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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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.