NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 vs Intel HD Graphics (Sandy Bridge)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 is a mid-range desktop graphics card based on the Kepler GK104 chip. It is significantly faster than the mobile Nvidia GeForce GTX 760M for laptops. Depending on the chip temperature and power consumption the core can be clocked between 980-1033 MHz (or even higher). The GDDR5 graphics memory of the 760 is clocked at 3000 MHz (6000 MHz effective).

On average the performance of the GTX 760 is between the GTX 660 and 770 / 680 in the Nvidia lineup and between the Radeon R9 270X and the R9 280 from AMD. The performance is sufficient for maximum detail settings in full HD resolution (for games from 2014 and earlier). However, in some games like Crysis 3 and Thief the average frame rate we tested was only about 30fps (see below).

The power consumption is rated at 160 Watt TDP (load).

Intel HD Graphics (Sandy Bridge)

The Intel HD Graphics (Family) is a processor graphics card which is integrated in the cheap Celeron and Pentium model of the Sandy Bridge generation. It is similar to the Intel HD Graphics 2000 and not with the processor graphics of the older Arrandale dual-core processors (which bears the same name). 

Depending on the processor, the HD graphics offers a different base and Turbo Boost clock speed. Currently there are three different models:

• Power Saving e.g. Celeron 847: base 350MHz, Turbo 800MHz
• Celeron e.g. Celeron B810: base 650MHz, Turbo 950MHz
• Pentium e.g. Pentium B950: base 650MHz, Turbo 1100MHz

Furthermore, the slow CPU performance of some models may influence the games a lot. For example, although the GPU in the Celeron B710 differs not much from the Pentium B950, the gaming performance was clearly worse and many games were unplayable.

As the Intel HD Graphics 3000 and 2000, the processor graphics card is able to use part of the last level cache of the processor (2MB usually for the entry level CPUs). This could be seen as a small amount of very fast dedicated memory.

Altought 2x Antialiasing (AA) is supported, the chip is as fast as when rendering 4x AA. In the Unigine Valley benchmark a similar HD 3000 i7-2637M for example reached the same score with 2x AA and 4x AA.

The feature set compared to the HD Graphics 3000 is also reduced in these entry level CPUs. E.g. Intel Quick Sync (for de- and encoding of HD videos), In Tru 3D, Clear Video HD are usually deactivated.