Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB Review

Performance Analysis

The GTX 760 2GB performs much more in line with the GTX 670 2GB than the GTX 660 2GB, despite its price being firmly in the middle of the two. In Battlefield 3 at 1,920 x 1,080 a minimum frame rate of 61fps is super-smooth and quicker than the HD 7950 3GB Boost by 3fps to boot. At 2,560 x 1,600 the 760 2GB matches the dearer AMD card thanks to a minimum frame rate of 34fps and also pips it at 5,760 x 1,080 with a minimum of 23fps; an impressive showing.


In Bioshock Infinite the GTX 760 2GB isn’t quite a match for the HD 7950 3GB, but it’s very close. At 1,920 x 1,080 its minimum frame rate of 52fps is 3fps behind the AMD card and only just faster than the GTX 660 Ti 2GB; clearly this isn’t a game that relies heavily on memory bandwidth. However At 2,560 x 1,600 it’s a close run thing between the GTX 760 and HD 7950, with a single fps separating the two (30/31 fps). At 5,760 x 1,080 though Bioshock looks to require more than 2GB of GDDR5, as the 7950 3GB is a long way ahead.

Crysis 3 is a game that’s very memory bandwidth hungry and this shows as the GTX 760 tears through our benchmark. At 1,920 x 1,080 it matched the 40fps minimum frame rate of the £310 HD 7970 3GB and at 2,560 x 1,600, with a minimum frame rate of 21fps, was just 1fps slower than the GTX 670 and 2fps slower than the HD 7950 3GB.

Skyrim at 1,920 x 1,080 again sees the GTX 760 2GB duke it out with the HD 7950 3GB, with the 760 marginally slower thanks to a minimum frame rate of 74fps to the AMD card’s 77fps. At 2,560 x 1,600 the two cards are again neck and neck with the GTX 760 producing a minimum frame rate of 55fps to the HD 7950 3GB’s 56fps. Across the basis of our four tests here, the two cards seem very evenly matched.


The new Unigine Valley benchmark looks to favour Nvidia’s cards a little, but a score of 1,492 points in our 2,560 x 1,600 test places the GTX 760 2GB decidedly quicker than the card it replaces and just 54 points behind the GTX 670 2GB, a gap that, as we found, is easily closed thanks to plenty of overclocking headroom. The card’s £210 price tag also sees it place second in our Unigine Valley graph, although this is just a representative graph from one benchmark.

Power and thermal performance was fair too. The stock card wasn't quite capable of sample at max boost all of the time, boosting to its max and then occasionally throttling a few MHz back to keep the temperature below 81°C and the cooling fan at an un-intrusive volume. of course, you can change this yourself by adjusting the card's thermal target in your OC software of choice.

A 295W system power consumption was decidedly higher than that of the 277W consumed by the GTX 670 2GB, a repeatable result that had us scratching our heads; we theorize that the GTX 760 2GB uses lesser GPUs that require more power to reach their stated frequencies.

Conclusion

While the GTX 760 2GB isn’t a revolutionary product (the GK104 GPU at its heart is after all, over 12 months old), it still stands as an enticing addition to Nvidia’s stable and, at £200, is far more appealing than the GTX 660 Ti 2GB it replaces.

Across our benchmarks it’s a capable match for the HD 7950 3GB with Boost, a card that’s priced £40 dearer at around £240. In some tests the GTX 760 was just a frame per second or two behind the GTX 670 2GB, a card that’s only recently dipped to £240, and if our review sample is any indication, it’s a very capable overclocker too; owners should have little trouble reaching stock GTX 670 2GB speeds, even with a stock card.

Looking at our Unigine vs Price graph the GTX 760 is also one of the best value cards on the market, second only to the GTX 660 2GB when it comes to bang per buck. While we’re certain some will argue that opting for a slightly quicker GTX 670 2GB is worthwhile, the £40 price gap is big enough to comfortably differentiate the two and means that Nvidia offers cards at easy-to-follow pricing rungs (with factory-overclocked cards making up the middle-ground) right through the most competitive section of the market.

So, while not a card to whip the masses into a frenzy in the same way as Xbox One DRM backtracks or Sony E3 slamdunks, the GTX 760 2GB efficiently and effectively continues Nvidia’s tightening of the screw against AMD’s ageing 7-series; with a £200 budget we simply wouldn't buy any other card.