Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Review Roundup

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier today, Nvidia released its latest graphics card: the Geforce GTX 760. A followup to last month's GTX 770 launch, the new GTX 760 is the fourth 700-series card since the company launched the GTX Titan back in February. Sporting 1,152 CUDA cores, 96 TMUs, 32 ROPS, a 256-bit memory interface that effectively runs at 6 GHz, a base clock of 980 MHz, and a Boost speed of up to 1,033 MHz, the newly-minted GTX 760 is offered at a price point of $250. Benchmark results are available from all the usual suspects: AnandTech, HotHardware, PC Magazine, PCPer, and Tom's Hardware. To make a long story short, Nvidia's new card edges out AMD's equally-priced Radeon HD 7950 Boost Edition, and even goes toe-to-toe with the $300 Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition. Factoring out AMD's incredible Never Settle game bundles, and looking purely at performance, the GTX 670 allows Nvidia to cinch up the mainstream gaming price point." Reader crookedvulture adds, "The $250 card is an updated spin on an existing GPU, so it doesn't raise the bar dramatically. In fact, the GTX 760 achieves rough performance parity with the Radeon HD 7950 Boost, which costs just a little bit more. The situation is similar at around $400, where the contest between the GeForce GTX 770 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is a toss-up overall. These price/performance scatter plots paint the picture clearly. AMD has largely resolved its previous frame latency issues with new drivers, making the battle between GeForce and Radeon more about extras than performance. Nvidia offers software to optimize game settings and record gameplay sessions, while AMD includes download codes for recent games. You really can't go wrong either way."

Comments

tl;dr:

[Guspaz]

It's the GeForce GTX 670 for a hundred bucks cheaper. That's what all the reviews boil down to.

Re:tl;dr:

[amiga3D]

I can't even look at AMD cards. Thanks to their drivers it's Nvidia only for me and my linux tower. Since Nvidia came out with their linux drivers years ago it's been one Nvidia card after another in every machine. AMD doesn't care of course since Linux is such a tiny slice of the customer pie which means when I build a windows box for friends I slap an Nvidia card in there too out of sheer resentment.

Re:tl;dr:

[Hadlock]

Now that AMD powers all three consoles, it's likely that windows and BSD drivers will improve. Recompiling a BSD ps4 game for the Linux stream console probably will be less difficult than it has been in the past.

I'll still be buying NVidia this round as well.

Re:tl;dr:

[Guspaz]

AMD powered two of the three consoles this past generation (Wii and 360), the drivers are still terrible (getting Enduro drivers working on Windows is a nightmare). Why would adding one more console change anything?

Re:tl;dr:

[Guspaz]

It has same performance as the GTX 670, at the same TDP as a GTX 670, with the same board/shape/etc as the GTX 670, at a price that is $100 cheaper. It doesn't matter what it's based on.

Re:tl;dr:

[adolf]

The Wii and the 360 weren't x86.

Re:tl;dr:

[osu-neko]

Probably doesn't help. My problems with AMD drivers had nothing to do with them not being optimized for x86, and everything to do with an engineering attitude that said "yeah we broke that OpenGL function with the latest driver release, but it's deprecated so games shouldn't be calling it anymore anyway so we're not going to fix it". Having to get their drivers working in the comparatively easy console market (where the environment is much more uniform and controlled) is not going to improve their inability to cope with the complexities of the diverse PC environment. They'll still be more likely to go bonkers when confronted with old or obscure titles, and still act like it's not their problem as long as the modern major titles run fine...

Re:tl;dr:

[Smauler]

Nvidia is one of the few brands I have loyalty to. I think most of this loyalty comes from the ti4200 I bought back in the day, which was complete awesome, for many years.

I went to the 8800GT, then the 460gtx. Neither of these have impressed me as much, but they've been very good.

My next upgrade is a complete system - I'm still running a (quick) core 2 duo on an old motherboard, with that 460gtx. It was already about the quickest gfx card you could slot in the PCI express on the motherboard a few years ago.

I haven't hit a game which is a problem yet.... and I know my system is a hell of a lot better than most consumer systems sold today.

Re:tl;dr:

[interkin3tic]

I wandered in here because I don't know jack about video cards. AMD's drivers don't work well on WINDOWS? Isn't that the biggest market for video cards?

This is a bit like finding out that goodyear tires don't work well on cars, that they only really work on motorcycles and trucks. Astonishing, but I'd believe it since I don't know anything about them.

Re:tl;dr:

[ikaruga]

Unfortunately that is not how things work. Unless Sony decide to open-source, or at least, release the binary for someone to reverse engineer them, having the PS4 using BSD+AMD combo will have no impact on the open development scene at all. It's going contribute to the BSD driver library as much as OSX, which is also based of BSD, did, i.e. nothing.
Either that or someone jailbreaks the PS4, dumps all it's system files and starts reversing.

