PNY GTX 750 Ti XLR8 OC Video Card Review @ [H]

PNY GTX 750 Ti XLR8 OC Video Card Review - Today we take another look at the best value for 1080p gaming in the less than $200 category. We have the PNY GTX 750 Ti XLR8 OC video card, with an extremely high overclock. We'll compare it to the ASUS R7 265 DC2 and ASUS GTX 750 Ti DC2 at highest overclocked values, to see which provides the most bang for your buck

aww it's adorable

Give it a more colorful appearance, and it could be their new "My first GeForce" line.

Shame that this card does not support SLI. You would have the best bang for your buck SLI setup for someone running 1080p.

I'd grab a pair of them if they did support SLI for my secondary machine. Even on its own it's not too bad for this as is. I'm pretty impressed by what this level of card can do these days.

Waiting to see the GTX 880 review to decide if I will upgrade my Gigabyte 7950, or wait until next year for the new AMD and Nvidia cards.

The Cobra said:

Shame that this card does not support SLI. You would have the best bang for your buck SLI setup for someone running 1080p.

Click to expand...

Still not sure I understand the want for SLI on the 750 Ti...

Why not get a GTX 760 or GTX 770 instead? The 760 is cheaper than two 750 Ti's, and a 770 is only about $20 more than two 750 Ti's... and neither solution has to put up with any SLI-related weirdness.

Damn, that little thing reminds me of my old ATI 9700 Pro, beside the larger HS/F. LOL, just remembered that I even had a double sided heat pipe and another after market systems on that thing in the later years.

Unknown-One said:

Still not sure I understand the want for SLI on the 750 Ti...

Why not get a GTX 760 or GTX 770 instead? The 760 is cheaper than two 750 Ti's, and a 770 is only about $20 more than two 750 Ti's... and neither solution has to put up with any SLI-related weirdness.

Click to expand...

Purely for fun and experimentation. I've actually had quite a few SLI setups over the years, and never experienced any real issues in anything that I've played. I had a GTX-295 for a while that was an excellent card as well.

I wouldn't generally go straight for a pair of lower cards over a single higher-end card, but if say, I had a secondary or tertiary (as is often the case) system with a card like this already in it, it would be cool to be able to pop another in later. Or as is often the case, I will just try a new type of setup just for fun.

Otherwise, yeah, you're generally correct in that one better card would be better.

Honestly, and this is my own 2cents. I personally wouldn't review a card that doesn't support SLI / X-Fire against cards that do. I understand you hands are tied and that you need contrast in your review ... but .....

While the cards might be close in price or perceived as equals, they really aren't. I have a box that runs 2 x R9 270x's and they have GTX 780 performance when x-fired and for the amazing low cost of 1/3 tp 1/2+ the cost of a GTX 780 which is exactly ... exactly what they are trying to avoid by removing the SLI bridge port from these 750 TI cards. *** 1/3 being craigslist pricing

A huge part of any review is value and these cards simply do not carry that same value when they've been artificially gimped.

I remember last year when the same thing happened when reviewers were sent cards with the SLI port and then learned the retail productions cards would not have that port and there was a huge outcry, if i remembered that story correctly.

SixFootDuo said:

Honestly, and this is my own 2cents. I personally wouldn't review a card that doesn't support SLI / X-Fire against cards that do. I understand you hands are tied and that you need contrast in your review ... but .....

While the cards might be close in price or perceived as equals, they really aren't. I have a box that runs 2 x R9 270x's and they have GTX 780 performance when x-fired and for the amazing low cost of 1/3 tp 1/2+ the cost of a GTX 780 which is exactly ... exactly what they are trying to avoid by removing the SLI bridge port from these 750 TI cards. *** 1/3 being craigslist pricing

A huge part of any review is value and these cards simply do not carry that same value when they've been artificially gimped.

I remember last year when the same thing happened when reviewers were sent cards with the SLI port and then learned the retail productions cards would not have that port and there was a huge outcry, if i remembered that story correctly.

Click to expand...

As long as people know what they're getting, or that one card has this option over the other, I don't think it's an issue. If the fact was hidden then maybe...

