Inno3D GeForce GTX 760 iChill Review

Today we sample our first custom cooled NVIDIA GTX760 in the form of Inno3D’s iChill HerculeZ x3. A three fan, triple slot cooling design that’s set to keep these summer temperatures under control.

Product on Review: Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 760
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Inno3D
Price: £240-260 (at time of review)

As the company name suggest, Inno3D make some truly innovating graphics card designs. The latest of which is the iChill HerculeZ, a triple slot cooling design which in this instance also happens to arrive with three fans to keep the oversized heatsink cool. Cooling as never been so important because despite the current balmy weather we are seeing here in Britain, NVIDIA’s method of ‘auto’ overclocking, aptly called GPU Boost 2.0, has a direct correlation between GPU core temperatures and core clockspeed. Therefore, the cooler the card is kept; the higher the potential Boost speed will potentially be gained.

The NVIDIA GTX760 is currently the mid-range graphics card of choice, just having the edge over AMD’s HD7950 while being a little cheaper to buy. The Inno3D card is priced around the £250 mark (at time of review) although finding one will prove difficult. Overclockers UK have them on pre-order although the price is marked up at £259.99. This makes the Inno3D GTX760 iChill HerculeZ by far the most expensive NVIDIA GTX760 on the market at present with prices for reference designs starting as low as £199.99 with custom cooled versions not a lot more. As we will see though, that extra cash injection needed to buy this card will get you much more than a reference design. Is the Inno3D card worth the extra outlay though? We will try to answer this and many more questions throughout the review…

About Inno3D

InnoVISION Multimedia Limited is a pioneering developer and manufacturer of a diverse range of cutting-edge multimedia PC hardware products established in 1998 Hong Kong. Our manufacturing operations have been set up since 1990 in Shenzhen, China. In this short period of time we focus on manufacturing OEM/ODM products as well as contracting out extensive production and research facilities to specialist companies. We have accomplished international recognition by PC’s top reviewers as becoming an outstanding success and one of the most fast growing companies in Asia.

Specification

As you can see from the specifications above, the Inno3D card receives a healthy factory overclock of 1059MHz, 79MHz over stock which results on a 1124MHz Boost clockspeed. The memory also receives a free 200MHz overclock although we suspect this is very conservative as from prior experience, the memory on these graphics cards will overclock much higher than this.

NVIDIA GTX760

Based on the same GK104 found on the GTX680, the GTX760 contains 1152 CUDA cores at a clockspeed of 980Mhz. This clockspeed coupled with GPU Boost 2.0 will allow the card to typically boost overclock to 1033MHz. The GTX760 also comes equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 and features four 64-bit memory controllers (256-bit). This memory is clocked to 6008Mhz (effective) however if previous results are anything to go by, this tasty memory will overclock much further than reference speeds so expect to see some good improvements in our overclocking section.

Above is an 8 Core Kepler. NVIDIA tell us that 2 of the cores would be disabled either by disabling 1 graphics processing cluster all together or just one core from two of the clusters.

Kepler Core
The GTX760 is equipped with a GK104 core is fabricated on the 28nm process with every component was designed with power efficiency in mind to ensure the GPU gave the best performance-per-watt possible.

While the 28nm manufacturing process holds the bulk of the power saving features, the way the new architecture works is also key to furthering Kepler’s power reduction. SMX, an evolution of the SM from Fermi is NVIDIA’s new streaming multiprocessor:

Each SMX runs at the graphics clock speed rather than 2x that speed as previously but because the GK104 has 1536 CUDA cores (8xSMX), over Fermi’s (GF110) 512 CUDA cores (16xSM), Kepler allows the GTX760 to operate at twice the performance per watt measurement compared to the GTX560.

To feed each SMX, each unit has four warp schedulers, each capable of firing off two instructions per warp, every clock. With a redesigned scheduling function, the GTX760 is a lot less complex and much more streamlined allowing the compiler to determine which instructions will be issued and can provide this information direct to the hardware block rather than going around the houses using Multi-port decode and a register scoreboard along with the dependency check before the information gets issued. This method is both quicker and more importantly, more power efficient.

