Nvidia GTX 760 Palit 2gb - First Impression / Review

[KEN]

Read a more detailed review with images here: Sethioz Industries Blog

I got a gtx 760 2 days back and am very impressed with the card.
My cpu and other parts are weak(New on the way soon), so I can't really do any proper benchmarks but still the performance is amazing considering the card is not being utilized properly even upto 50%.
Tomb Raider 2013, on the ingame benchmark tool gave me 41fps average and 60fps max on everything set on Ultra. With a proper CPU where there are no bottlenecks in the system, the card gives a 80+ fps as minimum and 100 as average.

Assassins Creed 3 is however currently unplayable in Boston. In Boston ONLY (maybe its just some bug in game), the fps drop to around 20fps(everything on max), on my system. Outside of Boston in any other town or in Jungle, the FPS don't go below 40 on my currently Bottlenecked PC. Maybe it is more CPU dependent or a very bad port just like GTA 4.

I will make proper benchmark videos and gameplays as soon as I can get a proper CPU. Until then, read about it on the blog listed above to get all current info I have provided.

[Sethioz]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcRANnRggMM < Tomb Raider 2013 Benchmarking Test on Absolute MAX settings in 1920x1080 with GTX680

When you made the test, ultra or ultimate ? because TR2013 has both. This test i made, is as good as it goes, even if you set on Ultimate, it still won't change AA onto max, so i had to set it manually.

I wanna see your results again with better CPU + RAM, to see how good 760 really is.
btw how are the temps ? idle > max and what are your fan speeds, % and RPM ...etc

on my GTX680 i get this:
Idle temp - 31 - 33C
fan speed 40% (1440rpm)

under max load - temp 60-66C
fan speed 100% (3003rpm)

I set fan speeds manually using MSI Afterburner.

[KEN]

I turned everything up manually and had to manually set AA on highest too. But note that my monitor is only 1600x900. That 41fps average is on that resolution with around 40% gpu usage and 100% cpu.
If you're getting and average of around 50fps on 1080p then the 760 will get around 45.

Temps are almost the same:
Idle temp: 31C - 36C
Fan at 30% (810 RPM)

Can't say about full load since right now it never goes at 100% usage nor does the fan go over 70%.
At about 40% - 50% usage(Dual Core is only capable of that much), it goes at 50C-60C with 70% fan speed.

Also the card is extremely quiet. I don't hear anything from it ever. Also in dark it looks very good, coz of the white LED on fans, the red part of the card shows up in the dark.

[Sethioz]

you can always use some CUDA enabled password cracker, such as EWSA or EDPR. it doesn't matter how bad or good your CPU is, you only need very basic CPU to reach max performance of your card.
I'm actually interested on how much it can pull in EWSA against WPA2/WPA

[KEN]

I got Nvidia 326.80 beta drivers and made a few changes to them. I've lost hope in Nvidia because they restrict your hardware willingly (probably) on the basic of whether you spent money on a Titan or spent lesser money to get a 760.
My previous score on Tomb Raider internal Benchmark was:

10 fps Minimum
41 fps Average
60 fps max

Everything set on the highest possible settings @ 1600 x 900 (My screen max resolution is this so can't test on 1920x1080).
Now my score is:

30 fps Minimum
58 fps Average
74 fps Max

That's a VERY big difference specially in the minimum. I've completed the game but there were places where it lagged (10-20 fps), when I could've played those portions of the game at 30 fps or more.
Also I started using MSI afterburner to keep my card temps under control. Around 70C (90% fan) is the highest I've seen now under load and 30C on Idle(45% fan).
I'm loving the Gtx 760, it's a very good card for such a cheap price compared to the others in the same range. Now I only need a good CPU to unleash the card's full potential. :)

[Sethioz]

they restrict your hardware willingly (probably)

what exactly do they restrict and how did you get past those restrictions and will it work on other nVidia cards/drivers ?
if it works on other cards, write a tutorial on how to "unlock" all this stuff.
you can also easily overclock using MSI Afterburner, its weird, cuz i thought that if cpu is crap then you simply cant get better performance out of GPU, but if you overclock your GPU, you can still get better results .. hmmm.

