ASUS GTX 750Ti OC 2GD5 review: Marginal improvement over stock card

The Maxwell architecture based GTX 750Ti has been an impressive card as we have seen with the NVIDIA and ZOTAC  versions for its price and power consumption. ASUS recently sent us their overclocked version of the GTX 750Ti with a dual-fan cooling solution. So let us check out if this offers an improvement over the other two we have tested.   Build and Design The ASUS GTX 750Ti-OC-2GD5 looks quite similar to the DirectCU II cards we have seen in the past from ASUS ,  except that this does not have the copper pipes which are the reason behind the DC2 naming convention. This card also has a distinct metallic shroud that is placed over the aluminium heatsink. Two 75mm  fans located atop the heatsink, as opposed to just one seen on the NVIDIA stock GTX 750Ti, help in keeping the temperatures under check. The fans fire downwards on to the heatsink. The cooler section extends a bit beyond the length of the PCB, something we had also seen with the ASUS GTX 760. [caption id=“attachment_220667” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The ASUS GTX 750Ti OC comes with a custom cooler with two 75mm fans[/caption]   The ASUS GTX 750Ti OC comes with a dedicated 6-pin power connector which is located at a very strange position - closer to the back panel - rather than being at the edge of the card.  Build quality of the card is top of its class. It lacks a backplate though.   Features [caption id=“attachment_220666” align=“aligncenter” width=“454”] The location of the 6-pin power connector is rather strangely located[/caption]   Based on the Maxwell architecture, the ASUS GTX 750Ti being a factory-overclocked card, has a base clock that’s 1072MHz (1020MHz on the stock card) and boost clock that’s at 1150MHz (1085MHz on the stock card). Rest of the features are similar to what we have seen on other GTX 750Ti cards such as 2GB GDDR5 RAM, 640 CUDA cores, 128-bit memory interface and so on. On the display side it has a D-sub port, two DVI ports and an HDMI port. The maximum resolution supported on the DVI ports is 2560x1600 whereas it can display 4K resolution content with the HDMI 1.4 port at 30Hz.   Apart from this the ASUS GTX 750Ti OC 2GD5 supports features such as GPU Boost 2.0, Adaptive V-sync, PhysX, DirectX 11 and so on.   Test Setup Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4 RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB (boot drive) Additional Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor, 150GB (secondary) PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Monitor: BenQ GL2250   Performance 3DMark 11 3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the “Performance” preset for this benchmark.   Unigine Heaven 4.0 Unigine Heaven 4.0 is a DirectX 11 benchmark based on the Unigine engine which can be used to test the stability of a GPU under stressful conditions. It involves a run-through of an imaginary land involving floating islands, cobblestoned streets, smokey atmosphere, going through caves lit with burning fires, dragon statues and so on. You can adjust the tessellation, anti-aliasing filters, anisotropic filters etc. We run this test keeping the settings at Medium, no Anti-aliasing filter and Tessellation at Normal.     Battlefield 3 Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and is based on the new Frostbite 2 game engine. The game only supports DX10 and DX11, which enables enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0, creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-realtime radiosity using Geometrics’ Enlighten technology. The game is a visual treat and a nightmare for graphics cards, which makes it perfect for our test. We used the “Ultra High” preset, Post AA – High, Blur – Full, Field of View – 90, Level – “Fear no Evil”.     Metro: Last Light Metro: Last Light is a first-person shooter video game that continues Metro’s legacy of being one of the most demanding games for the best of GPUs. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the built-in benchmark for this test.     Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite developed by Irrational Games uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine. It’s a first-person shooter which takes place in a fictional floating city called Columbia. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings. In the Ultra settings you have FXAA On, Ultra texture detail, 16x AF, Ultra dynamic shadows and with the Medium settings you have FXAA On, High texture detail, 8x AF and High dynamic shadows.     Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a third-person shooter which is a reboot of the famous series with Lara Croft as the protagonist. In this reboot, she is ship-wrecked on a mysterious island which presents its own set of challenges which Lara has to overcome. The game is based on a customised CrystalEngine. It also features the AMD TressFX technology which adds more realism to hair rendering and physics. We ran the benchmark using the in-built benchmark tool at the Ultimate and Ultra settings. On the Ultimate preset, you have TressFX activated, 16x AF, FXAA whereas the Ultra preset has Normal hair quality, 16x AF, FXAA.     Sleeping Dogs Sleeping Dogs is an open-world third-person action-adventure game developed by United Front games and Square Enix London Studios. Set in modern-day Hong Kong the game involves you playing as Wei Shan, an undercover cop, who infiltrates a local Triad gang. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings.     Temperatures We noted the temperature of all the participating cards at idle and load states. The fan speeds were kept on auto. We noted maximum load temperatures after running benchmarks such as FurMark at 1080p preset, 3D Mark 11, Battlefield 3 and Metro: Last Light and taking an average.   Power Consumption We used an energy monitoring device to measure the power consumed by the total rig with the graphics cards on them. The Cooler Master 800W PSU was plugged into the power meter which gave out the power consumed in Watts on the display. After powering on the system we let it stay unused for a good five minutes to get the idle power reading and then ran three instances of FurMark 1080p preset to get the maximum load power.   Verdict and Price in India ASUS GTX 750Ti OC 2GD5 offers decent performance which is slightly higher than the stock NVIDIA GTX 750Ti, but that is thanks to the factory overclock. We did not find the performance jump to be that great, to justify an almost Rs 3,000 premium. Sure, it is a well-built card and has sturdy fans as compared to the ZOTAC GTX 750Ti OC card. We noticed that the dual-fan design did not really keep the load temperatures below the stock card, due to the factory overclock. You can barely hear any noise from the fans which is great.   The one area where you may get an advantage is if you plan to further overclock the card, which will naturally raise the load temperature and power consumption. We took the boost clock to around 1200MHz and got around 5-7 per cent performance jump. Get this one if the price drops, else the stock card isn’t too shabby. We will be testing the R7 265 soon, so we would suggest you wait it out to see how it performs as compared to this.