Perhaps the biggest change from Fermi to Kepler was the omission of the old Shader Clock. The shader clock was getting tired as it was part of the old Tesla architecture which was implemented as an area optimisation. Because of the way Kepler executes instructions at a much more streamlined manner and at a higher clock rate, fewer copies of the execution unit need be made.

Another improvement over Fermi with the introduction of SMX is the redesigned Polymorph engine (2.0). The Polymorph engine takes card of the tessellation workload of the GTX770. The design of the Polymorph engine is to ensure that the tessellation we see on screen has little (as possible) impact on the rendering performance. What you may find bizarre though is that NVIDIA have cut the Polymorph engine count in half to 8 from Fermi’s 16 yet claim it is almost twice as quick. This is thanks to the improved core an memory clockpeed.

With both a higher core clockspeed based on older (but still very fast) GK104 core and of course that blisteringly fast memory, the GTX760 looks set to replace not only the GTX660Ti, but also offer a viable, yet cheaper alternative to the HD7950 GPU.

Features

Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Support 11.1 API (feature level 11_0)
Microsoft DirectX 11.1 API (feature level 11_0) DirectX 11 GPU with Shader Model 5.0 support designed for ultra high performance in the new API’s key graphics feature, GPU-accelerated tessellation.

SMX
Next generation streaming multiprocessor built from the ground up for incredible performance and power efficiency.

NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0Technology
Dynamically maximizes clock speeds based on workload and allows enthusiast class controls such as temperature target and fan controls, extra over-voltage headroom and optimizations for water-cooling solutions. This allows greater customization and overclocking options and enables gamers to push performance to new levels.

Microsoft® DirectX® 11
DirectX 11 GPU with Shader Model 5.0 support designed for ultra high performance in the API’s key graphics feature, GPU-accelerated tessellation.

NVIDIA® 3D Vision® Ready1
Support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, bringing a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D experience to the PC. A combination of high-tech wireless glasses and advanced software, 3D Vision transforms hundreds of PC games into full stereoscopic 3D. In addition, you can stream 3D movies and 3D digital photographs from 3DVisionLive.com in eye popping, crystal-clear quality.

NVIDIA® 3D Vision® Surround Ready2
With a single GeForce GTX 680 you can expand your PC games across three displays in full stereoscopic 3D for the ultimate “inside the game” experience.* NVIDIA� Surround� also supports triple screen gaming with non-3D Vision monitors. Add in a fourth accessory display to get access to your email, web, or other applications while you game.

NVIDIA FXAA Technology
Shader-based anti-aliasing technology available from the NVIDIA Control Panel that enables ultra-fast anti-aliasing in hundreds of PC games.

NVIDIA TXAA Technology
Support for new temporal anti-aliasing technique that delivers the ultimate combination of image quality and performance.

NVIDIA 3-way SLI® Technology3
Industry leading NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling in games across up to three GPUs.

NVIDIA PhysX® Technology
Full support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.

NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync
Dynamically enables vertical sync based on your current frame rates for the smoothest gaming experience.

NVIDIA CUDA® Technology
Unlocks the power of the GPU’s processor cores to accelerate the most demanding tasks such as video transcoding, physics simulation, ray tracing, and more, delivering incredible performance improvements over traditional CPUs.

NVIDIA® PureVideo® HD Technology
The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.

PCI Express 3.0 *
Designed for the new PCI Express 3.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing PCI Express motherboards for the broadest support.

Dual-link DVI
Able to drive flat-panel displays up to 2560×1600 resolution over a DVI connector.

DisplayPort
Drive the latest DisplayPort panels with support for resolutions up to 2560×1600.

HDMI4
Support for HDMI including GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D support, x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound.

GPU Boost 2.0

GPU Boost caused a bit of a stir when it was first introduced because it did away with the traditional ‘absolute’ method of dictating MHz. Rather it worked by overclocking the card by different means. To achieve an overclock using GPU Boost, one increased the MHz and Voltage as per usual however the card would then ‘Boost’ when placed under load. So rather than having a fixed clockpseed, the GPU adjusts the clockspeed depending on load, ensuring the power is there when you need it rather than it being full on all of the time, thus saving power consumption and heat production by having the card overclock dynamically.

