As of this writing the NVIDIA Titan Z has just been released and marks the second big launch in the company’s calendar for 2014. The other being Maxwell, NVIDIA’s power efficient GPU. With Intel heavily focusing its efforts in reducing power draw for its desktop parts, its no surprise NVIDIA is going the same route and users will be pleased to know that Maxwell is just a small step forward in this direction despite its promising first outing.
There are currently two products baked with the Maxwell GPU: the GeForce GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti. NVIDIA wanted to test the waters first before going all-out on the architecture unlike they normally do which sees the highest end SKUs hitting the market first then seeing lower-tier models getting succeeding launches.
We’ve reviewed the GeForce GTX 750 before and we were quite impressed but for those asking for a bit more, just a bit more and a little bit more performance there’s still the GTX 750 Ti and today we have just that. Palit has sent us their GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX OC for testing and let’s see just how much more we get from this card.
The GeForce GTX 750 Ti: Enter Maxwell
We’ve stated it far too often in our recent GPU reviews: both NVIDIA and AMD let nearly 2 years pass before proceeding in creating renewed GPU architectures. This has worked out well in their favor regardless, refining the existing technology and squeezing out every ounce of performance from the existing silicon.
The Maxwell GPU is based on a 28 nanometer fabrication process which is not what some were expecting as some speculated that Maxwell would be on the 20nm process. For good reasons though, the 20nm fab has yet to mature and NVIDIA cannot risk it. So based on the 28nm fab, Maxwell was born.
The GeForce GTX 750 Ti is equipped with 640 CUDA cores clocked in at 1020Mhz (like the GTX750) and with GPU Boost 2.0, can spike upwards to 1085Mhz. The GPU is complemented with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 5400Mhz on a 128-bit bus. The GTX 750 Ti sits between the 120$ Radeon R7 260X, R7 265 and R9 270.
Latest GeForce news can be found in NVIDIA’s GeForce mini-site.
The Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX
Palit is now expanding its product line with the introduction of the StormX series. The StormX series sits below the Jetstream as the mainstream offering from Palit, testing the market waters for the viability of another separate line akin to what Sapphire, ASUS and MSI are doing with their multiple product stack.
The Palit Geforce GTX 750 Ti StormX comes in two flavors, the normal StormX and the StormX Dual with the latter having a larger cooling solution hence the naming. For our review, we have the StormX model: NE5X75TS1341-1073F. A factory-overclocked GTX750 Ti featuring a core clock of 1085Mhz and a boost clock of 1163Mhz. Memory clocks gets a small bump, clocking in at 5500Mhz effective. The card is powered straight of the PCIe slot with not PCIe power required. Palit arms the StormX with a single slot cooler with a black shroud and in an impressive step forward, clads in the PCB in pure black.
Can it run Watchdogs with a playable FPS? 🙂 I’m thinking of getting one.
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Haven’t tested but if you’re not planning on maxing out the details, I’m positive it will do 55-60FPS no probs with just FXAA on 1080p.
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