ZOTAC GTX 750Ti OC: Efficient cooler but not a lot faster than a stock card

Last week we saw the reference NVIDIA GTX 750Ti - the first card sporting NVIDIA’s Maxwell architecture. It left us impressed with its performance, for its price point and the fact that it does not require any PCIe power connector. This week we got the ZOTAC GTX 750Ti OC which does require a 6-pin PCIe power connector due to the higher clock speeds. Let us find out if this card improves on the stock card by much and if it’s indeed worth the slight premium it commands.

Design and Build

ZOTAC GTX 750Ti OC is a factory overclocked iteration of the GTX 750Ti. So naturally, it comes with a custom cooler design. ZOTAC GTX 750Ti OC has an open ended design and the cooler section occupies the central portion of the card instead of being present in the form of a shroud. There are two fans atop an aluminum heatsink which is held in place by an external skeleton. There is a 6-pin PCIe power connector on the top right hand corner. This is a dual-slot card design and it lacks an SLI slot.

Features The ZOTAC GTX 750Ti OC comes with a core clock speed of 1046MHz which is 26MHz over the stock speed of 1020MHz. The Boost clock speed is set at 1124MHz which is 39MHz over the stock Boost clock speed of 1085MHz. As you may have already realised, these aren’t massive overclock speeds. Who knows, ZOTAC probably is planning to come out with an AMP Edition card which will have much higher core clock and Boost clock speeds.

The card comes with 2GB GDDR5 video memory with a 128-bit memory bus-width. On the display front, you have two DVI ports, an HDMI port and a DisplayPort. It can display 4K resolution content with the DisplayPort at 60Hz and HDMI port at 30Hz.

The ZOTAC GTX 750Ti is based on the GM107 GPU and it has 640 CUDA cores. This GPU is built on the same 28nm process that was seen with the Kepler GPUs. Apart from this the card comes with most of the standard NVIDIA features such as GPU Boost 2.0, DirectX 11.2 support, ShadowPlay, TXAA, FXAA, GameStream and so on.

Test Setup Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4 RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX OS 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 Catalyst Driver version: 13.11 Beta Nvidia driver version: 334.69

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

As seen from the charts, there was barely any noticeable improvement in terms of performance over the NVIDIA GTX 750Ti. Most of the game benchmarks are within a margin of error when compared with the stock card. Although the card is much better designed than a stock card, we didn’t really notice any advantage of having a 6-pin PCIe power connector for a regular user. If you plan to overclock, certainly the ZOTAC GTX 750Ti will provide more stability at Boost clock speeds over 1220MHz as compared to the stock card in which we noticed games crashing when we pushed Boost clock speeds over 1200MHz. Although the MRP of the ZOTAC GTX 750Ti is Rs 14,000, you can get it in the market for close to Rs 12,500. It is just around Rs 500 premium for a custom cooler. Whether to go for the ZOTAC GTX 750Ti OC or the stock NVIDIA GTX 750Ti depends on whether you will be overclocking the card and need that extra bit of power.