ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 750 Ti OC Edition Review

Along with the ROG Crossblade Ranger, ASUS Philippines also sent us one of their fairly new graphics card with quite a mouthful-of-a-name for review. Folks, meet the ASUS STRIX GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB OC Edition (told you it’s a mouthful) or in short, Strix-GTX750Ti-OC-2GD5.

Design and Construction

The Strix GTX 750 Ti is a mid-size GPU which is bigger than your average entry-level graphics card but is significantly shorter than high-end video cards.

The card’s black PCB is overshadowed by its fairly large DirectCU II cooling system which comprises of two direct-contact copper heat pipes that are attached to its heat sink. Above it is a pair of 11-blade fans that are housed inside an owl-inspired black fan shroud with red accents.

Because of its fancy cooling setup, the card takes up two slots on your PC case. The main slot is occupied by the GPU’s I/O panel which consists of one (1) DisplayPort 1.2, one (1) HDMI and one (1) DVI-I port. The other slot is taken up by the card’s steel vents for better airflow.

In case you’re wondering, the Strix GTX 750 Ti doesn’t have a port for PCIE. Instead it draws power from your motherboard’s PCIe slot.

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Test Bench

AMD A10-7850K clocked at 4.2GHz
ASUS RoG Crossblade Ranger Motherboard
8GB (2x 4GB) G.Skill Ripjaws X 2133MHz dual-channel DDR3 RAM
256GB Micron C400 SED Solid-State Drive
Antec HCP-1200 80Plus Gold Certified 1200W PSU
ASUS RoG Swift PG278Q Gaming Monitor

Software used:

Windows 7 Home Premium SP1
GeForce WHQL Certified Driver (v340.52)
Fraps (frame rate measurement)

Performance (Games)

As you can see on the screenshots above, the Strix GT750 Ti 2GD5 was able to reach an average 30fps on almost all of the graphics-intensive titles that we’ve tried on it without sacrificing the details too much.

Of course, some users may want to tune down the settings a bit in exchange for higher FPS. In case you’re wondering how the GPU fared under lower settings, here are the results we got using the same configuration we tried on the A10-7580K integrated GPU.

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With the exception of NBA 2K14, we saw a significant jump on the frame rate under MEDIUM Settings on all of the games that we tried on the STRIX GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GD5. As such, we think that this dedicated GPU should be a strong candidate in the sub-Php7.5K category based on the results we got.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Along with measuring what kind of frame rate we can get out of the graphics card, we also ran a few synthetic benchmark tests on it. For the sake of having a comparison, we’ve pitted the results we got from this dedicated graphics card against the score of the A10-7850K’s iGPU.

Here are the results:

3DMark 11 (Performance and Extreme)
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3DMark FireStrike (FPS and Score)

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3DMark Vantage (Performance & Extreme)

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Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4 (Basic and Performance)
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Click to enlarge

Temperature and Fan Noise

One of the more highly-advertised feature of this graphics card is its DirectCU II cooling setup with a 0-decibel fan noise. At first, we were quite skeptical about the claim, but after spending a good amount of time with the GPU, we’re glad to report that it does work as advertised. In fact we rarely notice that there’s even a fan (or two) in there with how quiet it is even under medium load.

The only time that we noticed a hint of noise from the GPU’s two-fan setup is when the temperature reaches around the 60-65-degree Celsius mark. But even then, the noise level is barely audible which should be a plus for nitpicky gamers who want total silence on their rig.

Conclusion

With everything taken into consideration, we can definitely say that the ASUS Strix GTX 750 Ti 2GD5 OC is a decent option for users who are in the market for a good mid-range video card that can spit out 30fps even on high settings.

ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB OC specs:

Process: 28nm
Architecture: Maxwell
CUDA Cores: 640
Compute Performance: 3.29 TFLOPS
Engine Clock: up to 1202MHz (Boost)
VRAM: 2048MB DDR5
Memory Clock: 5.4Gbps
Memory Bus Width: 128-bit
Bandwidth: 86.4GB/s
TDP: 60W
Supported Technologies: NVIDIA GameStream, GPU Boost 2.0, 3D Vision, CUDA, DirectX 11.2, PhysX, TXAA, Adaptive VSync, FXAA, NVIDIA Surround, G-SYNC
Supports up to 4 displays @4096×2160 max resolution
1x Dual-Link DVI-I, 1x DisplayPort 1.2 and 1x HDMI
Power Connectors: None, gets power from PCIe
Dimension: 196 x 122 x 38.1 mm

Furthermore, this graphics card will appeal to sound-conscious gamers who are looking for a quiet GPU to match their silent PC setup. Do note though that the extra features that are present on this graphics card resulted in to a slight increase (around 15-25%) in the price compared to other GTX 750 Ti-based cards. But if money is not an issue, the ASUS Strix GTX 750 Ti OC should be worthy of consideration.

What we liked about it:

* Generous factory overclocking right off the bat
* Cool owl-inspired design
* QUIET cooling setup
* Respectable gaming performance at high settings

What we didn’t like about it:

* A bit pricey compared to other GTX 750 Ti cards

Update: ASUS Philippines said that the ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB OC will be sold locally for Php8,250USD 141INR 11,918EUR 134CNY 1,024.