Nvidia today took the wraps off the new GeForce GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti GPUs, both based on its first-generation "Maxwell" technology. The company also unveiled the successor of the GTX 780Ti, the Geforce GTC Titan Black. Both the GeForce GTX 750 and the GTX 750 Ti are based on the Maxwell GM107 GPU, which was made using TSMC's 28nm HP node.

Nvidia's Maxwell is a Direct3D 11.0 compliant design, supporting the base 11.0 functionality along with many of the features required for Direct3D 11.1 and 11.2.

I/O functionality is identical to Kepler, with 4 display controllers backing NVIDIA's capabilities. HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 functionality join the usual DVI support.

With Maxwell, NVIDIA's video encoder NVENC, has received an performance boost. NVIDIA says that Maxwell's NVENC should be 1.5x-2x faster than Kepler's NVENC.

Decoding is also receiving a bit of a lift. Maxwell's VP video decode block won't feature full H.265 (HEVC) support, but it will offer partial hardware acceleration, relying on software and hardware to decode H.265. Nvidia says that decoding is getting a 8x-10x performance boost due to the implementation of a local decoder cache and an increase in memory efficiency for video decoding.

The company has also improved the density of the new designs with Maxwell. Denser designs allow for NVIDIA to offer similar performance as larger Kepler GPUs with a smaller Maxwell GPU.

With GM107 in being a 128-bit design that would need to compete with the likes of the 192-bit GK106, NVIDIA has increased the amount of L2 cache they use, from 256KB in GK107 to 2MB on GM107.

But most importantly, with Maxwell NVIDIA is almost solely focused on improving energy efficiency and performance per watt.

Nvidia says a GeForce GTX 750 Ti running at 1080p resolution doubles the performance and uses half the power of the GTX 550 Ti, which was built with the Fermi architecture.

The GTX 750 Ti also approximates the performance of the GeForce GTX 480 -- a $499 flagship product also based on the Fermi architecture -- while consuming only one-fourth the power, or 60 watts.

The GTX 750 Ti and 750 GPUs also include support for NVIDIA's GameWorks program and gaming technologies, including:

- ShadowPlay, which lets gamers capture and share their gaming experiences on Twitch and other online sites,
- G-SYNC display technology, for stutter-free gaming visuals, and
- GameStream, which allows gamers to stream their favorite PC games to NVIDIA SHIELD for high-performance gaming on the go.



In terms of specs, the GeForce GTX 750 Ti packs a complete GM107 implementation, comprising 5 SMMs, 640 CUDA cores, 16 ROPs, and 40 texture units, and fed by 2MB of L2 cache.

GTX 750 Ti?s GM107 GPU is paired with 2GB of GDDR5, on a 128-bit bus.

The GTX 750 Ti GPU's small physical design -- at 5.7-inches long -- doesn't require an internal power connector.

When it comes to clockspeeds NVIDIA is putting the GTX 750 Ti's core clock at 1020MHz with a boost clock of 1085MHz. The memory will be clocked at 5.4GHz, which on a 128-bit bus is enough to provide 86.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

NVIDIA wants to leverage GM107 and the GTX 750 series to capture this market for HTPC use and OEM system upgrades alike. The GTX 750 is based on a cut-down GM107 GPU, utilizing just 4 of GM107?s 5 SMMs. This reduces the CUDA core count to 512 and the number of texture units to 32. GPU clockspeeds are identical to GTX 750 Ti while the memory subsystem is further reduced to 1GB of GDDR5 running at 5GHz.

NVIDIA GPU Specification
	GTX 660	GTX 750 Ti	GTX 750	GTX 650
CUDA Cores	960	640	512	384
Texture Units	80	40	32	32
ROPs	24	16	16	16
Core Clock	980MHz	1020MHz	1020MHz	1058MHz
Boost Clock	1033MHz	1085MHz	1085MHz	N/A
Memory Clock	6GHz GDDR5	5.4GHz GDDR5	5GHz GDDR5	5GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
VRAM	2GB	2GB	1GB	1GB
FP64	1/24	1/32	1/32	1/24
TDP	140W	60W	55W	64W
Transistor Count	2.54B	1.87B	1.87B	1.3B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm
Architecture	Kepler	Maxwell	Maxwell	Kepler
GPU	GK106	GM107	GM107	GK107
Price	$229	$149	$119	$109

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750 GPUs are now available from Nvidia's add-in card suppliers, including ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac. Pricing is expected to start at $119 for the GTX 750, $139 for the 1GB GTX 750 Ti and $149 for the 2GB GTX 750 Ti.

The GeForce GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750 GPUs will also be sold in fully configured systems from U.S.-based system builders.

NVIDIA is placing both the GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750 between the GK106 flagship GTX 660 and the GK107 flagship GTX 650. The GTX 750 Ti will replace the GTX 650 Ti Boost, and GTX 750 is expected to retire GTX 650 Ti.

AMD's competition for the GTX 750 series will be the Radeon R7 265, and the recently price dropped Radeon R7 260X, which are set to go for $149 and $119 respectively.

According to the first reviews for the cards that have appeared online, the the GTX 750 Ti is nearly 2x as fast as the GTX 650, and nearly 3x faster than the GT 640.

However, Radeon R7 265 holds a 15-20% lead over GTX 750 Ti. Similarly, Radeon R7 260X averages a 10% lead over GTX 750, and it does so while having 2GB of VRAM to GTX 750's 1GB.


NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan Black

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan Black is a full GK110 implementation, just like the GTX 780 Ti, and packs 6GB of GDDR5. Titan Black improves on its predecessor by also using the full GK 110 die, one that calls for 2,880 shaders and 240 texture-units housed in 15 SMXs. Titan Black delivers a 5.1 Teraflops of computing performance per card



Core frequency sees a nice hike over first-generation Titan, now running at a peak 980MHz instead of 876MHz.The memory runs at a full 7GHz data rate just like the 780 Ti. The GK110 core and boost clocks are up by 1.6% and 5.6% compared to the 780 Ti, respectively.

And compared to the original Titan, you should expect a 14% to a 20% increase in performance on compute bound workloads or a 17% increase on memory bandwidth bound workloads. Gaming performance should be equal to the 780 Ti.

	GTX Titan Black	GTX 780 Ti	GTX Titan	GTX 780
Stream Processors	2880	2880	2688	2304
Texture Units	240	240	224	192
ROPs	48	48	48	48
Core Clock	889 MHz	875 MHz	837 MHz	863 MHz
Boost Clock	980 MHz	928 MHz	876 MHz	900 MHz
Memory Clock	7GHz GDDR5	7GHz GDDR5	6GHz GDDR5	6GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit
VRAM	6GB	3GB	6GB	3GB
FP64	1/3 FP32	1/24 FP32	1/3 FP32	1/24 FP32
TDP	250W	250W	250W	250W
Transistor Count	7.1B	7.1B	7.1B	7.1B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm
Price	$999	$699	$999	$649

Each TITAN BLACK also supports up to four displays per card - two DVI, one HDMI and one DisplayPort.

Availability is expected to be limited on the GeForce GTX Titan Black, with cards to retail for $999.