(Still not sure I understand the want for SLI on the 750 Ti...)


Used 7950's sell for around $119 on ebay and a much better way to spend your money.. if one could Sli or CX then that's 290x /780Ti performance for $240 buxs,.

Actually, I've been pointing people at the 750 Ti's (the ones lacking the need for an additional power connector) for a while now. Mostly people with older systems looking for a small upgrade that doesn't involve major surgery into the system.

Pretty much all the feedback I've gotten has been surprised satisfaction.

No, they aren't going to be rocking CryEngine at 4-digit framerates or running at 4K resolutions.

But the cards HAVE been replacing a lot of GeForce 8800's or upgrading lots of basic on-chip video. And it's doing it in relatively low power consumption scenarios.

Most of these people don't want to risk a used (see "Certified pre-fucked") card, or don't want to deal with EBay (Why are you bugging us about getting ripped off? We got our money...). They also aren't going to be running SLI/Crossfire by the very nature of the machines they're installing these into.

Your article should lead with the conclusion.

Also, I believe you are missing the exclamation mark after 'slight gains'.

Why are you pandering to Nvidia? Just do a red vs green, oc vs oc review. Don't bury the point that the oc'd AMD card blows the oc'd Nvidia card out of the water.

Im curious, for the guys that play CS:GO competitively now, anyone on this videocard?

What FPS are you averaging @ 1920x1080?

This thing is SCREAMING for HTPC use.

Chas said:

Actually, I've been pointing people at the 750 Ti's (the ones lacking the need for an additional power connector) for a while now. Mostly people with older systems looking for a small upgrade that doesn't involve major surgery into the system.

Pretty much all the feedback I've gotten has been surprised satisfaction.

No, they aren't going to be rocking CryEngine at 4-digit framerates or running at 4K resolutions.

But the cards HAVE been replacing a lot of GeForce 8800's or upgrading lots of basic on-chip video. And it's doing it in relatively low power consumption scenarios.

Most of these people don't want to risk a used (see "Certified pre-fucked") card, or don't want to deal with EBay (Why are you bugging us about getting ripped off? We got our money...). They also aren't going to be running SLI/Crossfire by the very nature of the machines they're installing these into.

Click to expand...

Agree with all of this. Also gaming HTPC scenarios fit this card well. I have a 660Ti in mine, but not everyone builds an HTPC as large as the one I have.

I would NEVER buy a used video card. Well, maybe off of here from a trusted person, but NEVER from ebay. I don't even like buying refurbs as I've had some seriously bad luck with them (even from reputable sources). I'd rather buy a new slightly lower end card than a used high end card any day. At least it will have a warranty, I won't get ripped off, and someone wasn't pushing the OCs so high it fried something. Or mined 10,000 hours on it.

DizConnected said:

Waiting to see the GTX 880 review to decide if I will upgrade my Gigabyte 7950, or wait until next year for the new AMD and Nvidia cards.

Click to expand...

Honestly, your best bet would be to just add another card for Crossfire. I'm running two Gigabyte HD 7970s in Crossfire that I bought when they had that big sale about a year ago with the huge "Never Settle" bundles. The R9 280 is exactly the same card and would be far less expensive than anything nVidia puts out. This article shows that, once again, nVidia has crappy bang-for-the-buck compared to ATi. This is evidenced by the fact that the identically-priced R7-265 blows the GTX 750 Ti out of the water when both are overclocked instead of just the GTX 750 Ti. As for the "problems" surrounding CrossfireX, my two HD 7970s run perfectly.

Alouette Radeon said:

Honestly, your best bet would be to just add another card for Crossfire. I'm running two Gigabyte HD 7970s in Crossfire that I bought when they had that big sale about a year ago with the huge "Never Settle" bundles. The R9 280 is exactly the same card and would be far less expensive than anything nVidia puts out. This article shows that, once again, nVidia has crappy bang-for-the-buck compared to ATi. This is evidenced by the fact that the identically-priced R7-265 blows the GTX 750 Ti out of the water when both are overclocked instead of just the GTX 750 Ti. As for the "problems" surrounding CrossfireX, my two HD 7970s run perfectly.

