KFA2 Nvida GeForce GTX 760 EX OC Single Card/SLi Review
User Review: jrodga2k5
Introduction
Having been using an AMD HD7970 for a good few months and thoroughly impressed with the performance I couldn’t help but fancy a change. When I built my most recent PC build I started with a GTX 670 before changing to the AMD card but with that I lost features such as Physx and a game I was playing at the time RAGE just didn’t play well as well with the AMD card.
So comes the resurrection of the GTX670 in a slightly cut down GK104 with much superior clock speeds and the new GPU Boost 2.0 tech in the form of the GTX760.
When the cards were released most of the versions all came with custom coolers and pre-clocked base clocks so it was simply down to both a price, noise levels and a cosmetic issue (being a windowed case you want it to look good right). But anyways down to business and first off the cards.
Card Spotlight
Standard packaging affair as you can see, nothing special with the box or inside it either…some PCI-E connectors and driver CD’s, standard package but nothing out of the ordinary.
Now onto the card(s) themselves with their custom cooler by KFA2 which looks absolutely stunning and unique. However I use the word unique loosely as on the side of the card it does state GTX600 series…possibly recycling some old coolers produced, not a big issue in all honesty but a poor oversight in my opinion. The card requires 1x6pin and 1x8pin PCi-E connections.
...and finally housed in the 600t.
Temperature/Noise
So there they are, housed in the Corsair 600T. I have a slight fan mod to try and provide some extra airflow since things are bloomin’ toasty out there right now and my room is like a hot box, not ideal for load temps especially. When referring to the temps GPU 1 will be the top card and GPU 2 the bottom card.
As shown on various review sites the power draw from the cards is around 170W TDW which isn’t too high at all and my OCZ 750 W PSU keeps affairs running in SLi without any grumble or whine without the PSU ramping up in terms of fan noise.
The fan on the cards keeps things silent at idle and can ramp up during load however it is only when switching to a more aggressive fan profile that things get loud. General load noise is what you would expect from any custom cooled card, certainly quieter than stock coolers with a slight wooshing sound to be heard.
Overclocking
Overclocking the cards I have found to have had some success. In the below image you can see that I’ve managed to coax an extra 10% approximately on the core and an extra 13% on the memory speeds. Now this is what I’m going to call a conservative memory overclock as the only benchmark where I encountered problems at over this speed was in Metro Last Light, there may be something in it so settled for these speeds.
Core: 1059 Mhz Default GPU Clock Offset: +102 (1161 Mhz effective)
Mem: 6008 Mhz Default MEM Clock Offset: +400 (6808 Mhz effective)
GPU Boost 2.0 seems to be where things get a little interesting now with this card. You can mess about with both the Power Limit and the Temp Target and I did so through EVGA Precision. To begin with my tests the card seemed to fall down with the temp target defaulted to 80C so certainly in this hot summer things where throttling especially with GPU 1 which is not ideal. I had to raise the Temp Target to the top of 95C and then add the additional power limit to 125%. By setting the Temp Target GPU 1 is now holding it’s core clocks a lot more readily especially in intensive benchmarks.
So that being said, yes, there is a boost clock showing on GPU-Z however this is the default, when GPU Boost 2.0 truly comes into play this ends up reaching much higher core speeds.
GPU Boost
GPU 1: 1210Mhz
GPU 2: 1248Mhz
I need to sort out some airflow but I should be able to bring both closer to the same speeds although it is very likely the difference is down to each card in the silicon lottery.
Test Specification
Intel Core i7 3770K @ 4.3Ghz
16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel
Gigabyte G1 Sniper M3 (Micro ATX)
750W TX OCZ PSU.
NVidia WHQL 320.49
Benchmarks
Now everything I will be running at 1080p so I fully await the calls of you should have gotten a single powerful GPU etc to do the task but SLi has come on leaps and bounds since I last messed about with a multi-gpu set up and I haven’t had one issue as of yet crop up.
