March 17, 2014

Palit custom-cooled GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual

The Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual is one such offering, which sports the GM107 chip in 28nm size. For Maxwell, NVIDIA went with five Stream Multiprocessors (SM), which carries 128 CUDA cores each. This results in the GTX 750 Ti having 640 CUDA cores in total. The GTX 750, on the other hand, has 4 SM with 512 CUDA cores.




Aside from that, NVIDIA is also aiming to have these cards to operate at lower power consumption to fulfill the needs of Home Theater PC (HTPC) and Small Form Factor (SFF) PC builders. This also means that with lower heat consumption, it also results in less heat output.

With the front of the packaging highlighting GeForce features like TXAA, PhysX, and GPU Boost 2.0, the back of the box is more concerned with games that take advantage of said technology, including Dying Light, World of Tanks and Batman: Arkham Origins. The card also supports NVIDIA GameStream technology, which enables gamers to play their favorite PC titles on the NVIDIA SHIELD.


Due to the power-efficient Maxwell architecture, the card does not require a 6-pin PCIe connector. This is especially good news, as a typical mid-range budget card tends to require substantial amount of power.

The StormX Dual cooler on this Palit card incorporates two 11-blade 80mm fans dubbed 'TurboBlade' to disperse heat efficiently. Also a nice touch is the card’s signature gold-colored 'X' that's placed right between the custom fan coolers. The cooler are locked by four screws at the outer corner of the fans. The card definitely exudes an air of cool confidence with its black and gold color scheme.


The Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual takes up two back panel slots. As for the output connectors, there are several to choose from, such as a mini-HDMI port, a DVI-I connector, and a D-Sub port. Maximum digital resolution supported is 4,096 x 2,160, where as for VGA is 2,048 x 1,536.

The Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual definitely packs a punch. On paper, the card’s core clock has been boosted to 1,281MHz from 1,202MHz. As for the memory clock, it was default at 5,400MHz and received a tremendous boost to 6008MHz. Very impressive indeed.


3DMark 11 and 3DMark 2013 Results
First, we put the card through 3DMark 11's Extreme preset to test its performance, as it runs at 1920 x 1080 resolution with settings designed to stress high-end gaming PCs. 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of DirectX 11 features, such as tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.


Next, we tested the card using 3DMark (2013), the latest benchmark from Futuremark that consists of the Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme tests. Both are quite GPU-intensive and filled with tessellation, smoke sequence and simulation using computer shaders to properly gauge the gaming performance of the card. The Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual scored 4,310 in the Fire Strike test.



On Fire Strike Extreme, the StormX Dual scored a commendable 2,151, which is quite a feat as it places the card close to the GTX 660.


Unigine 4.0 "Heaven" Results
The Unigine 4.0 "Heaven" benchmark tests GPUs with extreme tessellation, dynamic sky with volumetric clouds, real-time global illumination, and screen-space ambient occlusion among others. As stated on the results screen, the minimum was a sluggish 7.0 FPS, followed by a maximum of 47.6 FPS. At the highest setting with 8x AA enabled, the fan noise becomes immediately noticeable. Despite not hitting the 30FPS level, the card managed to pull through the Ultra and Extreme settings.


Battlefield 3 and The Witcher 2 Results
Running at 1920 x 1080 resolution, Battlefield 3 ran at an average of 49FPS, which was no surprise as the StormX Dual seems to handle most graphically-demanding games remarkably well. For instance, the card did not even drop beyond the 40FPS mark in Battlefield 3 on Ultra settings. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings on High settings, on the other hand, yield an average 50.5FPS, which is pretty commendable. However, running Witcher 2 on Ultra settings is a no-go, as the game's Ubersampling uses an extreme form of anti-aliasing, which will bring most mid-range cards to their knees.



Overall, the Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual scored absolutely well for a mid-range graphics card, delivering an excellent factory-overclocked performance for the GTX 750 Ti series. With the pre-clocked core of 1,202Mhz (15 percent increase from reference model), this card is one that you should seriously consider if you're planning to build a mid-end DIY PC or even a SFF gaming rig. It also does not require a 6-pin PCIe power connector, while its minimal power requirement (400W) is equally impressive. Not to mention, the aftermarket StormX Dual cooler is very efficient and the bundled ThunderMaster software is also user friendly. All this for a tidy sum of RM599, this is one mid-range GeForce graphics card that should not be missed.

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