Click to expand...

The benefit of many 750ti being that they don't require more power than the PCIe slot gives them. Perfect for quiet sff htpc with small power supplies.

I personally wouldn't buy a 265 or a 750ti, as quite a few R9 270 can be had for the same price pretty often. Hell, I got a 270x for $20 more than the reviewed cards, but I'm not using that in an htpc.

A 750ti will be my default option in some htpc builds I'll be doing for friends, though. I'll snag them when they hit $110, which is happening more often lately.

A silver award seems pretty fair.

I bought the EVGA model with the stock cooler/PCB for my HTPC (same size, same slot-only power, better warranty terms), and it was the easiest install I ever did. Got a similar overclock to the unit in this review, and it plays everything amazingly well. It's also dead-silent even at full-load, which makes me wonder why companies like Asus bother putting that massive cooler on their 750 Ti card.

I have a Node 304 case for my HTPC with a spare non-modular PSU inside, so space is at a premium. I was attracted to this card because I either needed to buy a 140mm modular quiet PSU (NOT easy to get) so I could fit a GTX 460 I have hanging around, or I could just spend a little more and get an easy upgrade.

I took the easy way out

LeninGHOLA said:

The benefit of many 750ti being that they don't require more power than the PCIe slot gives them. Perfect for quiet sff htpc with small power supplies.

I personally wouldn't buy a 265 or a 750ti, as quite a few R9 270 can be had for the same price pretty often. Hell, I got a 270x for $20 more than the reviewed cards, but I'm not using that in an htpc.

A 750ti will be my default option in some htpc builds I'll be doing for friends, though. I'll snag them when they hit $110, which is happening more often lately.

A silver award seems pretty fair.

Click to expand...

I wasn't denying that the GTX 750Ti deserves a silver award because it certainly does simply due to the level of engineering that nVidia put into it. I will say that it is most certainly overkill for HTPCs when a $20 Radeon HD 5450 does the job perfectly already because HTPCs don't do 3D rendering. I have 2 HTPCs in my house, one has an HD 6450 and one has an HD 5450. The HD 5450 was $20 last month and they both perform 1080p without error. Hell, even the old GeForce 8400 GS PCI that I use for diagnostics does 1080p without error. I can't see the point of paying over $50 for an HTPC GPU. The problem remaining for this card is that it's stuck in "no man's land" being too expensive for Office/HTPCs and too weak for real gaming PCs. The GTX 750 Ti, worthy though it is, is more of a demonstration of what is to come for nVidia. I don't think they expect it to sell well, I think that nVidia released it to show what Maxwell is capable of and encourage people to wait rather than perhaps buying the (right now) better priced Radeons.

Alouette Radeon said:

I wasn't denying that the GTX 750Ti deserves a silver award because it certainly does simply due to the level of engineering that nVidia put into it. I will say that it is most certainly overkill for HTPCs when a $20 Radeon HD 5450 does the job perfectly already because HTPCs don't do 3D rendering. I have 2 HTPCs in my house, one has an HD 6450 and one has an HD 5450. The HD 5450 was $20 last month and they both perform 1080p without error. Hell, even the old GeForce 8400 GS PCI that I use for diagnostics does 1080p without error. I can't see the point of paying over $50 for an HTPC GPU. The problem remaining for this card is that it's stuck in "no man's land" being too expensive for Office/HTPCs and too weak for real gaming PCs. The GTX 750 Ti, worthy though it is, is more of a demonstration of what is to come for nVidia. I don't think they expect it to sell well, I think that nVidia released it to show what Maxwell is capable of and encourage people to wait rather than perhaps buying the (right now) better priced Radeons.

Click to expand...

Because many people use their HTPC as a gaming rig. In fact, I'd say the majority do. That means your sub $50 card is pretty much useless and/or underpowered. That's what this review showed:


For newer games with demanding graphcis, at 1080p, the R7 265 and 750ti are going to be the place to START. A minimum for competent gaming with high settings.
Of course, if all you play is Rogue Legacy and Hotline Miami, you're going to need less. But for real games, this is the level and price point to begin your search right now.

