NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Review: The New Enthusiast Kepler
by Ryan Smith on June 25, 2013 9:00 AM ESTThe Last of the 700 Series & The Test
In something of an unusual move, along with announcing the GTX 760, NVIDIA also laid out their desktop video card plans for the next several months, leading through the fall. Typically NVIDIA doesn’t announce the non-existence of something, but then again since they apparently have nothing left to hide, there’s little reason not to.
In any case, the GeForce GTX 760 will be the last desktop 700 series card for the next several months. NVIDIA will not be introducing any further desktop cards according to the schedule they’ve provided us, so their lineup will be stable from here on. The 700 series allowed NVIDIA to introduce GK110 based cards and refresh their GK104 based cards, while GK107 and GK106 based products will not be changing. This means that rather than introducing a GTX 750 for example for GK106, NVIDIA will simply keep the top GK106 as the GTX 660.
This move is admittedly a bit weird for how NVIDIA normally does things, as with Fermi they updated their lineups top-to-bottom. Whether this means NVIDIA is planning a late update based on new chips – ala the GeForce GT 200 series, NVIDIA’s 40nm pipe cleaner – or if they simply don’t see a need to roll out new product numbers remains to be seen. But since NVIDIA has added GK106 parts as recently as March, and their top GK106 part doesn’t leave them much room for growth, there’s also a lack of technical opportunity to refresh the rest of their lineup like there was for their GK104 parts. Then again, AMD hasn’t bumped up the series number of their competing retail parts, so there’s little incentive (for once) to play number games in retail.
In any case the current lineup is most likely what we’ll be looking at through the rest of the year, until Maxwell sometime in 2014. This will leave the GTX 760 as NVIDIA’s top 1080p card, while the GK106 based GTX 660 will remain as NVIDIA’s more budget oriented 1080p card.
The Test
The press drivers for the GTX 760 are 320.39, a further bug fix of the existing R319 series drivers that also add support for the GTX 760. On the AMD side we’re using a mix of Catalyst 13.5 (7970) and Catalyst 13.6 (7950, 7870).
For comparison purposes we’ve also dug up a few older cards. Naming aside, NVIDIA’s GTX 560 Ti was their last $250 card and the class of card most 2 year cycle buyers will be coming from. Meanwhile we’re also including AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 and NVIDIA’s GTX 460 1GB. Finally, we’re going to include both the Radeon HD 7950 and 7950 Boost in our charts. The Boost edition has largely supplanted the original in retail, but frustratingly there are still some non-Boost (or otherwise sub-850MHz) cards on the market, so this covers both scenarios.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Monitor: | Samsung 305T |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 7950 Boost AMD Radeon HD 7950 AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 6870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 NVIIDA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 320.18 NVIDIA ForceWare 320.39 AMD Catalyst 13.5 Beta 2 AMD Catalyst 13.6 Beta 2 |
| OS: | Windows 8 Pro |
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Impulses - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Hmm, it took a while but it seems like I finally have a suitable upgrade path from my CF 6950x2 (unlocked)... I paid about $225 for each of those and I just haven't seen a card (or a pair of cards) that would be a substantial enough upgrade for under $500. SLI GTX 760 is more than I was hoping for, when the 770 came in at $400 I almost expected this to come in at $300+.Now, the question is, will I be bottlenecking myself under future games with 2GB GTX 760s in SLI for gaming at 5760x1200 or 3600x1920? My 6950s have held up well but I've been playing a lot of older games too... Should I be looking at a single GTX 780 instead or something?
mapesdhs - Monday, July 1, 2013 - link
As is so often the case, that depends on the games you're playing, and whether you're
using any mods, etc. Heavily modded Skyrim definitely needs more than 2GB even with
one high-res display. Heavy AA also needs more VRAM. Personally, if I was going for
multi-screen gaming, I'd want more than 2GB. Others have mentioned a 4GB 760, so
maybe that's an option? Or of course there are the various 3GB AMD cards, though I
wouldn't bother with CF until AMD's new drivers are out.
Some advantages of getting a single 780: better upgrade path in the future, less
power consumption, no SLI issues. The down side of course is the cost.
Ian.
hasseb64 - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
headline:"The new Enthusiast kepler"
Enthusiast?
Ever heard about "Main stream"?
I have nothing more to say!
tynopik - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
typo: 'less than idea for an action game' -> idealFar Cry 3 page
sdgvtree - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
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dineshramdin - Tuesday, July 2, 2013 - link
The most attractive feature is the 256 bit bus that would enable you a huge bandwidth and you can deal with any sort of resolutions if necessary. and for laptop accessories and many more, check this out- http://tinyurl.com/neqrzr9
Buddhaz Priest - Friday, July 12, 2013 - link
Wow. initially I kind of panned the GTX 770 because I didn't feel it was enough of a jump from the 670 for the price difference. Seemed like it wasn't a big hardware jump and that you were paying for the software goodies like GPU Boost 2.0, but after seeing the number difference between the 670 and 770 I gotta say I'm pleasantly surprised with how well the 770 performs.BadThad - Friday, June 13, 2014 - link
Let's see, no mention of the R270? You can find them for $150-175 (cheaper than the GTX) and they are virtually the same as far as performance.j18kuhn - Thursday, January 22, 2015 - link
I got one at best buy for my first pc for 210 and now I'm waiting on the rest of my parts from amazonArtas1984 - Sunday, August 16, 2015 - link
Seeing how the new GTX960 is just slightly ahead of GTX760, i guess buying the GTX760 was a smart choice. The gap between GTX970 and GTX960 is MASSIVE.