTX 770 Jetstream managed to hold out on its own here. The triple fan cooler had a slightly better performance compared to Nvidia's reference design, but that's just about it. Both coolers are equally silent, a testament to two very distinct and effective cooling solution. Visually, I do not think the Jetstream is as classy as TITAN's cooler though. But then again, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, so I shall just leave it at that. laugh.gif

Last but not least, the GTX 760 is an interesting little card. Zotac’s AMP! Edition ships out with a very high factory overclock. At 1111 MHz, it is simply the highest factory overclocked GTX 760 available in the market today. This will only serve to benefit customers who prefer to enjoy the extra performance boost right out of the box, without any additional manual tweaking. The small cooler with twin orange fans did a reasonably good job in keeping the temperature within the limits, though I would have wished to see a better result, but the cooler was still very quiet on the whole. Perhaps due to the temperature being on the high side of 81 °C (Nvidia's temperature target is 80 °C), I somewhat see the boost clock speed of the card throttled at 1176 MHz, just barely meeting its guaranteed boost clock speed (see GPU-Z screenshot above). It will not go any higher than that. Palit's GTX 770 Jetstream on the other hand managed to hit a higher boost clock speed of 1241 MHz, despite its published rate of 1202 MHz.

At 1080p, the GTX 760 has proven itself to be a rather capable card. Though we see the FPS hovers around 30+ range, but do note that anti-aliasing is set to 4x / 8x for most of the games tested, hence reducing the overall performance significantly. To boost up the performance, simply use FXAA whenever possible, or turn it off all together. You can also use GeForce Experience to optimize your games. I personally found this software to be quite user friendly and relatively easy to use. The below chart will show you how GeForce Experience managed to improve on the FPS, improving gameplay significantly. It basically reduces the anti-aliasing setting, from 2 x SSAA to SSAA off in Metro Last Light, and from 4 x SMAA to 1 x SMAA in Crysis 3. Performance is increased by 41% and 52% in Metro Last Light and Crysis 3 respectively. Not bad at all. thumbup.gif 


That does it, hope all of you had a good time reading up on my review. smile.gif 

>> Asus GTX TITAN <<

Pros:
• Fastest single GPU card
• Excellent reference cooler, elegant and very silent

Cons:
• Very expensive
• A much cheaper, factory overclocked GTX 780 can easily match or surpass the TITAN

>> Palit GTX 770 Jetstream <<

Pros:
• Handles today's games in 1080p resolution well
• Overclocked out of the box
• Excellent and effective cooling solution, slightly better performance than Nvidia's elegant reference design

Cons:
• Doesn't look as good as Nvidia's reference design
• Memory speed is not pre-overclocked
• Takes up nearly 2.5 slots

>> Zotac GTX 760 AMP! Edition <<

Pros:
• Highest overclocked GTX 760 in the market
• Small size suitable for HTPC setup
• Additional 3 years of extended warranty, on top of 2 years local warranty

Cons:
• May need to reduce anti-aliasing (AA) settings on some games
• Cooling performance not as good as I would have expected


Reviewed by: rav3n82


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