NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

Written by John Yan on 6/25/2013 for PC  

At this year’s E3, I was fortunate enough to meet with NVIDIA to check out their booth and NVIDIA Shield in person. What I didn’t know was I had another appointment with them to see their latest video card offering. Behind closed doors, I was shown the card that’s launching today, and that’s the GeForce GTX 760.

The GeForce GTX 760 is priced to compete with AMD’s Radeon HD 7950. Priced at $250, this makes the GeForce GTX 760 as an affordable Kepler based card to game with your PC at 1920x1200 with many options on. It’s also meant to replace the GeForce GTX 660Ti in their lineup of cards as their Fall 2013 lineup shapes up to be like this:
 
Specifications wife, the GeForce GTX 760 consists of:

GTX 760 GPU Engine Specs:
  1152 CUDA Cores
  980 Base Clock (MHz)
  1033 Boost Clock (MHz)
  94.1 Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)
GTX 760 Memory Specs:
  6.0 Gbps Memory Speed
  2048 MB Standard Memory Config
  GDDR5 Memory Interface
  256-bit Memory Interface Width
  192.26 Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)
 
All the features that I’ve talked about in my review of the GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 770 will be in the GeForce GTX 760. That means we’re talking about GPU Boost 2.0, adaptive temperature controls, soon to be released Shadow Play, and so forth. 

The card is a little shorter than the 780 and 770 coming in at 10”. The reference’s card casing is definitely not as impressive as the other two, being a more solid plastic encasing surrounding the board. On top are the two SLI connectors for triple SLI  and two six- pin connectors. Surprisingly, the power pins are a lot farther in towards the center of the card then on the outer edge, which I’m used to. TDP is 170W for the GTX 760.

To see the performance of the NVIDIA line, I have tested the GTX 760 with the GTX 780, GTX 770, and GTX 580. I don’t have a comparable AMD card around to test against unfortunately. My test setup consisted of:

Intel i7-2600K
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard
12GB of DDR3 ram
Samsung 256GB SSD
Windows 8

All tests were ran with the latest NVIDIA drivers for their respective cards. Version 320.39 NVIDIA drivers were used in testing with the GTX 760. Also, I decided to go with all games this time around, foregoing on any artificial benchmarking programs. I’ve attached a screenshot of each game’s settings. 

Batman Arkham Asylum used the built in benchmark and tests were ran 3 times. What you see is the average.
 
BioShock Infinite used the built in benchmark that took you through various areas of Columbia. Tests were ran 3 times with the average displayed below.
   

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon was tested using Fraps and using the first sequence where you ride a helicopter around the base. I picked this area because it’s easily repeatable.
 
I used Fraps to test Max Payne 3. Picking Chapter III in the arcade mode, I ran the first few minutes and tried to duplicate what I did. Again, the average of three scores is shown below.
 
Metro Last Light has a nice little built in benchmark that I used. You can set various options and I had the tests run three times. It also displays the results in a nice web page complete with graphs on how fast the various parts rendered.  
Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics has a built in benchmark that I used where the camera panned around Lara Croft near some wreckage. Below you will find the average score of three runs.
 
Performance wise, it was pretty much where I would have expected, coming in at slightly slower speeds than the GeForce GTX 770.  Considering the 770 is a $400 card, at $250 the GeForce GTX 760 looks to really give you some nice bang for your buck. It will fit nicely in lineup that NVIDIA is looking to have for the Fall and will give consumers a nice range of cards to look over at various price points and performance.

Of course, you're going to have access to GeForce Experience to help you get the best performance out of the card. It's easy and will benefit those that are unsure on how to maximize their purchase as well as experienced gamers who don't want to spend the time to fiddle with each setting. 
 
Shadow Play isn't here yet, but it's coming soon. This great feature that will record your gameplay with minimal impact on performance will be supported by this card as well so when NVIDIA does release it, and hopefully someday with Twitch integration as well, you'll be ready to share your gaming experiences with anyone online.

The GeForce GTX 760 gives NVIDIA a nice lineup of cards at various price points. If you're not looking to spend $300 or more on a card, you can't go wrong with this one. Board partners should also be launching with some variations such as more RAM and being overclocked out of the box. $250 is a solid price for the GeForce GTX 760, which delivers solid performance and gives you access to some great features in games as well.