I bought the 750 Ti to put into my HTPC BECAUSE I WANTED TO GAME.

The HD 4000 I started off with was fine for older games at 720p, but after 1.5 years I was hitting the minimum playable performance wall even for indy games.

Alouette Radeon said:

I wasn't denying that the GTX 750Ti deserves a silver award because it certainly does simply due to the level of engineering that nVidia put into it. I will say that it is most certainly overkill for HTPCs when a $20 Radeon HD 5450 does the job perfectly already because HTPCs don't do 3D rendering. I have 2 HTPCs in my house, one has an HD 6450 and one has an HD 5450. The HD 5450 was $20 last month and they both perform 1080p without error. Hell, even the old GeForce 8400 GS PCI that I use for diagnostics does 1080p without error. I can't see the point of paying over $50 for an HTPC GPU. The problem remaining for this card is that it's stuck in "no man's land" being too expensive for Office/HTPCs and too weak for real gaming PCs. The GTX 750 Ti, worthy though it is, is more of a demonstration of what is to come for nVidia. I don't think they expect it to sell well, I think that nVidia released it to show what Maxwell is capable of and encourage people to wait rather than perhaps buying the (right now) better priced Radeons.

Click to expand...

Except that the GTX750Ti is far more capable than even the HD5450 - and for about the same energy budget.

Look - I'm not knocking the HD5450; I owned one, and it was quite capable as an HTPC/light and casual gaming and even a "hackintosh" GPU. However, once you started looking beyond that - even a little bit - things started getting seriously pricey - especially before GTX750, let alone GTX750Ti, came along. (Remember, I bought the GTX550Ti before GTX750Ti came along, and it was basically the best bet in a bad economy.)

The advantage that GTX750Ti has is that it will go in most of the same PCs that have, or would normally have, an HD5450, without requiring so much as one other upgrade. (Most of the other GPUs in its price range, including pre-owned models of GTX6xx, require more power, and thus often require additional upgrades - heck, the GTX750Ti uses less power than the GTX550Ti.)

Not everyone wants - or even has use for - a "behemoth" PC. GTX750Ti - in quantities of one GPU - can keep up with all except the most GPU-intensive games at 1080p - and without requiring anything more than what power the PCI Express slot it occupies can feed it; exactly how many GPUs can make that statement, regardless of either age OR price?

Lastly, there is the Pentium Anniversary Edition (Pentium G3258). If you are going to build a new (or upgrade) build around it, your choices are likely to be bound by price-for-performance. For the same reason that Z8x/9x makes the best chipsets to tag-team with the AE, GTX750Ti is the bang-for-buck GPU choice - manly because it's not a power pig. You aren't limited to HTPC duty or even casual games - the wider world of mainstream games of the past few years beckons. And because you haven't blown up your budget on a more expensive PSU, you can use some of that saved coin on those games you couldn't play before. (Battlefield - either 3 OR 4. Crysis 2 and/or 3. Any CoD game. Etc. Etc.) Even better; when you finally CAN put in that i5-K or other CPU for that socket you had your eye on, you aren't trapped behind the GPU eight-ball - despite the small 128-bit memory bus, even GTX750Ti won't hobble a Haswell i5-K (even an overclocked one) in the least for 1080p.

Beyond 1080p isn't the reason for GTX750Ti - not even close.

"PNY offers a one year warranty with optional "lifetime" for the original purchaser upon completion of a registration form on PNY's website. This is definitely something you'll want to do. "Lifetime" warranty with PNY is however limited to the time the video card is actually sold in retail."

PNY switched over about five years ago to a "lifetime of the owner" warranty for its XLR8 graphics cards (similar to what EVGA used to do).

