Watch out folks, things are about to get graphic. Sorry, I am a sucker for puns. But seriously, today we’re going to be checking out the EVGA GeForce GTX 750 TI. Aside from having one of those ever-lengthening industry names, the 750 TI has been called the “Xbox One killer”, as well as having the reputation for producing graphics that rival the PS4 as well as higher end graphics cards.
I find those claims extraordinary myself, especially since I have yet to find any evidence from a reputable source. I have serious doubts that this card is capable of playing many of the newest games on High (and even Ultra, if you believe the hype) settings. So what’s a girl to do? Test that motha and see what’s what.
So what comes in the box? Well, the card, obviously. But that’s not all. There’s also a handy disc preloaded with drivers and software to keep the card running smooth. There’s a metal EVGA emblem to stick on your tower, if bragging is your thing. There’s also a book of information that seems to be in about ten different languages, and a folded poster of a guy holding a head. Not sure why they threw that poster in there, but it looks cool.
I expected the video card to be this goliath of a monstrosity that I had to plug a couple of molex cables into. Something that would take up so much room that I would have to remove components in order for it to fit. But it’s compact, reaching to the end of the PCI-E socket and no further. It is thick enough to cover whatever slot is below it, however.
A rather thick fan sits inside a flat black plastic housing to cool the card’s heatsink. As for connections, we have a trifecta of HD availability. There’s a DVI port, an HDMI port, and a Display Port… er… port. HDMI audio is supplied by connecting the internal audio on the motherboard to a 4-pin connecter on the card itself.
Installation was easy as can be. I simply disconnected my old DVI cable, unscrewed the old card, and then installed the new one in its place. Took me less than a minute. And, there’s no need for added power. This is a low wattage card, so it draws all necessary power from the motherboard itself. Slip into PCI-E slot, screw in retaining screw, plug in video cable, and you’re done.
Stress is the name of the game, so I’m going to be running the 750 TI through a rigorous obstacle course known as 3DMark Pro. And of course we can’t have a video card review without gaming it up. Since it’s still new, and you can read our review of it here, I’m going to test the card using Watch Dogs.
Ready to begin? Not so fast, hot shot. I need to tell you about the rig I’m going to be testing this thing on:
- MSI 970A-G46 Motherboard
- AMD FX-4170 4.2Ghz. (4.3Ghz Turbo)
- 16GB Corsair DDR3 1600Mhz
- EVGA GeForce GTX 750 TI (2GB DDR5)
- 3 TB Western Digital Caviar SATA HDD
Now that that’s out of the way, we can begin stress testing this thing. 3DMark Pro has three tests for graphics cards: Ice Storm (for mobile devices and entry level PCs), Cloud Gate (for notebooks and home PCs), and Fire Strike (for high performance gaming rigs). Obviously the first one doesn’t serve us much purpose at all. But I wanted to be thorough, so I decided to run all three tests in order of severity.
I also ran FRAPS to test frame rate as I went. I’d also like to make a note here about optional downloadable software. Most video cards these days can be controlled using a downloadable software for overclocking and fan control. This is a great idea, as some auto fan controls aren’t that bright. So I downloaded and installed EVGA Precision X and cranked my fan speed up before beginning these tests. Alright, on with the tests.
I’d like to make a note on the idle temperature before we begin the tests. I turned on my computer after installation and proceeded to start this review. It had been running for around an hour with nothing running in the foreground. At the end of that hour, she was sitting pretty at 29 degree Celsius (84º Fahrenheit).
3dmark Tests
Ice Storm went exactly as I expected it to. The 750 TI blazed through it at 60+ frames per second, and at over 200 frames per second during the secondary graphics tests. But who cares? This is a test that is intended for tablets and whatnot. So I moved on to the Cloud Gate test. A little more stressful than Ice Storm, but the card kept up at around 50-60 frames per second. The secondary tests that focused on graphics came in at 30+ frames, but the physics test is where this particular graphics card started to disappoint me. It got down below 10 frames and stayed there. Oddly enough, all of my screenshots of those tests show 4 frames per second. That’s not accurate by any means. Watch the full videos for accurate frame rates.
