NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan, Part 1: Titan For Gaming, Titan For Compute
by Ryan Smith on February 19, 2013 9:01 AM ESTOrigin’s Genesis: Titan on Water & More to Come
Wrapping up part 1 of our look at NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan, we wanted to take a quick look at the tri-SLI system NVIDIA sampled to us for this article: Origin’s Genesis. Without the ability to publish performance data we can’t go into any detail and otherwise fully evaluate it, but what we can do is give you a sneak peek at what’s among the most unusual, and likely most powerful Titan systems on the market.
But first, as a bit of a preface, as we mentioned earlier in our article NVIDIA has been sampling reviewers with various SFF and tri-SLI systems to showcase their two boutique computer concepts. With the tri-SLI system it was not only intended to show off raw performance, but also to serve as a showcase of Titan’s build quality. You see, NVIDIA had told us that the acoustics on Titan were so good that a tri-SLI system could not only be a reasonable choice from a background noise perspective, but that it would be notably quieter than even a GTX 680 tri-SLI system, the latter being particularly hard to believe given GTX 680’s impressive acoustics and low power consumption.
Of course, things didn’t exactly go according to plan, and in a happy accident Origin went above and beyond NVIDIA’s original request. As the Genesis’ marquee feature is water-cooling, Origin went all-out in setting up our sample system for water-cooling, and not just on the CPU. Despite the fact that Titan was (and technically still is) an unreleased card, working alongside their waterblock supplier EKWaterBlocks they were able to get proper waterblocks for Titan in time to build our system. As a result our tri-SLI Genesis unexpectedly ended up being both completely water-cooled and factory overclocked.
The bad news of course is that because of the performance embargo we can’t tell you anything about the performance of the Genesis, other than to say that as fast as one Titan card is, three overclocked Titan cards running on water is even faster, sometimes by a massive margin. Furthermore, coupled with this is the fact that GPU Boost 2 was designed in part to better mesh with the superior cooling capabilities of water-cooling, taking advantage of the fact that water-cooled GPUs rarely hit their temperature limits. As a result what’s already a fast system can sustain performance that much higher thanks to the fact that we hit our top boost bins more often.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here…
| Origin Genesis Specifications | |
| Chassis | Corsair 800D |
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3970X Extreme Edition, Overclocked To 4.9GHz, ORIGIN CRYOGENIC Custom Liquid Cooling CPU (6x4.9GHz, 32nm, 15MB L3, 150W) |
| Motherboard | Intel DX79SR |
| Memory | 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1866Mhz |
| Graphics | 3-WAY SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, ORIGIN CRYOGENIC LIQUID Cooling Solution and Professional Overclocking |
| Hard Drive(s) |
2x120 GB Corsair Neutron SSDs in RAID 0 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache |
| Optical Drive(s) | 12X Blu-ray (BD) Disc Combo |
| Power Supply | 1.2 Kilowatt PSU Corsair |
| Networking | On-Board Intel |
| Audio |
Realtek ALC892 Speaker, line-in, mic, and surround jacks |
| Front Side |
Power button |
| Top Side | - |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
| Dimensions |
16.2" x 4.6" x 16" (412mm x 117mm x 407mm) |
| Warranty |
1 Year Part Replacement and 45 Day Free Shipping Warranty with Lifetime Labor/24-7 Support |
| Pricing | MSRP of review system: ~$7000 |
We’ll have more on Thursday, including performance data for what so far is turning out to be a ridiculously fast tri-SLI system. So until then, stay tuned.
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Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Who cares about your pair of cards? Nobody but you!Iketh - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
lol hater!CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
As compared to the crawl into the street and stone yourself missive you throw in another post ? LOLYou won the hate war bub !
I thought the gentleman owning the two 7950's made a very decent comment.
Yes it's shocking coming from someone with 2 amd cards, but for once, it occurred.
chizow - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
This is much worst than the Ultra imo, at least in the case of the 8800GTX/Ultra, the performance at least somewhat justified the price relative to the rest of the market. We are somewhat spoiled by the bevy of card releases in recent years, but that's also the curse of the 680 and now Titan, the performance difference is nowhere close to the increase in price tag.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
You're NUTS to pretend you deserve 1 to 1 price to perf pricing on up the line, or that it is even a standard or usual expected measured outcome.What you do have is years now of idiot web articles and postings from insanely focused miniscule minded scrooge like weirdos futzing around dicing up beans to fill web space. So now your brain is fried. FPS is all the drool cup can visibly contain.
Congratulations on the complete brainwashing. When you screamed 100% in the prior threads, it was found to be 20%, 30%, etc. outlying 40%.
Facts don't matter, all the bang for the buck historical fantasy BS in your gourd, does.
joqqy - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
I'll wait until price drops, quite content with what I have now.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
Since you spent $550, you could spend a grand.I accept your notional decision, but it is not out of your price range, you are after all running 2x #2 flagships.
In fact yours is the first and ONLY reasonable pricing comment (complaint) in the entire thread.
Congratulations for that. Appreciate it. Happy gaming to you.
Deo Domuique - Friday, March 8, 2013 - link
I strongly believe, currently the best setup one could have is what you have...2x 7950 the most bang for your buck! 2 great cards with great price... Although, I'm no fan of Crossfire or Sli. Still, even one 7950 it still holds the best spot in my mind.
sensiballfeel - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
$1000 for a card slower than a GTX 690?Running two 580s for years now and skipped 680 for being too slow expecting something else in the pipeline.This is it and NvidiA wants to double the price to $1000?
Nvidia has lost their mind.Good card,the price is beyond ridiculous.Nice try nvidia,but no thanks.
Menty - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Meh, it's a single card rather than an SLI-on-a-stick card. That makes it better, in my book.