NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Up next is our legacy title for 2013, Crysis: Warhead. The stand-alone expansion to 2007’s Crysis, at over 4 years old Crysis: Warhead can still beat most systems down. Crysis was intended to be future-looking as far as performance and visual quality goes, and it has clearly achieved that. We’ve only finally reached the point where single-GPU cards have come out that can hit 60fps at 1920 with 4xAA.
At 2560 we still have a bit of a distance to go before any single-GPU card can crack 60fps. In lieu of that Titan is the winner as expected. Leading the GTX 680 by 54%, this is Titan’s single biggest win over its predecessor, actually exceeding the theoretical performance advantage based on the increase in functional units alone. For some reason GTX 680 never did gain much in the way of performance here versus the GTX 580, and while it’s hard to argue that Titan has reversed that, it has at least corrected some of the problem in order to push more than 50% out.
In the meantime, with GTX 680’s languid performance, this has been a game the latest Radeon cards have regularly cleared. For whatever reason they’re a good match for Crysis, meaning even with all its brawn, Titan can only clear the 7970GE by 21%.
On the other hand, our multi-GPU cards are a mixed bag. Once more Titan loses to both, but the GTX 690 only leads by 15% thanks to GK104’s aforementioned weak Crysis performance. Meanwhile the 7990 takes a larger lead at 33%.
I’d also note that we’ve thrown in a “bonus round” here just to see when Crysis will be playable at 1080p with its highest settings and with 4x SSAA for that picture-perfect experience. As it stands AMD multi-GPU cards can already cross 60fps, but for everything else we’re probably a generation off yet before Crysis is completely and utterly conquered.
Moving on, we once again have minimum framerates for Crysis.
When it comes to Titan, the relative improvement in minimum framerates over GTX 680 is nothing short of obscene. Whatever it was that was holding back GTX 680 is clearly having a hard time slowing down Titan, leading to Titan offering 71% better minimum framerates. There’s clearly much more going on here than just an increase in function units.
Meanwhile, though Titan’s gains here over the 7970GE aren’t quite as high as they were with the GTX 680, the lead over the 7970GE still grows a bit to 26%. As for our mutli-GPU cards, this appears to be a case where SLI is struggling; the GTX 690 is barely faster than Titan here. Though at 31% faster than Titan, the 7990 doesn’t seem to be faltering much.
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Sufo - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
lol, you clearly haven't run a dual gpu setup.Veteranv2 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Such a shame. How you can you disregard all the dual GPU cards?Another biased review. I miss the time when Anand used to be objective. Now it is just a Intel/Nvidia propaganda site. Not even an objective final thoughts. It is really a shame. I feel sad.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Um? They're there. Along with 680 SLI and 7970GE CrossFire.processinfo - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Act surprised? He means that in final thoughts you downplaying fact that Titan is slower than dual GPU cards. I agree with him. It seems biased, especially when later you talk about 3 way SLI with Titan that would have same issues like dual GPU cards. They cost the same or less and they are faster. For gaming this card brings nothing to the table. For $500-600 it would be different story.Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Ahh.So our editorial stance is that while SLI/CF are great, they should only be used to increase performance beyond what a single large GPU can accomplish. AFR comes with some very notable penalties, and while these are acceptable when you can go no bigger, we do not believe these are good tradeoffs to make otherwise.
It's the same reason why we didn't recommend cards like the GTX 560 Ti 2Win over the GTX 580.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5048/evgas-geforce-g...
Simply put we'd rather have the more consistent performance and freedom from profiles that having a single GTX Titan provides, over the higher but also more unreliable performance of a GTX 690.
Alucard291 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Well its exactly as you said Ryan. Its overpriced and badly positioned in the market (except you used much kinder words - presumably to keep your paycheck)Its a nice, pointless consumer (that's a key word right here) gpu which brings benefits (what are those benefits exactly?) of overpriced compute performance to people who don't need compute performance.
Beautiful move Nvidia.
processinfo - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
It is not about recommendation. I prefer single GPU and no SLI configs myself.It is about a fact that it is just slower than anything with similar price tag.
This is card only for people who need both: fast gaming card and computing card in one (or for those who don't care about a price).
Hrel - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
I think it's about time you re-asses that stance. SLI/CF has come a long way in the past few years.Also, 1000 dollars for one card puts it so far out of consideration it doesn't even count as an option for single GPU use. Which was why he said "For $500-600 it would be a different story". For gaming this card is useless. For Compute it seems 7970GHE would be a better option too. Again, based solely on price. Performance is close enough it makes WAY more sense to just buy 2 of those for 860 bucks if you really need to do some serious GPU compute.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Actually we did re-assess our stance ahead of this article.Far Cry 3 came out and SLI didn't work correctly; it took a few NVIDIA releases to get it up to where it is today. That's exactly the kind of scenario that drives our existing stance.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Yes, of course, forget mentioning the half decade of AMD epic failure in CF...It's just amazing what I read here. The bias is so glaring a monkey couldn't miss it.