VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2013-07-08
The iChill GTX 760 implementation from inno3D comes with a well-build cooling system with 3 fans and pre-overclocked from the factory and succeeds to come very close to the non-GHz Edition version of the Radeon HD 7970. Besides that, for added value we also get a nice cloth pad inside the box that we can use at LAN parties or at home along with a high-performance gaming mouse.
At first we would like to thank InnoVISION for offering a sample of their inno3D iChill GTX 760 video card for testing and reviewing.
“Cutting-edge multimedia PC hardware products
InnoVISION Multimedia Limited is a pioneering developer and manufacturer of a diverse range of cutting-edge multimedia PC hardware products established in 1998 Hong Kong. Our manufacturing operations have been set up since 1990 in Shenzhen, China. In this short period of time we focus on manufacturing OEM/ODM products as well as contracting out extensive production and research facilities to specialist companies. We have accomplished international recognition by PC’s top reviewers as becoming an outstanding success and one of the most fast growing companies in Asia.
Our company's objective
Our company's objective is to deliver the ultimate multimedia experience to the masses of PC users and multimedia professionals at an affordable cost. InnoVISION was then created to build brand awareness for the continuously growing product range in order to meet the fast growing market. InnoVISION's product scope comprises the successful Inno3D brand - a comprehensive variety of 3D graphic board accelerators, the InnoDV - series of digital video/TV capture and editing products, InnoAX - high-end sound / audio cards, and EIO - advanced peripherals.
ISO9001:2000 certification
InnoVISION's ISO9001:2000 certification assures not only a world-class standard of product but also production, management and distribution efficiency. The company's talented and dedicated R&D teams both in Hong Kong and Shenzen are continually carrying out research of the highest level to design the next generation of groundbreaking products. InnoVISION boasted a significant rate and increase in the market share of graphics card sales over the past years. To maintain InnoVISION highly respected image we will continuously focus to achieve a competitive advantage by maintaining constant product quality by continuous research and advance technical support to target customer needs. InnoVISION will constantly grow and develop for future innovation of new and existing products. We are determined to reach beyond limits and stay focused on our company’s objectives for future prospects.”
Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Support 11.1 API (feature level 11_0)
Microsoft DirectX 11.1 API (feature level 11_0) DirectX 11 GPU with Shader Model 5.0 support designed for ultra-high performance in the new API's key graphics feature, GPU-accelerated tessellation.
SMX
Next generation streaming multiprocessor built from the ground up for incredible performance and power efficiency.
NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0 Technology
Dynamically maximizes clock speeds based on workload and allows enthusiast class controls such as temperature target and fan controls, extra over-voltage headroom and optimizations for water-cooling solutions. This allows greater customization and overclocking options and enables gamers to push performance to new levels.
Microsoft® DirectX® 11
DirectX 11 GPU with Shader Model 5.0 support designed for ultra-high performance in the API's key graphics feature, GPU-accelerated tessellation.
NVIDIA® 3D Vision® Ready
Support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, bringing a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D experience to the PC. A combination of high-tech wireless glasses and advanced software, 3D Vision transforms hundreds of PC games into full stereoscopic 3D. In addition, you can stream 3D movies and 3D digital photographs from 3DVisionLive.com in eye popping, crystal-clear quality.
NVIDIA® 3D Vision® Surround Ready
With a single GeForce GTX 680 you can expand your PC games across three displays in full stereoscopic 3D for the ultimate "inside the game" experience.* NVIDIA Surround also supports triple screen gaming with non-3D Vision monitors. Add in a fourth accessory display to get access to your email, web, or other applications while you game.
NVIDIA FXAA Technology
Shader-based anti-aliasing technology available from the NVIDIA Control Panel that enables ultra-fast anti-aliasing in hundreds of PC games.
NVIDIA TXAA Technology
Support for new temporal anti-aliasing technique that delivers the ultimate combination of image quality and performance.
NVIDIA 3-way SLI® Technology
Industry leading NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling in games across up to three GPUs.
NVIDIA PhysX® Technology
Full support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.
NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync
Dynamically enables vertical sync based on your current frame rates for the smoothest gaming experience.
NVIDIA CUDA® Technology
Unlocks the power of the GPU's processor cores to accelerate the most demanding tasks such as video transcoding, physics simulation, ray tracing, and more, delivering incredible performance improvements over traditional CPUs.
NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology
The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.
PCI Express 3.0
Designed for the new PCI Express 3.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.
Dual-link DVI
Able to drive flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600 resolution over a DVI connector.
DisplayPort
Drive the latest DisplayPort panels with support for resolutions up to 2560x1600.
HDMI
Support for HDMI including GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D support, x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound.
After the launch of the Titan, Nvidia wanted to also cover the other performance segments and eventually to replace some of the older generation products. In one of our previous reviews we have taken a look at the GTX 780 card from Gigabyte which featured overclocking from the factory and succeeded to render impressive performances.
After the GeForce GTX 770, which shares a lot with the previous GTX 680 but with higher memory frequencies, Nvidia has placed another member at a noticeably lower price point, the GTX 760.
This chip is also based on the 28nm GK104, but features only six out of eight SMs (streaming multiprocessors) and this result in a total of 1152 unified shaders along with 96 TMUs. The chip also features a 256-bit wide memory interface along with 32 ROPs.
