NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTHitman: Absolution
The third game in our revised lineup is Hitman: Absolution. The latest game in Square Enix’s stealth-action series, Hitman: Absolution is a DirectX 11 based title that though a bit heavy on the CPU, can give most GPUs a run for their money. Furthermore it has a built-in benchmark, which gives it a level of standardization that fewer and fewer benchmarks possess.
Based on our results I suspect Hitman is CPU limited beyond 85fps or so, which is depressing our results on these extremely powerful cards. Titan is by far the fastest of the single-GPU cards, but at 2560 it only beats the GTX 680 by 34%, and the 7970GE by 18%. If we jump up to 5760 we can see that Titan pulls ahead by more, now 48% and 33% respectively, and this is probably the most pure GPU result we’re going to get out of Hitman.
Note that the dual-GPU cards still do better than Titan here, but they are running right into the wall presented by the CPU bottleneck. Their 17% leads are nothing to scoff at, but it may not be all they’re capable of.
Meanwhile thanks to its built-in benchmark, Hitman is one of the most consistent games in our lineup, making it a good candidate for including the minimum framerate, which we have below.
The minimum framerates on Hitman show Titan in an even better light. Though it still loses to the dual-GPU configurations, it’s now 40% ahead of the GTX 680 and 25% ahead of the 7970GE respectively. And amusingly enough, at 2560 Titan is just fast enough to hit 60fps minimum.
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Tetracycloide - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
That's the thing, it's not a 'consumer gaming card.' It's a consumer compute card. Obviously the price for performance for gaming makes no sense but that's not their target market.ronin22 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
This exactly!It's an amazing card for computing.
I wish I could get one...
Blazorthon - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
In reply to both of your comments, I have to ask this: If that is justification for its price, then why is it that AMD doesn't have their Tahiti cards priced like that and why didn't Nvidia price their previous consumer compute cards like that (GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 480, GTX 580, etc.)?CommandoCATS - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
Because this seems like a specialized thing for people who care about compute tasks within NVidia's CUDA universe (and things like iRay, which didn't exist when previous generations first came out).The truth is that in academia and research, CUDA is still the top dog (just do a google scholar search). I'm sure for most gamers, the GTX 680 is the way better deal. However, this is essentially a Tesla K20 for 1/3rd of the cost, so it's kind of a bargain from that perspective.
cheersloss - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Exactly right. There is nothing about this card that is a value. The same compute functions were there in the older flagships as well, the gtx 580, 480, 280 etc.Titan is just an overpriced, overhyped trainwreck. Another attempt at a cashgrab on the gullible.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
The gullible that have the several thousands of extra they can spend that you don't have and cannot spend.Certainly poorboy feels better after having called his superiors gullible. The jelly is seeping through at an extraordinary rate.
cheersloss - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Exactly right. There is nothing about this card that is a value. The same compute functions were there in the older flagships as well, the gtx 580, 480, 280 etc.Titan is just an overpriced, overhyped trainwreck. Another attempt at a cashgrab on the gullible.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
LOLGood you run the 280, and I'll run the Titan, and we can be equal and best friends, and I'll tell you over and over all the benchmarks and games and fps scores and compute tests are lying and your 280 is just as good and the same and you're right and I wish so badly that I was as poor as you and just bought a used 3 gen back nVidia card, but they fooled me, the gullible gamer.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
ROFL - aww poor baby, now tessellation and compute is a total loss for amd, too as you conveniently forgot to include the 680, 670 660Ti 660 650Ti 650. hahahahha u people suck.So I can buy 2 amd cards that crash and don't run CF at all 33% of the time, or I can buy the most awesome top card in the entire world of gaming and play all the titles and be just great, or I can buy 2 nVidia cards and SLI them and have every game run except correctly except 1 while amd CF fails often...
I can buy the most stable, fully featured, many more featured nVidia card, or I can buy the dying no catalyst driver writers worth their salt (fired for savings) or left for better waters or headhunted, crashing piece of rotten unsupported glitching amd crap.
$999 looks like a bargain basement price to me. I can hardly wait to own The Shield, too.
Innovation. Awesomeness. New features. Unified drivers THAT JUST WORK.
Features ported BACKWARDS to prior generations.
Cuda
PhysX
Frame Rate Target
Boost
Stable dual card setups
Same game day drivers
Honest company not cheating liars like amd
I BUILT THIS co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang current CEO, a perfect example of the awesomeness of capitalism and personal success and the American Dream in REAL LIFE. lol
( Oh I bet those little OWS activist amd fanboys we have here are shooting blood through every pore)
Why in the world would I buy an amd card ? There's only one reason - to try to save a dying loser in a kind act of CHARITY - and frankly, what we have for amd fanboys is nothing short of the most evil little penny pinching crying whining baby SCROOGES I have ever seen.
So we can FORGET IT when it comes to the amd fanboy rabble here supporting AMD - they support only their own selfish fanboy agenda and psychotic public pocketbook panhandling.
I'd like to thank TheJian for pointing out amd fail coverage, vs the ignoring of the nVidia FINANCIAL SUCCESS STORY:
amd Q earnings coverage
"
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5465/amd-q411-fy-201...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5764/amd-q112-earnin...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6383/amd-q3-2012-ear...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6690/amd-q412-and-fy...
"
nVidia Q earnings coverage
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6746/tegra-4-shipmen...
LOL - let it burn you crybabies to the CORE, I hope blood shoots from your eyes...
xaml - Sunday, March 3, 2013 - link
Don't leave out the biggest "crybaby" of all, yourself.