Re:tl;dr:

[Guspaz]

I got a new business laptop recently. My last experience with discrete graphics in a laptop predates switchable graphics, so I presumed that by now, everything would "just work". Boy does it ever not. Something as simple as installing a driver update can precipitate hours of re-installing the various drivers (both Intel and AMD graphics drivers) in different order hoping to get them both working again. Turns out the solution is to wipe out every trace of graphic driver and then install everything in a very particular set of steps, and even when everything is working, it's impossible to just say "run everything on the discrete GPU". You'll never be quite sure whether any given app is running on the iGPU or dGPU, and there are some apps that it would seem just don't want to run on the dGPU, or others that WILL run on the dGPU but will report that they're running on the iGPU (surely that's going to cause issues, if they think they're running on a different platform than they actually are)?

I don't remember the exact article, but one of the Anandtech reviewers had the exact same problems trying to work with Enduro on a laptop he was trying to review; he reported on his frustration, and how even when you follow the correct steps precisely, you must endure long install processes and multiple reboots.

Re:tl;dr:

[lightknight]

Hmm. I have a HP Envy 17 with an AMD/ATI 7670 (or something to that effect) in it...and it does have an option to use the built in (Intel) GPU, or use the discrete (ATI) GPU, or have them automatically switch when you're on battery power. Granted, you do need to install both ATI packages from HP to get the full monty (the later package is just an update, not a full set), but still...

Re:tl;dr:

[Guspaz]

That option seems to basically be at the discretion of the system vendor. Perhaps it is available in newer drivers than I managed to get installed (it's a Dell notebook). I do know, though, that even when you tell it to default to discrete, it still runs some stuff on the iGPU. Enduro ultimately runs everything through the iGPU (framebuffer copies), so you need the Intel driver, and at the bare minimum the Intel drivers and control panel need to be run on the iGPU. It's unfortunately not possible to just run exclusively with the discrete chip.

Which is really what I want, because for this laptop's intended purpose, it will never be on battery power except excepting a few seconds here or there.

Re:tl;dr:

[eddy]

They work perfectly fine overall. Most people who complain can often be put into one of these three specific categories:

• a) People who had a bad experience 10 years ago and is still harping on about it. They probably have similar strong albeit uninformed feelings about hard drive brands.
• b) People with laptops where the system builder basically gave up on the product the second it was built, so they upgrade to the 'official driver' and some specific system feature stops working.
• c ) people who are into multiple-GPU setups. These may have valid complaints, but they're a WAY-WAY vocal minority. The first rule about multi-GPU setups is Don't Do It.

Re:tl;dr:

[Narishma]

And that's assuming the PS4 games, and not just the apps, will actually be running on the BSD system.

Re:tl;dr:

[phorm]

What's the last AMD you bought? I've traditionally been an nVidia user but haven't had major driver issues with AMD for a long time.

I do admit I almost never buy the latest-and-greatest cards (too damn expensive from either vendor compared to performance), but there's still within a relevant timespan (a year of first release).

For latest-and-greatest, I've had issues with both nVidia and AMD cards.

Re:tl;dr:

[ezelkow1]

There is one more, specific use cases that amd does not handle well that nvidia does

Built a nice system about 2 years ago based on a 6850. Great price/performance and was pretty happy with it. However their multi-monitor performance leaves a lot to be desired. First you have to use a janky adapter in order to properly use 3 outputs due to the way their DACs are structured on the cards, even though you have 4 total outputs on the card you have to use a DP->HDMI/DVI adapter to run 3 separate monitors. This is not mentioned anywhere except random internet forums.

Once you get that all setup then you have to deal with their 'master' clock. You have to specify one monitor as a master monitor which drivers the clock and refresh rate. Even if you have all the monitors set to the same resolution and refresh you get tearing/sync issues on the non-master monitor. I have 2 monitors on a desk and then run hdmi to a projector that mirrors the first monitor. It was pretty easy to see which ever was set to master did not have tearing and the ones that werent did.

So a few months back switched to nvidia. No adapters needed, no tearing/sync issues, no master clock. Everything worked perfect out of the box

Bloat

[causality]

Nvidia offers software to optimize game settings and record gameplay sessions

Did anyone else read that and think, "this does not belong in a device driver"?

Maybe it's a great idea that many people will use and there is no other possible way to accomplish this task in userspace. I'm open to that idea, but right now I just don't see the merit.

Re:Bloat

[Hadlock]

Perhaps it's a rebranded copy of FRAPS, out whatever third part equivalent? If it is driver level, it'll be nice to see a standard way to output video for services like ustream or corporate users like webex out gotomeeting instead of some goofy Java setup through the browser.

