Today, NVIDIA releases their GeForce GTX 760. It uses the same GK104 graphics processor we've seen on cards like the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, GTX 680, and GTX 770. Palit has overclocked both GPU and memory on their GTX 760 JetStream out of the box, which provides a nice 6% performance improvement over the reference design. The new card delivers not only an impressive 25% performance improvement over the GTX 660, but is also priced $55 higher. In the product stack, the GTX 760 will replace the GTX 660 Ti against which the Palit card provides 12% higher performance at $25 less. Compared to AMD's lineup, we see the card 14% faster than the Radeon HD 7950, and it almost matches the HD 7970 that comes at much higher pricing, though.
Palit's new cooler uses a red shroud people will either love or hate. It's also a triple-slot cooler, which should produce better thermal performance and lower noise levels, but neither seem to be present here. I'm a bit disappointed. Noise levels are slightly better than the NVIDIA reference design cooler, but still too noisy. Other cards, like the MSI GTX 760 Gaming, do much better here. Temperatures are ok, but I would have expected better from a triple-slot cooler. Idle noise levels are great though, so this card will be a blessing for people who work a lot and game rarely.
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 and provides an easily accessible performance boost that puts the card right between the HD 7970 and GTX 680. Pretty nice for a $265 card.
Gaming power consumption is roughly similar to the reference design, which is impressive because Palit's card comes with much higher clock speeds on both GPU and memory. This puts the card quite high up on our Performance per Watt scale. It seems Palit's PCB design is more power efficient than others.
Palit expects their card to retail at $264, a small price increase for a more powerful cooler and a large overclock out of the box. You should consider other GTX 760 cards, though, if you want a quiet gaming card. 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 roughly the same price and is much slower, but comes with three games. So if you absolutely must keep cost down, the HD 7950 would be a cheaper but slower option after selling off the game coupons.