GPU Boost 2.0 is an evolution of this idea. The techs at NVIDIA have determined that GPU power was unnecessarily limiting performance when GPU temperatures was low. Instead of boosting GPU performance based on a power target, it is now based upon temperature with this temperature threshold being 80 degrees Celsius.

Because the boosting is now determined by temperature, noise levels are also reduced as NVIDIA claim the GTX cards deliver a better acoustic profile.

So to summarise, overclocking the card using GPU boost 2.0 means adjusting the temperature threshold, for example from 80c to 85c. The GPU clockspeed will then gradually increase until it reaches this new temperature and will be dynamically adjusted on-the-fly to stay within this threshold. Because of this it is much more difficult to claim one GPU is faster than another without having both working under precisely the same operating conditions.

It therefore should go without saying (but we will say it anyway) that the colder your card runs, the faster it should theoretically operate as a colder card allows overvolting and thus even higher clockspeeds.

GPU Boost 2.0 also features overvoltage control. NVIDIA make no bones that enabling this function will damage the long term operability of the graphics card and as with AMD’s overdrive, you have to acknowledge this fact before you can unlock the cards voltage control. We applaud NVIDIA for this because they have acknowledged that enthusiasts, like us here at Vortez, like to push hardware to the max and without voltage control, the whole process becomes so much more uninteresting and much more difficult.

So, because GTX760’s boost clock and voltage level are now tied to the GPU’s temperature, the voltage can be dialled higher which in turn will allow the GPU to attain higher clockspeed values. Obviously, increasingly board voltage, as with most other products, will gradually degrade the GPU through electron migration causing a premature death of the GPU. Voltage support will be offered on a board partner by partner basis however, we would be extremely surprised if it wasn’t enabled in every GTX760’s VBIOS.

We will see how GPU Boost 2.0 performs in our overclocking section later in the review.

GeForce Experience

GeForce Experience is a new application from NVIDIA that optimizes your PC in two key ways. First, it maximizes your game performance and game compatibility by automatically downloading the latest GeForce Game Ready drivers. Second, GeForce Experience intelligently optimizes graphics settings for all your favorite games based on your hardware configuration.

Some enthusiasts will view (excuse the pun) altering settings to get the very best from a game one of the ‘fun’ elements of owning a powerful graphics card. Others just want to play their game of choice without the endless testing and benchmarking to determine what settings work best. Many don’t have the inclination or indeed the time to learn what effect each setting has upon the games visual elements.It soon becomes a bind when upon a new driver release those settings which were great before can be bettered (or lowered) for a better gaming experience. FXAA, TSAA, MMAA or simply AA. Low, medium, high, ultra texture settings along with overall visual settings can be all too confusing when configuring a games visuals and while it would be easy to just crank everything up to maximum and hoping for the best, this all too often results in choppy, unplayable gaming ruining the gaming experience.

NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience removes much of the guess work when configuring a game thereby giving users the means to jump straight into the game with the best optimised settings for there hardware.

This handy utility will also keep your GPU updated with the latest driver that can be set to automatically download, ready to be installed as soon as they are available and also it gives you access to the beta drivers.

How does it work?
GeForce experience requires an internet connection which, once connected to the NVIDIA Cloud datacenter will download optimal game settings that are tailored to your PC based upon CPU, GPU and monitor resolution.

Low end hardware will have the visuals reduced to improve framerates while high end hardware will inevitably have higher settings assigned. This is all done with a click of a button which ensures that the game not only looks great but perhaps more importantly, plays smoothly.

Testing of the settings are done by NVIDIA themselves who benchmark the game, set a framerate target to ensure smooth gameplay then adjust the settings to ensure both framerate and smooth gameplay are optimised.

In our own tests, the utility worked well and is great for those who want to jump straight into the game with the minimal of fuss and furore of adjusting GPU settings.

Our one complaint is that the supported games list requires expanding. While most of the popular games are supported, many, especially some older but very popular titles are not.

Packaging & Accessories

The graphics card arrives in a high gloss medium sized box measuring 40 x 22cm. iChill dominates the front of the packaging which overall is quite attractive being based on a graphite backdrop.

Flipping the box over we get nothing other than a multilingual introduction to Inno3D. We would have liked to have seen perhaps a breakdown of the cooling design or at the very least product features and specification. Sadly neither are to be found anywhere on the outer sleeve.