Now for the Fire Strike test. I’m going to be completely honest here. I didn’t think the frame rate would get above 10 fps, especially since it took over a minute to load the test. Imagine my surprise when it hovered right around that very number the majority of the time.
Xbox One killer? Not even close. And I don’t see it pimp-slapping the PS4 anytime soon, but from what I’ve seen so far it’s worth the money. Fire Strike is taxing on most video cards in all price ranges, so I don’t find these results very surprising. In the end it got a score that was on par with many video cards at a higher price range, so I wasn’t entirely disappointed. But running 3D tests isn’t what people generally buy these cards for, so let’s proceed to the gaming portion of our show.
Gaming Tests
I chose Watch Dogs for the gaming test because my last video card wouldn’t play it on high settings without stuttering. I’ve also read a lot of commentary online about people having issues playing this game with Ultra settings while having an enjoyable time. I was thinking I would see 15-20 frames per second, tops. I was wrong.
I loaded up the game and went to the graphics menu to adjust my settings. Most of them were on medium quality, and when I clicked the button to auto adjust my settings, nothing changed. My heart sank. I pretty much admitted defeat then, but loaded up Fraps anyway and proceeded to set all graphics settings to Ultra. At this point I was no longer hoping for 15 frames. I didn’t think it would climb that high. As I said before, I was wrong. Very rarely did the fps counter drop below 30 frames. Only in very graphic-intense areas did I have any issues at all, and it was nothing more than the occasional dropped frame.
As you can see from the video, every available detail is present and accounted for. I noticed little to no noticeable loss of gaming quality during any of the play time. And yes, I know I was running around like a lunatic in the video. I was trying to show as much as possible in as little time as possible.
See those sparks when I courageously ran my stolen 80’s crapbox into the nice whips along the road? That’s 750 TI graphics, baby. And the temperature at the end of all this? 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Considering that anything below 80º C is considered okay for most cards, I would say that they’ve done a great job of using lower voltage to create beautiful graphics.
Conclusion
All in all, I have to say that I’m more impressed with this card than I anticipated. I still don’t think it’s the console destroyer that everyone claims, but it does what it’s intended to do. And it does it well. I definitely recommend it as an affordable alternative to many high end cards. The GTX 750 TI is a winner in my book.
You can get the 2GB verion cheap right here.
GTX 750 Ti GPU Engine Specs:
- CUDA Cores – 640
- Base Clock – 1020 (MHz)
- Boost Clock – 1085 (MHz)
GTX 750 Ti Memory Specs:
- 5.4 Gbps Memory Clock
- 2048 MB Standard Memory Config
- GDDR5 Memory Interface
- 128-bit Memory Interface Width
- Memory Bandwidth – 86.4 (GB/sec)
GTX 750 Ti Support:
- OpenGL 4.4
- PCI Express 3.0 Bus Support
- Certified for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista or Windows XP
- NVIDIA GameStream, GPU Boost 2.0, 3D Vision, CUDA, DirectX 11, PhysX, TXAA, Adaptive VSync, FXAA, NVIDIA Surround, G-SYNC-readySupported Technologies1
- 3D Vision Ready
- Microsoft DirectX 11.2 API
- Blu Ray 3D
- 3D Gaming
- 3D Vision Live (Photos and Videos)
Display Support:
- 4 Displays Multi Monitor
- 4096×2160 Maximum Digital Resolution
- 2048×1536 Maximum VGA Resolution
- HDCP
- HDMI
- One Dual Link DVI-I, One Dual Link DVI-D, One mini-HDMI Standard Display Connectors
- Internal Audio Input for HDMI
GTX 750 Ti Graphics Card Dimensions:
- 5.7 inches Length
- 4.376 inches Height
- Double-slot Width
Thermal and Power Specs:
- 95 Degrees Celsius Maximum GPU Temperature
- 60 Watt Graphics Card Power
- 300 Watt Minimum System Power Requirement
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