ZOTAC GeForce GTX 750Ti 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 DVI HDMI DisplayPort Video Graphics Card (ZT-70605-10M) Reviews

Thoroughly Enjoying Current-Gen Gaming With This Little Card, April 9, 2014

By 

Kay Wrobel –

  

This card has replaced an aging Radeon HD 4830 512MB DDR3 card, which has done a fantastic job in the past. But my recent revisiting of PC gaming, particularly BioShock Infinite, had prompted me to look around for something newer and better. I have done lots of comparing of the new Maxwell cards that are out there right now. In particular, I paid much attention to the employed cooling methods of the various incumbents. Let me say that I originally had my eyes on the EVGA GTX750 Ti SC edition, simply because its cooler is similar in size as this one. But then I read that the cooler was using a constant speed that was very audible, and so I started shopping around. I should also mention that I have a very limited budget, and so price was also a deciding factor. Most GTX 750Ti are priced around $159 or even higher depending which brand you go with. And almost all of them stressed that they were somewhat over-clocked.

What finally moved me to pull the trigger on this Zotac one was that that it was priced really well at $149 and that according to some reviewers, the fan was very quiet. I can hereby confirm that this card is virtually inaudible and performs extremely well. Now I’m not usually running any benchmarks on my system, but this card runs extremely well. Let me give you some examples.

Before I continue, I should mention that I run my desktop and games in 720p for the simple fact that my Sony Bravia 37″ HDTV has a native resolution of 1280×720, even though it accepts 1080p signals. That is why I don’t see the point of cranking up the resolution in my games. I should also mention that at this point, I can easily be wowed with PC games since I have played all my previous games on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and now Wii U (which I btw. love!).

On the the tested games and conditions under which I ran them.

1. Fallout New Vegas – Ran the game on my old Athlon 64 X2 5400+ with 4GB DDR2 memory and the Radeon card managed this game very well at Ultra settings and 720p, though it chugged a bit when trying out in 1080p. But at 720p, it ran very smooth with the occasional hiccup. With the Zotac GTX 750 Ti, this game runs as smooth as it can get, even on 1080p. And I’m not talking about indoor scenes, but the beautiful outdoor scenery, which it renders absolutely perfect without a hitch. Even when the action gets going, it barely budges, except for the occasional stutter caused more by the buggy game engine when it loads an enemy or a scripted event rather than because the card can’t handle it. Hey, it’s Bethesda for ya there!

2. Warp – An indie game by Trapdoor published by EA running Unreal Engine 3. EA. That should be a warning sign already. The game chugged like crazy on my Radeon 4830, especially when transitioning rooms. This is somewhat alleviated with the GTX 750 Ti, though still present. After replacing the Athlon 64 with the new FX-8320 and DDR3 ram, the chugging is minimized, but still there. This MUST be a horribly optimized game. Oh yeah, it screen-tears like crazy. Not very happy. But again, not the Zotac or NVidia’s fault.

3. Bioshock Infinite – Now this game’s performance just blows my mind. This game must be optimized fairly well because even my old rig with the Radeon 4830 ran the first half hour of the game starting on sea, then the light house, and the first sequences in Columbia extremely well. I was almost considering to scrap the entire upgrade and stick with my years old setup for a while longer. Until I entered the city of Columbia and stood in front of Father Comstock’s statue. I should stress, that even with the old setup, I ran the game on Very High and even tried Ultra for kicks. But in this scene is where the fun ended with my old setup. Also, there’s some kind of shop next to the statue. When you’re inside that store, the frame rate dropped significantly. – Enter the Zotac GTX 750Ti. This card handles Bioshock Infinite beautifully all on Ultra settings and even the DX11 Alternate Lighing setting turned on. I also forced FXAA in the NVidia Settings Panel for this game. It looks soooo pretty that I could just sit there drooling at the sight of it. Now I have to add that I purchased the NVidia card first before the CPU upgrade, and so I had this little card running inside my old setup for about 2-3 weeks. And there were still some hiccups when Bioshock was loading new scenes. These issues have pretty much disappeared now that I have the FX-8320 in tandem with DDR3 memory (4GB only and VISTA!). There are a few off-scenes where not much actually seems to happen, like a guy shoe-shining some other guy’s shoes, and weirdly, the framerate drops a little? But overall, I’d say the game runs perfect. Oh, and I have V-Sync on as well.

If I haven’t made it abundantly clear by now, I am very impressed with and excited about the GTX 750 Ti. And Zotac has delivered a bare bones card, don’t get me wrong, but it performs so well that I…

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