I’m also not a paid reviewer and don’t receive review samples so the benchmarks will be on my system testing KFA2 GTX 760 EX OC in single card, SLi and SLi Overclocked performance. You can do your own comparisons with other cards out there and feel free to do so as there are plenty of reviews hosting these results for other cards.
Conclusion
Well I must say I’ve been more than impressed with the performance of the cards in SLi for the price as they seem to cut through everything I’ve thrown at it and quick comparisons with GPU scores in 3D Mark show they are managing to pull out Titan beating (stock speed) performance all for just under £400 (with cashback).
Having taken some time to look through the benchmarks on there it is certainly just about on a par with the GTX 690 which is 2xGTX 670’s so it is certainly a feasible setup especially in the cost effective manner when you consider that goes from upwards of £799.99.
Single card performance is what you’d expect from a mid range card. Considering we were benching with max settings (-MSAA in some occasions) a single card can certainly handle everything at 40+fps going well over 60fps in some cases. Take MSAA or FXAA off and it will certainly handle pretty much anything also.
Consider this however, if you do like the Green Side (and I’m not trying to start a flame war since I came from an AMD card) then this could be the new mid choice option for you, as stated performance is fantastic for a midrange card and with a bit of overclocking this can be pushed even further. With 4GB cards on the way as well from many vendors (KFA2 and EVGA) then there is the option out there for those who use much higher resolutions.
As a single card it’s more than capable and down the line you could easily add a second as the prices will naturally drop as time goes on.
In SLi the cards just perform, be it cutting through Metro Last Light with PhysX to flying through Crysis 3, NVidia really has impressed me with the SLi scaling I’ve seen here and as long as the Driver Releases remain as solid as they are I certainly can’t complain. Looking over the results we are seeing near 100% additional performance in Far Cry 3, over 80% in Battlefield 3 and just about 80% in Crysis 3.
So overall I’m more than happy with my purchase(s) and the performance has been better than even I expected.
Thanks for taking the time to read the review and I welcome any feedback (constructive please), requests for further testing (where I have the software) and willing to answer any questions you may have.
Cheers
User Review: jrodga2k5
Introduction
Having been using an AMD HD7970 for a good few months and thoroughly impressed with the performance I couldn’t help but fancy a change. When I built my most recent PC build I started with a GTX 670 before changing to the AMD card but with that I lost features such as Physx and a game I was playing at the time RAGE just didn’t play well as well with the AMD card.
So comes the resurrection of the GTX670 in a slightly cut down GK104 with much superior clock speeds and the new GPU Boost 2.0 tech in the form of the GTX760.
When the cards were released most of the versions all came with custom coolers and pre-clocked base clocks so it was simply down to both a price, noise levels and a cosmetic issue (being a windowed case you want it to look good right). But anyways down to business and first off the cards.
Card Spotlight
Standard packaging affair as you can see, nothing special with the box or inside it either…some PCI-E connectors and driver CD’s, standard package but nothing out of the ordinary.
Now onto the card(s) themselves with their custom cooler by KFA2 which looks absolutely stunning and unique. However I use the word unique loosely as on the side of the card it does state GTX600 series…possibly recycling some old coolers produced, not a big issue in all honesty but a poor oversight in my opinion. The card requires 1x6pin and 1x8pin PCi-E connections.
...and finally housed in the 600t.
Temperature/Noise
So there they are, housed in the Corsair 600T. I have a slight fan mod to try and provide some extra airflow since things are bloomin’ toasty out there right now and my room is like a hot box, not ideal for load temps especially. When referring to the temps GPU 1 will be the top card and GPU 2 the bottom card.
As shown on various review sites the power draw from the cards is around 170W TDW which isn’t too high at all and my OCZ 750 W PSU keeps affairs running in SLi without any grumble or whine without the PSU ramping up in terms of fan noise.
The fan on the cards keeps things silent at idle and can ramp up during load however it is only when switching to a more aggressive fan profile that things get loud. General load noise is what you would expect from any custom cooled card, certainly quieter than stock coolers with a slight wooshing sound to be heard.
