NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTSleeping Dogs
Another Square Enix game, Sleeping Dogs is one of the few open world games to be released with any kind of benchmark, giving us a unique opportunity to benchmark an open world game. Like most console ports, Sleeping Dogs’ base assets are not extremely demanding, but it makes up for it with its interesting anti-aliasing implementation, a mix of FXAA and SSAA that at its highest settings does an impeccable job of removing jaggies. However by effectively rendering the game world multiple times over, it can also require a very powerful video card to drive these high AA modes.
Sleeping Dogs is another game that AMD cards have done rather well at, leaving the GTX 680 quite a way behind. The sheer increase in functional units for Titan means it has no problem vaulting back to the top of the list of single GPU cards, but it also means it’s crossing a sizable gap.
In the end, at 2560 at the High (second-highest) AA settings, Titan is just shy of 50% faster than the GTX 680, but a weaker 17% ahead of the 7970GE. As we drop in resolution/AA, so does Titan’s lead, as the game shifts to being CPU limited.
Notably, no single card is really good enough here for 2560 with Extreme AA, with even Titan only hitting 35fps. This is one of the only games where even with a single monitor there’s real potential for a second Titan card in SLI.
Meanwhile the gap between Titan and our dual-GPU cards is roughly as expected. The GTX 690 takes a smaller lead at 18%, while the 7990 is some 42% ahead.
Due to its built-in benchmark, Sleeping Dogs is also another title that is a good candidate for repeatable and consistent minimum framerate testing.
While on average Titan is faster than the 7970GE, the minimum framerates put Titan in a rough spot. At 2560 with high AA Titan is effectively tied with the 7970GE, and with extreme AA it actually falls behind. It’s not readily apparent why this is, whether it’s some kind of general SSAA bottleneck or if there’s something else going on. But it’s a reminder that at its very worst, Titan can only match the 7970GE.
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CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
You seem to keep forgetting nearly all other computer parts, since our illustrious communist has usurped the perch, have also not fallen in price, as has traditionally been the case.Computers parts across the board are staying the same and rising in price.
It's called a crappy world money printing inflationary mess.
If you haven't noticed it, you're clueless.
chizow - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Yeah once again you must be living in a parallel universe.PCs, and electronics in general, are all getting cheaper in price and increasing in performance with each iteration. Hell even Apple products have lower price points than they did 3-4 years ago across the board.
Just look at laptops for example. You can get a solid "Ultrabook" laptop for $500-800. Same class of laptop would've cost you $1200-$1500 5 years ago.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
A finished product is not a computer part you fool.Nice try liar.
colonelpepper - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
VueAvid
Maya
Autocad
3DS Max
After Effects
Adobe Creative Suite
This card is touching the boundary between gaming & QUADRO cards and yet there are ZERO benchmarks for any of this software yet page after page after page after page dedicated to various games.
What gives?
Perhaps Toms will have a relevant review.
Hrel - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
I was wondering about this as well. Dustin even says it designed as a "cheap compute card".I'd add PowerDirector to the list though.
Hrel - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Ryan*JarredWalton - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Keep in mind the time constraints. Ryan and Anand received the Titan hardware late last week; adding in additional testing for this article is a bit much, considering Ryan already had to write the initial Part 1 plus this Part 2. I'm guessing that performance in professional apps where Quadro is usually the go-to choice aren't going to benefit all that much from Titan relative to GTX 680, though, unless NVIDIA is reversing their stance on Quadro getting special drivers (which doesn't seem to be the case).dbr1 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Exactly!How does this card perform in Adobe Premiere Pro???
atlr - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Seeing performance of a benchmark like http://ppbm5.com/ with Creative Suite v6.03 across the set of Nvidia and AMD cards would be interesting. I have not found runs of this benchmark with a AMD 7970 yet. CUDA rules the Adobe roost although there is some OpenCL support in current products.Ryan Smith - Monday, February 25, 2013 - link
Due to the disparity in GeForce and Quadro drivers, not to mention the difference in support, these are programs where for the most part it wouldn't make much sense to benchmark them on a GeForce Titan. Now if NVIDIA rolls out a GK110 Quadro, then that would be far more useful.If you're in the market for a Quadro, you're probably not in the market for a GeForce. NVIDIA keeps those market segments rather rigorously separated.