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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mrdude - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
I doubt it, given the transistor count and die size. This thing isn't exactly svelte, with 7.1Billion transistors. The viable-chips-per-wafer must be quite low, hence the price tag.What I don't understand is why people would buy a a $1000 GPU for compute? I can understand why somebody buys a ~$300 GPU to add a little extra horsepower to their small selection of applications, but if you're paying $1000 for a GPU then you're also expecting a decent set of drivers as well. But both AMD and nVidia have purposely neutered their consumer cards' performance for most professional tasks and applications. As a result, you can buy a cheaper FirePro or Quadro with professional drivers based on the smaller die/GPU (like a 7850 or 660Ti) that will outperform this $1000 single GPU card in a variety of software.
If I'm paying upwards of $1000 for a GPU, it sure as hell has to work. Buying a consumer grade GPU and relying on consumer (gaming) drivers just means that you'll almost never hit anywhere near the max theoretical throughput of the card. In essence, you're paying for performance which you'll never get anywhere close to.
This is a perfect card for the fools who overspend on their gaming GPUs. For everyone else it's just a high-priced bore.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
All those fools, we have been told over and over, and in fact very recently by the site's own, are here !That's what this is for, dimwit. Not for crybaby losers who can barely scrape up an HD 5750.
Let's face it, every one of you whining jerks is drooling uncontrollably for this flagship, and if you're just a loser with a 450W power supply, no worries, they're being sold in high priced systems with that.
You'd take in a minute, happily, and max out your games and your 1920x1080 monitor in MOST games.
I mean I have no idea what kind of poor all you crybabies are. I guess you're all living in some 3rd world mudhole.
madmilk - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
They're clearly not in any kind of hurry, given how well Tesla is selling at 3 times the price. These are probably just the rejects, set to a higher voltage and TDP and sold to the consumer market.mrdude - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Oh yea, nVidia is never going to jeopardize the cash cow that is the Tesla for the HPC crowd, or Quadro for the professional market. The margins there aren't worth giving up in order to bring GPU compute (and its drivers) to the mass market.This notion that this is a GPGPU card is silly, frankly. We can throw around the max theoretical GFLOPs/TFLOPs figures all we please, the reality is that you'll never see anywhere close to those in professional applications. There are two reasons for that: Tesla and Quadro.
chizow - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Yeah, totally agree with the post title, Nvidia has lost their fking minds.And PS: The X-Men *STILL* want their logo back.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
This isn't 19G80 Kansas anymore Dorothy.Do any of you people live in the USA ?
I mean really, how frikkin poor are all you crybabies, and how do you even afford any gaming system or any games ?
Are you all running low end C2D still, no SSD's, and 1280x1024, do you live in a box ?
How can you be in the USA and whine about this price on the very top end product for your Lifetime Hobby ?
What is wrong with you, is the question.
Pariah - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
In most cases, this card won't make sense. There are at least a couple of scenarios where it might make sense. One, in an ultra highend gaming system. That means multiple Titan cards. Because these are single GPU cards, an SLI Titan setup should scale much better than an SLI 690 with 4 GPU's would. And further that point with triple SLI Titans.Secondly, this card is smaller and uses less power than a 690, which means you can use it in much smaller cases, even some mini-itx cases. That would be one helluva a nice portable LAN box.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
This card makes sense for anyone running a mid sandy bridge and 1920x1080 monitor.After I complained about the 1920X1200 reviews here, pointing out nVidia is 12% BETTER compared to amd in the former resolution, 50 raging amd fanboys screeched they have a 1920X1200 monitor they run all the time and they were more than willing to pop the extra $150 bucks for it over the 1920x1080...
So we can safely assume MOST of the people here have a 1920X1080 for pete sakes.
A low end sandy is $50 to $80, same for a board, DDR3 is the cheapest ram.
So for less than $200 bucks to prepare at max, (use your old case+ps) near everyone here is ready to run this card, and would find benefit from doing so.
Now lying about that just because they don't plan on buying one is what most here seem to want to do.
Deo Domuique - Friday, March 8, 2013 - link
This card should be cost ~600-650$. Not a single cent more. The rest is ala Apple markup for the mindless consumer. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them.trajan2448 - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Obviously a great piece of technology. Interested to see what the over clockers can achieve.If it was $700 It would make a lot more sense. Nonetheless, fun to see some fanatics do a TRI SLI overclocked and blow up their monitor.