Overclocking
Overclocking the cards I have found to have had some success. In the below image you can see that I’ve managed to coax an extra 10% approximately on the core and an extra 13% on the memory speeds. Now this is what I’m going to call a conservative memory overclock as the only benchmark where I encountered problems at over this speed was in Metro Last Light, there may be something in it so settled for these speeds.
Core: 1059 Mhz Default GPU Clock Offset: +102 (1161 Mhz effective)
Mem: 6008 Mhz Default MEM Clock Offset: +400 (6808 Mhz effective)
GPU Boost 2.0 seems to be where things get a little interesting now with this card. You can mess about with both the Power Limit and the Temp Target and I did so through EVGA Precision. To begin with my tests the card seemed to fall down with the temp target defaulted to 80C so certainly in this hot summer things where throttling especially with GPU 1 which is not ideal. I had to raise the Temp Target to the top of 95C and then add the additional power limit to 125%. By setting the Temp Target GPU 1 is now holding it’s core clocks a lot more readily especially in intensive benchmarks.
So that being said, yes, there is a boost clock showing on GPU-Z however this is the default, when GPU Boost 2.0 truly comes into play this ends up reaching much higher core speeds.
GPU Boost
GPU 1: 1210Mhz
GPU 2: 1248Mhz
I need to sort out some airflow but I should be able to bring both closer to the same speeds although it is very likely the difference is down to each card in the silicon lottery.
Test Specification
Intel Core i7 3770K @ 4.3Ghz
16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel
Gigabyte G1 Sniper M3 (Micro ATX)
750W TX OCZ PSU.
NVidia WHQL 320.49
Benchmarks
Now everything I will be running at 1080p so I fully await the calls of you should have gotten a single powerful GPU etc to do the task but SLi has come on leaps and bounds since I last messed about with a multi-gpu set up and I haven’t had one issue as of yet crop up.
I’m also not a paid reviewer and don’t receive review samples so the benchmarks will be on my system testing KFA2 GTX 760 EX OC in single card, SLi and SLi Overclocked performance. You can do your own comparisons with other cards out there and feel free to do so as there are plenty of reviews hosting these results for other cards.
Conclusion
Well I must say I’ve been more than impressed with the performance of the cards in SLi for the price as they seem to cut through everything I’ve thrown at it and quick comparisons with GPU scores in 3D Mark show they are managing to pull out Titan beating (stock speed) performance all for just under £400 (with cashback).
Having taken some time to look through the benchmarks on there it is certainly just about on a par with the GTX 690 which is 2xGTX 670’s so it is certainly a feasible setup especially in the cost effective manner when you consider that goes from upwards of £799.99.
Single card performance is what you’d expect from a mid range card. Considering we were benching with max settings (-MSAA in some occasions) a single card can certainly handle everything at 40+fps going well over 60fps in some cases. Take MSAA or FXAA off and it will certainly handle pretty much anything also.
Consider this however, if you do like the Green Side (and I’m not trying to start a flame war since I came from an AMD card) then this could be the new mid choice option for you, as stated performance is fantastic for a midrange card and with a bit of overclocking this can be pushed even further. With 4GB cards on the way as well from many vendors (KFA2 and EVGA) then there is the option out there for those who use much higher resolutions.
As a single card it’s more than capable and down the line you could easily add a second as the prices will naturally drop as time goes on.
In SLi the cards just perform, be it cutting through Metro Last Light with PhysX to flying through Crysis 3, NVidia really has impressed me with the SLi scaling I’ve seen here and as long as the Driver Releases remain as solid as they are I certainly can’t complain. Looking over the results we are seeing near 100% additional performance in Far Cry 3, over 80% in Battlefield 3 and just about 80% in Crysis 3.
So overall I’m more than happy with my purchase(s) and the performance has been better than even I expected.
Thanks for taking the time to read the review and I welcome any feedback (constructive please), requests for further testing (where I have the software) and willing to answer any questions you may have.
Cheers
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