Introduction

Released in late June, the GeForce GTX 760 is NVIDIA's most recent graphics card. The card is based on the same 28 nm GK104 silicon as the GeForce GTX 680, but features just six of the chip's eight streaming multiprocessors, which translates into a configuration with 1,152 CUDA cores and 96 texture memory units (TMUs). Unlike the GTX 660 Ti, NVIDIA left the memory and raster operations subsystems untouched, giving the chip a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface and 32 ROPs.

The chip features NVIDA's new GPU Boost 2.0 technology, which takes temperature, power, and load into account. Opportunities for the GPU to run boost frequencies at load are greater if the GPU is cool (under the 80°C mark) , and therein lies the incentive to opt for custom-design graphics cards with competent cooling solutions. The memory is clocked at 6 Gbps, which yields a decent 192 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a 33 percent increase over the GTX 660 Ti and GTX 660.



Today, we are reviewing the MSI GeForce GTX 760 HAWK. It is a more overclocking-oriented variant than the MSI GTX 760 Gaming we reviewed on GTX 760 launch day.

The card comes with the highest clocks we've seen on a GTX 760 so far, which affects pricing. At $290, the card is not exactly cheap in comparison to other GTX 760s, but it will be interesting to see whether the performance gains can make up for its steep price.