NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun 2
Our next benchmark is Shogun 2, which is a returning favorite to our benchmark suite. Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. Even 2 years after its release it’s still a very punishing game at its highest settings due to the amount of shading and memory those units require.
Shogun has us seeing one of Titan’s best games almost right away. The 50% performance gain over the GTX 680 at 2560 almost exactly mirrors Titan’s 50% increase in memory bandwidth, which given the game’s nature as a memory eater shouldn’t come as too great a surprise. In this case it’s enough to push Titan to nearly 60fps at 2560 even with everything cranked up, or a bit past 30fps at 5760.
This happened to be a game the GTX 680 was already doing modestly well at relative to AMD’s cards, so the Titan/7970GE matchup is even more lopsided, with Titan surpassing the 7970GE by over 60% at 2560. It’s not entirely clear what Shogun is doing that favors Kepler over GCN so much, but the result is the single biggest performance gap we’ll see all day.
Moving on to the dual GPU cards however, we are reminded that for raw framerates a dual-GPU card can almost never be beat. Titan is effectively tied with the 7990, but the GTX 690 and the multi-card configurations surpass it by at least 17%. As we’ve stated before, Titan’s forte will not be raw framerates, but rather slightly lower framerates without the pitfalls of SLI/CF. The only thing that’s really being determined here is how big this gap will be.
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CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
Enlightenment comes slow to the angry activist conspiracist tinfoil hatter, but it appears you've made progress.Another REASON $999 is the correct price.
Suck it up loser.
Sabresiberian - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
You know, there are some reasonable arguments against this card, but you have to take it to an AMD fanboy level by calling it an overpriced GTX 680.iSlayer - Saturday, March 30, 2013 - link
Titan gets pretty close to 690/680 SLI performance while using less power, producing less heat, and freeing up space for 3 additional Titans. With Titan, I can make a machine up to 60% more powerful than was previously possible. Sure, it's going to cost twice as much as it would to get the same performance from other cards, but that's only theoretical as you literally cannot match a Titan config with a single computer.You seem to have entirely missed the point of this card.
klepp0906 - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
if you thought the titan was a troll, i'd hate to see what you call their latest attempt w/ the titan black, free of the artificial limitations put in place just so they can make another money grab. (all while the driver support on the older card still falls flat on its face in many cases ie: surround)ehpexs - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Nvidia has been so greedy with 600 series. 560s turned into 680s and now this. Nvidia is not getting my money for years.HighTech4US - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
> Nvidia has been so greedy with 600 series. 560s turned into 680s and now this. Nvidia is not getting my money for years.So you instead gave your money to greedy AMD and their $549 HD7970 last January or did you wait for AMD to become less greedy when they had to reduce the price by $120 because of the greedy Nvidia releasing the GTX680.
chizow - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Yes AMD started this all with their ridiculous 7970 prices, but Nvidia has taken it way beyond that. $1K is usury, plain and simple.Hrel - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Haha, never seen anyone use the word "usury" in real life before. You used it kinda wrong but your point came across. Nice!chizow - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
It's contemporary usage has extended beyond the traditional references to loans/interest, if you replace "interest" with "premium" it makes perfect sense. But glad you understood and enjoyed the reference.mlambert890 - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
It's a ridiculous usage honestly. The sense of entitlement people have is almost incomprehensible that there is moral outrage over an expensive video card.If you feel its a bad deal, don't buy it. If you feel that somehow NVidia has committed a sin against nature by releasing the 680 originally (which is somehow now being viewed as "broken" I guess.. amazing) and then releasing this card at $1000, because you feel that this card should have *been* the 680, then you are making assumptions without any evidence.
Everyone seems to be basing their angst on the notion that NVidia *could* be selling this card right now at $500. How does *anyone* know this? It's faith based insanity. No one knows what their yields are on this thing yet all of the disgruntled are going out on some wild limb screaming because they feel this card could have come out last year for half price.