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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CeriseCogburn - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
LMHO - yes by the time the amd fanboy actually declares his amd fanboyism, amd won't be around anymore....Yes, you're done.
Alucard291 - Friday, March 8, 2013 - link
And naturally you're not a fanboy... Dear god... you cannot be that stupid...MrSpadge - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Don't buy it, period.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Another amd fanboy control freak loser.I won't be taking your "advice".
Alucard291 - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Yup you really DO need to grow up a little. Or a lot. Your choice.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Nope, you crybabies and poorboy whiners are the sad little tropes that need adulthood desperately.Adults earn money and have a grand to spend.
Crybaby children do not.
Alucard291 - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
Looking at the way you're expressing your impotent rage all over this review's comment section you sound roughly old enough to be my son's class mate :)DemBones79 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Wow... did no one read the first part of this article? I think it's pretty obvious from the price/performance ratio that NVIDIA is trying to scare away all but the most truly insane enthusiasts and the compute-on-a-budget crowd.My guess is that yields are still abysmally low and they're still reeling from the backlog of Tesla orders that resulted from the Titan supercomputer contract win. Given that, they probably do not have sufficient supply yet to meet "enthusiast" demand, so they priced it more into the "you've got to be insane to pay this much for this little" bracket.
Whereas computer scientists and others who could benefit from the compute tech on the card could probably more readily convince their Finance depts. to loosen the purse strings for this as opposed to a Tesla proper.
Don't be fooled. This may be labeled as a "consumer" card, and it certainly is a performance bump over the 680, but it was not brought into this world for the express purpose of playing games.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
You people are all lying freaks.A day before this, many of you screamed buy 2x of the top end, and when amd was charging $599 for one, you were all good with that.
Now like stupid crybaby two year olds, you've all copped the same whine.
You're all pathetic. All liars, too. All sheep that cannot be consistent at all.
Alucard291 - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Stop being so rude and abusive.Take a break. Stand up go outside, take some deep breaths. Stay away from the internet for a bit.
Might do you some good.