[KEN]

Only with 700 series. It's the same thing I posted above, only a matter of changing things around the driver files into making it think you have a Titan. For some reason Nvidia counts Titan under the 700 series:

That is why it probably works.

Also I don't understand how this average fps is accounted for in the benchmark. If the lowest is 30 fps and highest is 74 fps which gtx 760 is giving then 74+30 / 2 = 52 not 58.
Anyhow the latest beta drivers with tweaks also improved performance of Assassins Creed 3 even more. AC3 is CPU dependent game so I have to put everything on high instead of highest to get playable speed specially in Boston, in Jungle and everywhere else, it is well over 50 fps so either its my cpu or just some bug in Boston.

[Sethioz]

have you checked your clock speeds and anything else that effects performance, like voltage to GPU ..etc. Maybe it overclocks it in a way.

for example, my dual core CPU is not able to push my old GTX550Ti as far as my quad core did, even tho dual core only has 50% of CPU usage when GPU has 99% usage, however if i overclock the GTX550Ti, it will break the performance that it got with quad core cpu.
I tested it on EDPR (elcomsoft distriputed password recovery) and these are results:
GTX550Ti with quad core cpu = 12500p/s
GTX550Ti with dual core cpu = 11200p/s
Overclock GTX550Ti with dual core cpu = 13000p/s ( clocked from 900mhz to 1013, any higher and i had driver crashes, it recovered but broke the program using it)

obviously same base clock would give better results with quad core cpu, but my point here is that maybe it simply overclocks your 760 if you make it think its Titan.

Check with different programs to see what the clock is, make sure to check in all condition (idle, normal, under load), some video cards have dynamic clock and they change it. for example one of my GTX550Tis had automatic voltage control, if i put heavy load onto it, it went from 1v to 1.125v, which is quite a big difference for a GPU, while other stayed at 1v even under load.

I think AIDA64 is best for checking all that, set it to update every second and show all possible GPU values. (its bad for normal use, because of resource usage, normal should be no less than 3 seconds, but for testing 1s is good).


But yeah, its all about money to them, most people do not understand how computer companies SCAM money from them. There is absolutely NO difference between any of the nVidia GPUs, they're all the same really, difference is just that more you pay, faster you get, but it costs them the same to make them. developing costs too, but not THAT much. they could easily make better card than Titan is, but they just won't, because Titan is more than enough to play anything on max .. so in near future when better games come out, they can scam more money by making something more powerful and call it Colossus and say "its a breakthru!" ...while they could easily do it right now.
Cooling is issue, but not if i would have to design a cooler, i could get temps down by easy 50% or even more. I mean . why is GPU so tiny? why not spread it across the board? so if GPU is bigger, it has more surface you can mount the heatsink on, heatsink should have a lot heavier base, with MORE metal and sit all over that GPU. it would cool the shit out of it and for super performance go liquid.

[KEN]

Clocks are same and even temps are the same as they were before. Its possibly just the files installer copies. Also there are some text among those .inf's saying "if gtx 700 = install old", "if gtx titan = install new". Cant remember the exact but something similar so its probably a matter of what driver files the installer copies. Maybe its just a new version of driver and old version of the drivers that we get in the installer according to our gpu's.

I'm trying to find out how much of a bottleneck I am seeing in this card so I can have an idea of the performance of the card when there's no bottleneck in the system.
I'll post back with predictions of the full potential performance of the card and later we can compare with real performance and see how much theory and practical differs.

[Sethioz]

shame on nVidia for doing such a scam.
maybe there are more of those "fixes" where you can force it to copy different files, like 690 may have better files in use than 680.

however its too early to say, there might be a good reason for it, maybe it damages the card somehow, but if all clocks and specs remain same .. then i doubt there is. im about 95% sure it is what you said it is .. they're just making Titan feel and look better than it actually is. 780 is very close to Titan, so with this driver trick .. 780 maybe even better than Titan or same.