Crysis 3

Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2015.

Crysis 3 - 3840x2160 - High Quality + FXAA

Crysis 3 - 3840x2160 - Low Quality + FXAA

Crysis 3 - 2560x1440 - High Quality + FXAA

With GTX Titan X being based on the same iteration of the Maxwell architecture as the GTX 980 and its GM200 GPU essentially built as a GM204 + 50%, it comes as no surprise that the performance gains over GTX 980 are going to be rather consistent. In Crysis 3 the GTX Titan X holds a 35% performance lead at 4K, with that lead tapering slightly to 30% at 2560. Meanwhile the lead over the GK110 cards isn’t quite what we saw with BF4, dropping to around 45% and 55% for GTX 780 Ti and GTX Titan respectively.

As one of our most punishing games, this is also a good example of where even GTX Titan X will come up short at 4K. Even without MSAA and one step below Crysis 3’s Very High quality settings, the GTX Titan X can only muster 42fps. If you want to get to 60fps you will need to drop to Low quality, or drop the resolution to 1440p. The latter will get you 85.2fps at the same quality settings, which again highlights GTX Titan X’s second strength as a good card for driving high refresh rate 1440p displays.

Meanwhile this is another game where our multi-GPU cards still pull ahead, reminding us of the spoiler potential for the R9 295X2 and the GTX 980 SLI. In fact AMD gets some very good scaling here, and they need it as the GTX Titan X bests the R9 290XU by 56% at 4K High.

Battlefield 4 Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
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  • Urizane - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link

    660 and 660 Ti are different chips entirely, with 660 Ti not fully enabled.
  • chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    @stun you're in for a huge upgrade either way. Makes sense to wait though, but I am not sure if 390X will change current pricing if at all. But Nvidia may also launch a cut down GM200 in that timeframe to give you another option in that $500+ range.
  • Da W - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    Usually, the last one out is the fastest.
  • furthur - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    you're an absolute idiot if you jump on this crap. grab a 290 in the mean time and a 390x on release,
  • Michael Bay - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Maybe he doesn`t need an equivalent of a room heater in his case like you do, brah.
  • Phartindust - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    At 83c, you're not exactly making ice cubes with titan.
  • cactusdog - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Im not convinced about this TitanX and the last titan turned out to be a bad investment for the $1,000 asking price. Last time, Titan came out (at $1,000) then a matter of weeks later , the 780TI came out with the same performance for $300 less. This time, we have the 390X soon but no doubt Nvidia have a 980TI up their sleeve, so the value of these highend $1,000 cards disappears quickly making it a bad investment. I expect a $1,000 card to hold the performance crown for at least 6-12 months not a few weeks, then get out performed by a card that costs $300 less.
  • Laststop311 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    it wasn't weeks later it was many months later
  • D. Lister - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    @cactusdog
    "Titan came out (at $1,000) then a matter of weeks later , the 780TI came out with the same performance for $300 less."
    Actually the 780Ti, having a lot more CUDA cores, destroys the original Titan in gaming performance. The 780Ti equivalent was the "Titan Black", with the same amount of cores, but twice the VRAM, slightly higher default core clock, and fully unlocked compute.
  • Phartindust - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    ^This

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