After removing the sleeve we are greeted with a Matt black box with a silver iChill logo embossed across the lid. Here is where things get interesting because we were very impressed with the contents of the box. Not only do you get the usual plethora of accessories but Inno3D also included a mouse mat, and a good one at that.

Continuing the included accessories, Inno3D have also bundled a free copy of Futuremark’s latest 3DMark benchmark. Buy from selected retailers and you will also receive a free copy of the latest Splinter Cell game too. The remainder of the accessories include a VGA-DVI adaptor, twin MOLEX – 6pin PCIe power cable adaptor, installation guide, driver and utility CD, case badge, a handy power supply guideline and even an Allen key (to remove the cooling shroud to clean the heatsink).

It’s not often we find manufacturers going the extra length to include a plethora of accessories but what we received from Inno3D, especially given the price point was nothing short of exceptional.

First Look

The first thing that hit us was the size of the card. Not only is it quite lengthy but it is also a triple slot design meaning it will take up its own PCIe port and two others below this. It is also quite a weighty beast thanks to the huge heatsink.

It not only looks great from the fan side but also from the side you will likely see in your PC case. The card comes with a very swish gun metal grey backplate. While the backplate design would look fine on a benchtable, the words are actually upside down when viewed from a standard ATX case design. Still, it is a gorgeous design – who cares if you can read what’s on it when it looks this good?

This card didn’t just eat all the pies, it ate the whole shop by the looks of things. The design is however very neat and tidy with only a small cable visible at the end of the heatsink which is excellent considering there are three fan cables to hide.

The I/O area features the usuall quartet of DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMAI 1.4a and DisplayPort outputs. There is also a vent area although this serves little practical purpose other than case venting as the GPU is an ‘in-case’ circulatory cooling design meaning hot dispelled air is exhausted into the case environment rather than expelling it directly out of the back of the case.

This graphics card, like other GTX760s is multi-SLI capable.

Surprisingly, it also only requires the reference design twin 6 pin PCIe power ports. We couldn’t find any specific power requirements for this card other than on the included ‘PSU guidelines’ which quotes a 500W PSU will be required to power this graphics card.

Overall we loved the design of the iChill cooler. Yes it is big but it certainly is not brash. It is very aesthetically pleasing and while it does have an upper class feel to it, it somehow retain an industrial theme thanks to the Allen screws. It just screams ‘performance’ from whichever angle you look at it.

Let’s have a look under the heatsink shall we?

Closer Look

The card has 6 8x Allen screws which enable the user to remove the fan shroud to gain access to the heatsink for cleaning. This will not void the warranty. While basic in its design and certainly not as efficient as some other designs we have seen, it is still good to see manufacturer thinking about long term use of the end user.

Removing the heatsink will void the warranty and there is little to get around this I’m afraid as a perforated seal breaks once the heatsink is removed. the heatsink is a perpendicular design meaning hot air will be vented back into the PC enclosure so good case air cooling will be required for optimal GPU cooling efficiency.

The heastink has a brushed effect baseplate which sandwiches 5 nickel coated heatpipes the stretch across the twin aluminium finned heatsink arrays. The GPU mounts are metal but encased with thick rubber grommets.

The heatsink is attached to the PCB by just four spring loaded screws which given the weight of the heatsink was a little concerning however upon removal of the heatsink our fears were unfounded as there is a midplate which adds a lot of lateral strength to the graphics card to prevent bowing under its own weight.

After removing the midplate we find each of the on-board components are cooled via direct contact to the midplate with thermal pads save for the GPU core which has direct contact (good) to the heatsink baseplate. the PCB design is typical of a high end card with the VRM closest to the power ports leaving the GPU to be framed by 8x 256MB memory ICs.

The VRM is a 5+2 design. The main 5 GPU inductors are married to 3 MOSFETs each with the smaller memory inductors having just two MOSFETS. Making up the VRM are a multitude of solid state capacitors.

The memory hails from HYNIX with a product code of H5GQ2H24AFR R0C which is the same memory used on the reference design. Not that this is a bad thing as we know it overclocks extremely well.

Finally we get to the beating heart of the GTX760 iChill: The GK104 core.