Re:Bloat

[blankinthefill]

Alternately, for those that do use it, it seems like a really good way to cut OUT a lot of bloat. By taking out the middle man, I would think that you would be able to get better quality for cheaper than if you used a 3rd party program like fraps. I could be wrong, but considering these cards tend to be targeted towards gamers, and gamers like to make videos of them playing games, it seems like there may be something to this.

Re:Bloat

[causality]

Alternately, for those that do use it, it seems like a really good way to cut OUT a lot of bloat. By taking out the middle man, I would think that you would be able to get better quality for cheaper than if you used a 3rd party program like fraps. I could be wrong, but considering these cards tend to be targeted towards gamers, and gamers like to make videos of them playing games, it seems like there may be something to this.

Perhaps this is where I'm unusual. I play games sometimes, but I've never desired to make a video of my gameplay.

If I ever did that, well since it hasn't happened yet, it would be such a rare event that maximum performance and minimal overhead wouldn't be a big concern at all. I'd rather have a smaller, leaner, less bloated (and potentially less buggy) driver myself. I mean, I have an nVidia card and I do appreciate the ability to tweak the features and performance that their drivers offer, but that's also why as an nVidia customer I find myself (in the minority of?) people who want a driver to stick to its core functions.

Besides, I'm using Linux so I wouldn't be using Fraps. That too probably makes my situation unusual.

Re:Bloat

[timeOday]

I suppose they're smart enough to put the recorder into some sort of utility rather than the driver per se. But hopefully it is using GPU hardware to do video compression, in which case most of the execution time probably is in the driver anyways.

Re:Bloat

[epyT-R]

The best way to make it easy to capture video from a game is for the developers to add demo record/playback capabilities in their titles. Many games already support this. In windows, they can be run (with a command to load the demo) through something like kkapture which wraps the timing, gfx, and sound apis and captures the output to a codec of your choice (I use lagarith). From there, edit the file as you please. The framerate can be set, and as the game thinks it's always time to render the next frame, it runs as fast as your leftover CPU cycles can encode and you lose no frames. It's a perfect capture.

kkapture is a free opensource utility written by ryg, a member of the demo group farbrausch. He originally wrote it to capture the output from win32 demos, but it works for many games too.
http://www.farb-rausch.de/~fg/kkapture/

Re:Bloat

[osu-neko]

Nvidia offers software to optimize game settings and record gameplay sessions

Did anyone else read that and think, "this does not belong in a device driver"?

Nope. Why would I, when nothing was said or implied that this functionality was being put in the device driver? My last AMD card said it came with some game software on the box, and I did not, upon reading that, think "games do not belong in a device driver" either. I'm quite comfortable with the notion that both nVidia and AMD can bundle software other than device drivers with their cards, and do not assume "software" necessarily means "device driver".

Re:Bloat

[Nemyst]

It's good because it uses the GPU's internal H.264 encoding hardware to record seamlessly at no cost to framerate. Fraps and other screen recorders are known to often halve frame rates or more. By doing the recording on the GPU itself, you can extract the framebuffer much more efficiently, transcode it straight in the GPU without much (if any) involvement by the CPU, and save the much smaller file to the hard disk at the very end, thus avoiding the use of the comparatively slow disk to store the very large non-compressed buffers.

Prior to that, the only way of recording the screen efficiently was to use HDMI recorders which would just take the entire output and transcode that externally, which is far less practical and much more expensive.

Re:Bloat

[Smauler]

Making a video of your gameplay can be very useful for beta testing. Fraps is a little crap at doing things like that sometimes.

Re:Bloat

[Blaskowicz]

I fail to see it as detrimental. Nvidia deals with it by pouring tons of money and engineers and competent overseeing on their drivers, it's one of their biggest asset. Among the "useless" stuff they have done is support for stereo ten years before there were 3DTVs, stable driver for linux, BSD, even Solaris (well they have portability covered), ten years of driver support or more for a given GPU (even on linux), or recently support for game profiles on linux so you can at last have different AA, filtering, vsync etc. options depending on the game you run, without manually changing driver settings every time (sadly my 7600GT doesn't get this, being on legacy support. But that card will gets updates so that it runs on newer linux and Xorg for years).

Re:Bloat

[TheLink]

I don't see anywhere in the summary (who reads the articles anyway? ;) ) that implies it would be driver level. So I'd just assume they aren't that crazy.

I use MSI's Afterburner to record video from games and it works well enough for me (price seems right too): http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
The output file ends up quite big and I need to use virtualdub or vlc to compress it. But that's because my PC isn't powerful enough to do on-the-fly H264 video compression of the capture at 60fps.

Re:Bloat

[TheLink]

I make some recordings because often I don't spot the errors I make while playing. Then when watching the video I realize I should have done something else instead.

p.s. I doubt it's a driver level thing. It's likely to be one of those utilities that are bundled with the card.