Alouette Radeon said:

I wasn't denying that the GTX 750Ti deserves a silver award because it certainly does simply due to the level of engineering that nVidia put into it. I will say that it is most certainly overkill for HTPCs when a $20 Radeon HD 5450 does the job perfectly already because HTPCs don't do 3D rendering. I have 2 HTPCs in my house, one has an HD 6450 and one has an HD 5450. The HD 5450 was $20 last month and they both perform 1080p without error. Hell, even the old GeForce 8400 GS PCI that I use for diagnostics does 1080p without error. I can't see the point of paying over $50 for an HTPC GPU. The problem remaining for this card is that it's stuck in "no man's land" being too expensive for Office/HTPCs and too weak for real gaming PCs. The GTX 750 Ti, worthy though it is, is more of a demonstration of what is to come for nVidia. I don't think they expect it to sell well, I think that nVidia released it to show what Maxwell is capable of and encourage people to wait rather than perhaps buying the (right now) better priced Radeons.

Click to expand...

There's a reason that silicon vendors such as intel, NV and to a lesser extent AMD are focusing on performance per watt. Believe it or not, performance peer watt benefits both the high end and low end, which is important because mobile is a huge market. Did you ever notice how many design wins NV had with the Kepler architecture? Ranging from nearly every ultrabook with a mobile dGPU to macbook pros? Maxwell was designed to be efficient enough to be downsized for mobile / ultrabook products - and while the first product is a desktop GPU, Maxwell will absolutely be selling a ton of chips as a mobile discrete GPU. That's pretty much why NV dominated mobile dGPU sales for the past 2 years (roughly 8 to 2 over AMD), it was because of Keplers massive efficiency advantage over AMD for the past several years. I'm sure AMD has taken notice and they're also more focused on performance per watt going down the road.

That same architecture is used for both mobile and desktop. While you personally may not find the 750ti interesting , a lot of OEMs selling small form factor systems can use the GM107 while they cannot use an AMD R7. Which, by the way, the R7-265 has a TDP twice as large. It does make a difference for OEMs, but probably not DIYers. Sure, for an HTPC you can get other cards and probably be fine. Although the 5450 in your example is not going to play games nearly as well at 1080p, that's a fact. Anyway.... Aside from that, Maxwell is going to sell a ton of chips for mobile due to the efficiency, just as Kepler did.

Also, the other interesting thing about Maxwell is that once it's beefed up with more cores and power, that same efficiency will be able to push it to higher performance levels at an even lower TDP level. That's where the GM204 and GM200 will come in - that efficiency leads to increased performance on the high end as well once the chip is beefed up by adding more cores. You can get 780ti performance levels at a far lower TDP level. Or you can push past the 780ti performance with a 225-250W TDP. I don't know where these chips will actually land (performance wise, but it should be pretty interesting.

I've got a Zotac 750ti in my pc, love it.
Low power requirement (don't need a big PSU for it and didn't have to upgrade mine), very little heat (don't have to add extra fans), audio over HDMI (1 cable to the tv instead of 2), excellent 1080p performance in damn near any game I play, can Steam stream to my Ubuntu laptop or Gamestream to Shield devices (waiting for the next gen handheld before I purchase one) and PhysX runs on high in all of my games (didn't think it would make a difference until I played Borderlands 2 with it on, its a nice bonus).
I would think this would be a GREAT card for a HTPC people would want to game on, or even a good potential candidate for a low cost Steam Machine in the near future.

Just ordered one today from TD. With two discount codes plus a $10 MIR it'll cost $115 in the end. Pretty good price for the performance. I'm looking to lower my electric bill and between getting rid of my OC'd FX-6300 and GTX 670 and getting an i5-4690 plus the GTX 750 Ti I should shave quite a few watts off my gaming sessions.

Good little card so far. With my modest gaming habits (WoW, LotRO, Skyrim and other Bethesda RPGs, Borderlands 2, Kingdoms of Amalur, Torchlight II, etc...) I can either max the in game settings or come very close to it. My core will not overclock at all. Even 20 Mhz will cause problems. The memory on the other hand is quite good. Got it up to 6700 Mhz (effective) from 6008 Mhz. That did help quite a lot (and is way more than what this review got from the memory). Still runs very cool and quiet with the fan on auto - never goes above 40%. All in all a decent card for 1080p gaming right now - I just don't know about its longevity. I'm afraid new games coming I might be interested in would require too many compromises in quality settings.