Let’s see how all this, when put back together performs…

Test Setup

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphic card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and where possible the same drivers unless a newer driver rectifies an issue we have encountered or significantly improves performance to such an extent that continuing with an outdated driver is not feasible.

Frame Time Analysis
We have also seen the emergence of frame time analysis. We covered this in a separate article here: GPU Reviews: Why Frame Time Analysis is important so we won’t go into the reasoning again but to summarise, our testing comprises both FPS testing and perhaps arguably more importantly, frame time analysis. We also look at overall performance by equating averages across the games and finally before concluding our review we take a look at value for money.

HardwareWith the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics cards on test:

INNO3D GTX760 ICHILL HERCULEZ
(Forceware 320.49)
GIGABYTE GTX770 WINDFORCE 3X OC 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
ZOTAC GTX760 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.39)
NVIDIA GTX760 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.39)
]NVIDIA GTX760 2GB GDDR5 SLI(Forceware 320.39)
SAPPHIRE DUAL-X HD7950 3GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 13.6 beta)
CLUB 3D HD7970 royalAce 3GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 13.6 beta)
GAINWARD PHANTOM GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN SLI 12GB(2x6GB) GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GTX680 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
AMD HD7970 3GB GDDR5 (AMD CAT 13.3 beta)

Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 1200W
Hard Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:

Battlefield 3
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
BioShock Infinite
DiRT: Showdown
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included 3 of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Temperature, Acoustics and Power Consumption

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we use the included iPower Meter found with our Thortech PSU. As system load figures obviously differ from idle it is extremely difficult to get an accurate figure of system draw and then simply take this figure away from the overall amount because each game will generate varying levels of CPU and hard drive activity. Dynamic power adjustments which fluctuate in game will also affect accurate power figures thus rendering any such power consumption calculations redundant at worst and approximate at best.

We will therefore take our system readings averaged over a benchmark run of Tessmark (100% load) and after 20 minutes of being idle in Windows 7. These can then be used as a comparison to other graphics cards to determine how much more or less power you can expect a GPU to consume.

NVIDIA recommend a PSU capable of 500W for their reference design models and Inno3D follow suite for the iChill GTX760. We however believe you could possibly get by with a smaller PSU given that both our GTX760 samples pulled much less than this. It is however worth bearing in mind that you will need twin 6-pin PCIe power cables which are unlikely to come with a low specification unit.

The Inno3D card consumed slightly more power than reference designs, most likely due to the extra fans and factory overclock.

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result as the card did not throttle with this application.

IF the iChill card was going to excel in any benchmark, this was it. We are happy to report that it did not disappoint being by far the coolest card on test at both idle and load speeds. Even when overclocked, the card barely broke the 60c barrier which is a fantastic achievement given that reference GTX760s will readily hit 80c with ease.

By under no illusion, the Inno3D iChill HerculeZ is one cool customer indeed!

Acoustics

Despite having excellent cooling, the graphics card cooling design does not sacrifice acoustic ability with it being silent for the most part. The card does begin to hum a little when under load for extended periods but for the most part you would struggle to hear it over average case fans.

Let’s see how the card performs in our suite of benchmarks…

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike (Synthetic)

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Unigine: Heaven 4 (Synthetic)

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

Unigine: Valley (Synthetic)

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Battlefield 3 (FPS)

Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next installment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.

Crysis 3 (FPS)

Crysis 3 from Electronic Arts is the fourth instalment of the Crysis franchise and sequel to Crysis 2. It uses the CryEngine 3 gaming engine which is perhaps the most advanced gaming engine to date and therefore the most demanding. The meme ‘Can it run Crysis’ has never been so apparent…

Far Cry 3 (FPS)

Far Cry 3 is a tropical survival shooter video game from Ubisoft Montreal and Massive studios. It’s open world design has similar traits to it’s forbear Far Cry 2 but it does it all so much better. With stunning visuals and settings to bring a PC to it’s knee’s, this game is so much more than the ‘just another console port’ it was reported to be.

BioShock Infinite (FPS)

Set in 1912 during the growth of American exceptionalism, BioShock Infinite is a thrid person shooter developed by Irrational games and published by 2K Games. It is the third instalment of the BioShock franchise. the game utilises the Unreal Engine 3, modifying it with their own lighting engine to present a visually stunning experience like no other.