Not on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless ATI is seriously reconsidering its position on Linux drivers, I would go blindly for an NVIDIA
My Geforce 220 is 10 times faster than a HD5970 (used to mine bitcoins on it) with all of the games (LoL, D3, TF2 etc.)

Re:Who gives a fuck?

[dfghjk]

The world as we know it might not even exist without Alan Turing. His contributions went well beyond computer science.

Needed for streaming to Shield console anyway

[Blaskowicz]

Such a feature was needed anyway and already exists. It's also the stuff behind the "Geforce GRID" (racked servers with GPUs that stream 3D accelerated software, like CAD, GIS, visualization or games to multiple thin clients, compatible with desktop virtualization, with choice between a "geforce" or "quadro" software configuration for each user)

Kepler GPUs include a H264 encoder used for that streaming purpose. Dumping to disk is a simple and interesting option, which I hadn't thought about but is obviously useful as well.

Gotta love Nvidia fans

[tyrione]

Laced with broad strokes of bs like any other zealot they come out in droves to defend their brand. Nvidia CUDA is a dead end future. The LLVM/Clang driver Target for the R600/future AMD set up will make AMD Radeon/FirePro solutions on Linux/FreeBSD rock solid in the next 6 months. Nvidia continues to ignore reality: OpenGL/OpenCL are married together. APU designs are the future and having a crappy OpenCL presence far behind AMD is the reason Apple dumped Nvidia from now on.

Re:Gotta love Nvidia fans

[organgtool]

Has AMD added support for hardware-accelerated video decoding in their Linux drivers? They claimed they fully supported my video card under Linux, but I was only able to get a couple of frames per second on 720p videos with their latest proprietary drivers. I'm still very bitter about that because that was false advertising in my opinion.

Re:AMD drivers still suck

[lightknight]

And I've had the reverse experience. I've had an Nvidia (XFX?) board, not even an expensive one, blow its capacitors...something of a first for me with regards to video cards. Drivers have been...well, drivers...nothing to phone home about, they work...but the hardware has kind of left me wanting more.

Re:AMD drivers still suck

[Osgeld]

I had a 7600 pop its cap's but it was old then

but yea, I switched from a nvidia to an amd painlessly, it offered more bang for the buck and drivers havent been an issue, it just runs like it should

Re:AMD drivers still suck

[Ash Vince]

And I've had the reverse experience. I've had an Nvidia (XFX?) board, not even an expensive one, blow its capacitors...something of a first for me with regards to video cards. Drivers have been...well, drivers...nothing to phone home about, they work...but the hardware has kind of left me wanting more.

Xfx are cheap crap.

  If you want to have fewer problems buy the most expensive manufacturer of a given gpu, not the cheapest. I generally try and stick with gigabyte or evga.

Gotta love Apple fans

[dutchwhizzman]

As if Apple won't go back to NVidia when they have a more competitive offering. They have been switching back and forth several times since the radeon 7000 was a hot video chip.

Boo Nvidia

[h4x0t]

There's too much Nvidia love in this thread.

Just installed a 7850; it rules, and for 180 bucks I got it and 3 games. The fan casing was a quarter inch too long for my case before I took tin snips to it.

I'll keep buying AMD if only to promote competition in my favorite market.

Re:Boo Nvidia

[drsquare]

Also unlike Nvidia they don't set themselves on fire, and the drivers don't break multi-monitor suport. After my experiences I don't know if I'll by an Nvidia card ever again.

Re:AMD drivers still suck

[Luckster7]

If you want to have fewer problems buy the most expensive manufacturer of a given gpu, not the cheapest. I generally try and stick with gigabyte or evga.

EVGA is crap, I had one only a few months old blow out a cap every week or two until the third time it stopped working. Sounded like gun fire every time. That was five years ago. The same Seasonic 80+ supply is going strong today powering a PNY Nvidia card.

Re:AMD drivers still suck

[Ash Vince]

If you want to have fewer problems buy the most expensive manufacturer of a given gpu, not the cheapest. I generally try and stick with gigabyte or evga.

EVGA is crap, I had one only a few months old blow out a cap every week or two until the third time it stopped working. Sounded like gun fire every time. That was five years ago. The same Seasonic 80+ supply is going strong today powering a PNY Nvidia card.

Once it blew the first one you should have sent it back.

The only thing I have noticed though is that their stuff seems a little fussy about wanting a decent PSU.

Re:AMD drivers still suck

[Luckster7]

I didn't realize it was the video card blowing caps. I just heard what sounded like a gunshot every couple of weeks while wondering what was going on. I didn't take the time to package their junk up and mail to them to get another piece of junk. I'll just never buy EVGA again. FYI Seasonic is about as good of a brand of power supply as you can get. They were one of the very first companies to get an 80+ certification, mostly because they were about the only company already making ATX power supplies that were that efficient.