As we have found on the GTX 780, this GPU also features Boost 2.0 technology, which dynamically overclocks depending on temperature, current load and power. 3rd party manufacturers have concentrated on delivering efficient cooling systems in order to eliminate the temperature as a factor which restricts boost clocks, but also to be able to overclock even further.
When looking at the beefy cooling InnoVISION have implemented on the iChill version of the card, we thought right away that this version should be overclocked from the factory and we were right. The card comes with a GPU clock of 1056MHz vs 980MHz on the stock Nvidia version and the boost goes up to 1124MHz.
The manufacturer was nice to send the card in a retail packaging, will all the bells and whistles. The iChill GTX 760 is shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard box, with some stickers on the side preparing us for the additional goodies:
A short product description can be found on the back side of the packaging:
The box is sealed on both sides for additional security:
After removing the first packaging layer, inside we will find an additional black box, with the iChill logo in the middle:
If we lift the top cover, we will discover a nice gaming mouse pad, sitting on top:
The cloth pad comes with the iChill and inno3D logos and wants to imitate carbon fiber:
On the back side of the pad we will find the non-slip rubber material:
Besides that we will get an Installation Kit, one 3DMark voucher and also a Power Supply Guideline leaflet:
The Power Supply Guideline will inform us what type of PSU we will need depending on the purchased video card:
The Installation Kit houses the driver disk, along with some instructions regarding hardware installation:
By removing the top layer, we will find the card sitting near the rest of the bundle:
The card is shipped with a DVI-to-VGA adapter, a MOLEX to PCI-Express power adapter, a key and also a case badge:
Initially, the board features protective covers in all necessary places and components of the top metallic shroud are covered with a thin transparent film, which must be removed before the first use:
The iChill GTX 760 features no less than 3 fans which blow air on the heatsink in order to eliminate excess heat:
Between the fan blades we will get to see some badges which look very much the same as the case badge we have mentioned earlier as a bundle:
The top metallic shroud can be removed with the supplied key for dust cleaning:
The fans do not feature additional logos in the middle:
By looking on the laterals of the card, we will spot the GPU plate along with some heatpipes which travel to the top heatsink:
The manufacturer was pretty tricky by placing the warranty sticker right under the heatsink so not anyone would have access to it:
By rotating the card we will see the other end of the heatsink, with three heatpipe terminations and one of the fan cables:
On the back side of the card we will find a metallic plate, with some additional logos printed on it:
The two SLI fingers are also protected with plastic covers:
In the front we have one DisplayPort, one HDMI port and two DVIs:
To get more details on the cooling system and the top side of the PCB, we will have to disassemble the card; the first step we will take is to remove the four screws with springs which keep the plate fixed onto the GPU:
From the GPU plate we can see traveling 5 heatpipes to the top heatsink; also, on the each side of the plate we will find black rubber washers:
By removing the heatsink, we will be also able to take a look on the frontal side of the PCB, which is initially covered by another metallic black plate:
The card PCB is sandwiched between the two metallic plates, so it won’t bend due to excessive weight. The black plate also comes with the thermal pads which cover the memory modules and the VRM components:
The GPU is surrounded with 8 GDDR5 memory ICs with the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C and are rated at 1500MHz:
On the right side of the card we have the VRM circuitry:
Here is also a closer look at the GK104 graphics processor:
On the back side of the PCB there are no more memory ICs, but we could spot a Richtek RT8802A voltage controller, on a small separate PCB:
CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 OC
RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)
Video: Gainward 650Ti Boost GS
Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
Drivers used: Nvidia - ForceWare 320.49; AMD - Catalyst 13.4
With the help of the GPU-Z 0.7.1 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:
To extract even more information, we have used the AIDA64 utility:
For finding out the temperatures in both IDLE and Full Load with the fan set on Auto, we left the computer IDLE for about 25 minutes and then started monitoring with HWINFO64 and logged the values obtained while running Heaven 4.0 at 2560x1440 resolution for an additional 40 to 50 minutes, with details at Maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 27.5 degrees Celsius:
Before measuring out the noise the video card was producing, we have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and we found out it was 30.9dBA (with everything turned off).
At all times, the sound meter was placed 20cm near the video card.
As we have mentioned before, the GTX 760 is based on the “older” GK104 GPU architecture and has 2 out of the total 8 SMs disabled (compared to the GTX 680). Interestingly enough, the new card offers quite a lot of performance thanks to the 256-bit memory bus and higher clocks, trading punches with the stock Radeon HD 7970 non-GHz edition in many of the tested games.
The inno3D iChill implementation comes with a modified PCB and a quite large cooling system which occupies about 3 expansion slots. The cooling performance is really good and in our temperature measurement tests it did not exceed 54 degrees Celsius. All the hot air is evacuated back inside the case as we have seen with the Gigabyte 780 WF card and in order to avoid getting the fans to a high speed, we should make sure to have a well-ventilated computer case.
In order to see how much power we can squeeze off the card, we have installed EVGA Precision and started raising the clocks in small increments till we have experienced artifacts in 3DMark 2011 (Performance Mode) or driver resets. Afterwards we have set back the clock with about 5MHz and recorded the final result. Lastly, we have ran 3DMark 2013 once in order to make sure everything works fine.
At the time of launch, Nvidia has announced the GTX 760 cards as being available for about 200 Euros without taxes. The iChill GTX 760 can be found at CaseKing.de for about 265 Euros or Overclockers.co.uk for about £239.99.
We would like to thank again to InnoVISION for making this review possible!
The company latest news can be also checked at the Inno3D Facebook page.