Origin Genesis Review: Triple Titan Terror
by Ryan Smith on April 23, 2013 9:00 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
Though it didn’t go as initially intended, our time evaluating Origin’s Genesis ended up being enlightening for entirely different reasons. It’s one thing to look at a tri-SLI system, but it’s extremely rare that we get to look at any kind of liquid cooled GPU system, let alone one packing 3 cards as fast as NVIDIA’s GTX Titan. NVIDIA told us that they wanted to showcase tri-SLI Titan in an interesting manner, and though this isn’t quite what they had planned Origin has unquestionably done just that.
The Genesis, simply put, is obscene. With a heavily overclocked Core i7 processor, 3 overclocked GTX Titans, RAID-0 SSDs, liquid cooling throughout, and a number of other smaller touches, the performance of the Genesis is on a level all its own. Which almost presents us with a problem, since so much of the review process is comparative. The Genesis is essentially the fastest thing you can build in an ATX form factor, packing some of the most powerful components available today and built in a case heavy-duty enough to flatten someone ACME style. What can you even begin to meaningfully compare that to?
At nearly $9,000 for our system as equipped, the Genesis stands alone in every possible way. Perhaps it’s fitting then that it’s a lot like the GTX Titan itself: expensive, powerful, and impressive. With Titan NVIDIA set out to create a luxury video card, and the Genesis is the logical conclusion of that process, bringing Titan into a luxury computer. A $9000 gaming computer isn’t economical by any definition of the word, but for the few that can afford such a toy, there simply aren’t any other toys like this.
Ultimately in evaluating the Genesis it’s not a question of value for its potential customers, but rather a question of needs and tradeoffs. 3 Titans in tri-SLI offers a level of gaming performance that exceeds all but the most challenging games, and while even 2 Titans may be necessary to drive a single display, with 3 Titans it’s simply a foregone conclusion that it’s intended to drive surround gaming. It takes something this powerful to unlock the ability to run at the highest quality settings at the highest resolutions.
The tradeoff for all of this is that powerful systems consume a lot of power themselves, and the Genesis is no exception. The Genesis is built to consume 1200W in power and expel it as 1200W in heat, something it does extremely well thanks to the liquid cooling system. That liquid cooling system is always active however, so if the Genesis does have one drawback it’s that while it sings under load, that cooling system is singing under idle, too.
As for Titan itself, though Anand and I agreed in our look at Falcon Northwest’s Tiki that the SFF is the most interesting application of Titan right now in this age of power efficiency and quiet computing, tri-SLI Titan is a stark reminder that there are benefits for going big, too. Once you get past the hump of SLI versus the multi-monitor performance penalty, SLI scaling is at least solid on everything we’ve tested. And despite our concerns about being CPU limited, at multi-monitor resolutions and backed by a bleeding edge CPU there’s still plenty of room for Titan to soar. Tri-SLI Titan can handle everything we throw at it and then-some. Ultimately it’s serving a niche of a niche (of a niche), but the performance is there for a price.
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - link
That's been square millimetres the whole time.Loonybean - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - link
I wonder if Origin missed the bus with the fans, I've just built a dual Titan rig for a customer with 1 x 360mm and 1 x 240mm radiator, using Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1450 fans, and you can hardly hear it with the fans running full speed. I did use a 3770K @ 4.75Ghz, so there's probably less heat there though.FalcomPSX - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - link
to put this in perspective, 1300w draw is pretty close to what an average air conditioner sucks down to cool a house. So this computer if running anywhere near 1000w draw while gaming, could effectively double your electric bill in the summer. Especially considering the heat it puts out cooling all these components means you'll run your AC even more to keep the house temperate. Crazy how much power this beast draws.That being said, under most normal scenarios I'd be willing to bet it still draws in the 300-600w range while surround gaming, if not more, which is a far cry from 1300w, but still enough to seriously spike your electricity use.
Hadwells - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - link
Thanks, Ryan,I tried some quick searches and couldn't find anyone testing multiple Titans in a dual/triple WQXGA (2650x1600) setup. I'm not really a gamer, is it that no games support 5300x1600 or 7950x1600 resolutions? You mention this in your last paragraph, any numbers for this setup?
Three of those "overclockable" monitors could be had for ~$1400 these days, not out of place for a $9000 computer.
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - link
They support it. We simply don't have the equipment to test it.garrun - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Do you have the equipment to test a 4k monitor/TV with it? I don't even know what inputs 4k takes...Alien0007 - Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - link
Hey, I have been looking everywhere for a true liquid cooled titan review. Thanks for all the great information.What I have read about GPU boost 2.0 is that if you can keep the temps below the selected temp max setting the GPU will keep boosting at top speed.
What clock speeds are you hitting when you add the optional voltage increase that Nvidia allows?
Given that you can keep temps really low with the liquid cooling. Is this thing hitting 1200 Mhz or what?
As soon as I heard of GPU boost 2.0, I thought this is going to be killer when you can liquid cool the Titan. That's the only thing the article was missing for me.
Thanks
Alien0007 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
?HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Don't lie. You kept this system as long as they'd let you, gaming the hell out of it. You "got sick" and then "had some meetings" and what not while you were busy blowing Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Metro, etc up.Then when you were done with all your gaming and you received your, "Final notice before we bill you for the review system, please return!" you squealed like a piggy and began hurriedly writing a review.
That's when the cold reality of day came the next morning. Soon, your precious would no longer be yours. Soon, you would not have tri-Titan SLI. Soon, you would be back to normal people gaming.
And you wept.
rwei - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
o.O