The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTDragon Age: Inquisition
Our RPG of choice for 2015 is Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest game in the Dragon Age series of ARPGs. Offering an expansive world that can easily challenge even the best of our video cards, Dragon Age also offers us an alternative take on EA/DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine, which powers this game along with Battlefield 4.
Once again turning down Frostbite’s performance-crushing MSAA, what we find at 4K with Ultra quality is that the GTX Titan X is once more hitting framerates in the 40fps range. At 41.7fps the GTX Titan X is the only single-GPU card to average better than 30fps at these settings, with the next-closest card being the GTX 980 at exactly 30fps. Overall the GTX Titan X does particularly well at 4K Ultra, beating the GTX 980 by 39%, the GTX 780 Ti by 53%, and the R9 290XU by 44%.
Users looking for higher framerates can either turn down the quality setting one notch to high, which gets us 54.4fps from the GTX Titan, or drop down to 1440p, which is good for 79.3fps. Meanwhile our multi-GPU configurations once again make their presence felt. At 4K High quality both the GTX 980 SLI are over 60fps, however the GTX Titan X unexpectedly beats the R9 295X2 at 1440p.
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BurnItDwn - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
So its like 50% faster vs a R9 290, but costs 3x as much ... awesome card, but expensive.uber_national - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
I think there's something strange going on in your benchmark if the 7990 is only 3 fps slower than the 295x2 in the 2560x1440 chart...Samus - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
"Unlike the GTX 980 then, for this reason NVIDIA is once again back to skipping the backplate, leaving the back side of the card bare just as with the previous GTX Titan cards."Don't you mean "again back to SHIPPING the backplate?"
I'm confused as the article doesn't show any pictures of the back of the card. Does it have a backplate or not?
xchaotic - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
Nope. A $999 card and it doesn't have a backplate. This is possibly due to easier cooling in SLI configsAntronman - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
It's a blower cooler. So everything goes out the side of the case, which can be desirable if you have cards right on top of each other as the airflow is unobstructed.It's just Nvidia. Unless you need PhysX, you're much better off waiting for the R300s.
Mikmike86 - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
Spring pricing is a bit off.R9 290x's go below $300 after rebates quite often now, Febuary I picked up a 290x for about $240 after rebate which was the lowest but have seen several at or below $300 without a rebate.
R9 290s run around $250 and have gone down to $200-$220 recently as a low.
970s have been hovering around $320 but have gone to $290-$300.
Otherwise the Titan X was more for marketing since the 290x (2yr old tech) claws at the 980 at 4k and the 970 falls on it's face at 4k.
This cards a beast don't get me wrong especially when it chases the 295x2 after overclocking, but when you can get a 295x2 for $600 after rebates a couples times a month it just doesn't make sense.
$800 and I could see these selling like hotcakes and they'd still pocket a solid chunk, probably just going to drop a 980ti in a few months after the 390x is released making these 2nd place cards like they did with the og Titans
I go back and forth between Nvidia and AMD but Nvidia has been extra sketchy recently with their drivers and of course the 970.
Refuge - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
I just dont' appreciate their price premiums.I've been a fan of Green Team since i was a young boy, but anymore I usually lean Red team.
Just not satisfied with what I'm paying over on the other side to be honest.
Yes when I'm on the Red side I don't always have the same peak performance as Green. But I had enough money afterwards to pay my car payment and take the old lady out to dinner still. ;)
sna1970 - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
Nvidia intentionaly made GTX 970 only 4G of ram ... why ? so no one use them in 4K for cheap SLI.I hate nvidia ways.
imagine 3x GTX 970 in SLI for only $900 (300 each)
or 2x GTX 970 , which will be slightly faster than Titan X for $600
but noooooooooo, nvidia will never allow 8G GTX 970 , keep it at 4G so people buy Titan X ...
disgusting . AMD wake up .. we need competition.
medi03 - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link
There is R9 290x available for nearly half of 980's price, being only 5-15% slower. (and 300w vs 370w total power consumption, I'm sure you can live with it)There is R9 295x2 which handily beats Titan X in all performance benchmarks, with power consumption being the only donwside.
Railgun - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
@Ryan Smith. For future reviews, as you briefly touched on it with this one, especially at high resolutions, can you start providing how much VRAM is actually in use with each game? For cards such as this, I'd like to see whether 12GB is actually useful, or pointless at this point. Based on the review and some of the results, it's pointless at the moment, even at 4K.