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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veppers - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Grow up man.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Adults like myself face reality. Lying fanboys act like spoiled brats and cannot stand to hear or see the truth.You're a child.
Alucard291 - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
Yup and you sound just like the spoilt brat in question. This is not engadget mate. Go away.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
So far you've posted 3 attacks against me, and added exactly NOTHING to any discussion here.It's clear you're the whining troll with nothing to say, so you are one that needs to go away, right ? Right.
chizow - Monday, February 25, 2013 - link
Oh the irony, you are crying about posting personal attacks and adding nothing to any discussion here? That's what every single one of your posts boils down to.Alucard291 - Friday, March 8, 2013 - link
The discussion? You spew random offensive insulting nonsense against anyone who dares to point out that slower + more expensive is worse than faster and cheaper (be it amd or nv).You then proceed to attack people (on a very personal level I might add) for whatever other reason and go on to say that AMD (did anyone except you even mention amd? - well I'm sure some did but mostly due to your constant stream of butthurt) is terrible.
Cool don't use them. Calm down, relax, take a breather go for a walk.
Or of course you can continue whiteknighting some random product that you are unlikely (given the odds) to ever buy for yourself. Who cares. Just get off the neophyte train when you do it. Ok?
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 - link
You have no clue on any odds.Like I said, you people are 3rd worlder crybabies.
Between bragging hardcore upper end users frequent Anandtech, you whine and cry about 1/3rd the price of a decent PC.
You're all full of it, and all act like you're budget is personal malaria in sub saharan Africa, except of course when you're rig bragging.
This is the USA, except of course wherever you penniless paupers reside.
RussianSensation - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Yes, yes. Keep eating NV's marketing. 36-38% faster than a $430 HD7970GE for $1000???!!http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/20...
Heck, you can buy a $500 Asus Matrix Platinum 7970 and those overclock to 1300mhz, which makes the Matrix 30% faster than the GTX680. Do the math and see where that ends up relative to the Titan.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canu...
This is really a $699 card max.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Why buy a crashing piece of crap amd cannot even write drivers for ?Forget it.
AMD is almost gone too, so "future proof" is nowhere except in nVidia's pocket.
Now and in the future, nVidia wins period.
Idiots buy amd.
Hrel - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
The problem with that reasoning, that they're raising here, is that the 7970 is almost as fast and costs a lot less. The Titan is competing, based on performance, with the 7970. Based on that comparison it's a shitty deal.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$430. So based on that I'd say the highest price you can justify for this card is $560. We'll round up to $600.
Nvidia shipping this, at this price, and just saying "it's a luxury product" is bullshit. It's not a luxury product, it's their version of a 7970GHE. But they want to try and get a ridiculous profit to support their PhysX and CUDA projects.
Nvidia just lost me as a customer. This is the last straw. This card should be pushing the pricing down on the rest of their lineup. They SHOULD be introducing it to compete with the 7970GHE. Even at my price range, compare the GTX660 to the 7870GHE, or better yet the sub $200 7850. They just aren't competitive anymore. I'll admit, I was a bit of a Nvidia fan boy. Loved their products. Was disappointed by older ATI cards and issues I had with them. (stability, screen fitting properly, audio issues) But ATI has become AMD and they've improved quality a lot and Nvidia is USING their customers loyalty; that's just wrong.
I'm done with Nvidia on the desktop. By the time I need a new laptop AMD will probably have the graphics switching all sorted; so I'm probably done with Nvidia on laptops too.