DiRT: Showdown

DiRT Showdown is the new arcade racing game from the team that brought you the award-winning DiRT series, uncaged in 2012. Pick up and play controls combine with electrifying events, frenzied crowds and stunning graphics to deliver high octane, dive in and drive thrills from event one.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (FPS)

Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Gaming Experience (Frame Time Analysis)

Here we take a look at both average (black) and 99th Percentile (coloured) response times of the graphics cards. It is highly unlikely a user will notice any micro stutter (also incorrectly referred to as lag but the effect can be interpreted to be similar) at anything below 30ms but every gamers perception differs.

Comment

The graphs above may appear very daunting however, what you want to see is a smooth line (not fuzzy) with very few peaks and troughs. While you are unlikely to notice peaks and troughs below 30ms, any peak above 30ms may be seen as a stutter during gameplay. This will however depend greatly on your own perceptions. Multi card setups are more likely to show frame lag due to the nature of cross communicating to render frames.

Average and 99th Percentile response times (Frame Time Analysis)

Overclocking (GPU BOOST 2.0)

For overclocking our NVIDIA cards we will be using EVGA’s Precision too (ver. 4.0) as this gives us all of the options we require. Should you desire, then Inno3Ds own TUNEIT 2.0 is equally good.

Above is a screenshot of GPU-Z showing the reference (factory overclocked) speeds and reference boost clocks

Given that the card comes overclocked direct from the factory, we didn’t expect massive overclocks n the GPU core. We are however happy to report a respectable overclock was achieved. We hit a wall adding 140MHz which started to show signs of instability. We reduced the core by 10MHz and managed to attain stability in all our benchmarks. To achieve a higher overclock on the memory though we had to reduce this overclock further with a balance achieved at 115MHz to grant good core and memory (+550MHz!) overclocks.

After settling on our stable clockspeed which was verified by multiple runs of Unigine Heaven and 3DMark we benchmarked the overclock and compared it to stock results with Unigine Heaven 4.0 to evaluate the benefits of overclocking the GPU.

Conclusion

Firstly, let’s discuss the main feature of the card, the iChill HerculeZ cooling design. As stated previously, cooling is extremely important to achieve a good GPU overclock, especially now with NVIDIAs GPU BOOST 2.0. The Inno3D card cools very well indeed; in fact one might say this is the pinnacle of graphics card cooling because even the best cooling solutions we have seen to date cannot compete with the fantastic performance of this heatsink. There is however a price to pay for this fantastic cooling and that is real estate.

If you own a cramped case then this card may not be for you. It will readily take up three slots on your motherboard and at 295mm long; it has length to match its girth. It is simple physics really, the more surface area you have to dissipate heat, the more heat with be dissipated given that all other efficiencies are equal. The size of the heatsink is not just what makes this cooling design so good though, the three fans, midplate and backplate all combine not only to give fantastic performance but also sublime looks.

While many will baulk at the cost which is around £40 more expensive than a basic reference design, you have to consider that what you are getting here is a good factory overclock and class leading air cooling. Yes there are others on the market that provide the same but not quite as good as Inno3D’s product. This is without taking into consideration the free mouse mat and 3DMark program which only adds to the general package appeal. It will never be accused of being value for money as £250 for a mid range card is still not cheap but it is, we feel, worth it.

We loved the aesthetics of the card. No matter which angle you look at it, you cannot help but admire the design. It is one of those products that you can’t help but look back at when walking away which is a sure sign of a winner and win it does.

It outperformed both other GTX760’s on test and also the AMD HD7950. While it may have looked a little out of its depth against the big guns, Inno3D also have the iChill HerculeZ coolers on the GTX780 and GTX770 cards which we hope to review for you at a later date. If today’s sample is anything to go by these cards will also receive our praise because the Inno3D GTX760 iChill is a most impressive mid-range graphics card.

To summarise:
If you are looking for a mid-range card that offers top class cooling that not only performs very well at this level but also looks a million dollars then the Inno3D GTX760 iChill HerculeZ should be at the top of your shopping list. If you can find one, buy one!

Pros
+ Class leading cooling
+ Eye popping good looks
+ Backplate
+ Quiet
+ Factory Overclocked

Cons
– Bulky & Heavy
– Warranty void if heatsink is removed