Today, NVIDIA releases their GeForce GTX 760 that uses the same GK104 graphics processor as on the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, GTX 680, and GTX 770. EVGA overclocked their GTX 760 SC ACX out of the box to provides a nice 6% performance improvement over the reference design. The new card not only delivers an impressive 25% performance improvement vs. the GTX 660 but is also priced $60 higher. In the product stack, the GTX 760 will replace the GTX 660 Ti against which the EVGA GTX 760 SC provides a 12% higher performance at $20 less. Compared to AMD's lineup, we see the card 14% faster than the Radeon HD 7950 and just 1% behind HD 7970 that is much more expensive.
EVGA is using their ACX cooler they introduced with the GTX 700 Series, but I'm a bit disappointed. Cooling performance is just ok with load temperatures in the 72°C range, but noise levels are simply too high. The NVIDIA reference-design cooler is already noisy, but EVGA's cooler adds even more noise on top of that. I'm not sure how the cooler made it through qualifying, but with 72°C and that much noise I don't have a lot of hope of better fan settings netting an improvent. Remember, the MSI GTX 770 GAMING we reviewed today runs at 69°C and emits less than half(!) the noise. Changing thermal paste didn't improve things; I also talked to other editors who report the same noisy experience. Our sample also suffered from a bit of audible coil noise.
While AMD's HD 7950 comes with 3 GB of VRAM, the GTX 760 "only" uses 2 GB, which is plenty considering both cards are just too slow to play any game at resolutions that require more than 2 GB of VRAM. Overclocking works well, providing an easily accessible performance boost of around 18% that makes the card faster than the GTX 680 and HD 7970 GHz Edition. Pretty nice for a $260 card.
Gaming power consumption ends up higher than the GTX 670, which makes the GTX 760 the least energy-efficient GK104 design, but the difference is so small that it really doesn't matter outside of the lab. Any power supply that powered a GTX 660 should be able to handle the additional power requirements of the GTX 760 just fine.
EVGA tells us that their card will retail at $260, which is reasonable if you consider the large overclock out of the box. The cooler and its fan noise is another thing; if you want a quiet card, you better look elsewhere (MSI GTX 760 GAMING). When looking at cards for serious gaming, the GTX 760 is the card offering the most bang for the buck. The cheapest AMD HD 7950 retails at $10 more but is 14% slower, so even if you sell the three games and end up with a price below the EVGA GTX 760 SC, the performance difference will be quite significant.