NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTSynthetics
As always we’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance to get a better look at Titan’s underpinnings. These tests are mostly for comparing cards from within a manufacturer, as opposed to directly comparing AMD and NVIDIA cards. We’ll start with 3DMark Vantage’s Pixel Fill test.
Pixel fill is a mix of a ROP test and a test to see if you have enough bandwidth to feed those ROPs. At the same time the smallest increase in theoretical performance for Titan over GTX 680 was in ROP performance, where a 50% increase in ROPs was met with a minor clockspeed reduction for a final increase in ROP performance of 25%.
The end result is that with gains of 28%, Titan’s lead over GTX 680 is just a hair more than its increase in theoretical ROP performance. Consequently at first glance it looks like Titan has enough memory and cache bandwidth to feed its 48 ROPs, which given where we’re at today with GDDR5 is good news as GDDR5 has very nearly run out of room.
Moving on, we have our 3DMark Vantage texture fillrate test, which does for texels and texture mapping units what the previous test does for ROPs.
Oddly enough, despite the fact that Titan’s texture performance improvements over GTX 680 were only on the range of 46%, here Titan is measured as having 62% more texturing performance. This may be how Titan is interplaying with its improved bandwidth, or it may be a case where some of the ancillary changes NVIDIA made to the texture paths for compute are somehow also beneficial to proper texturing performance.
Finally we’ll take a quick look at tessellation performance with TessMark.
Unsurprisingly, Titan is well ahead of anything else NVIDIA produces. At 49% faster it’s just a bit over the 46% theoretical performance improvement we would expect from the increased number of Polymorph Engines the extra 6 SMXes bring. Interestingly, as fast as GTX 580’s tessellation performance was, these results would indicate that Titan offers more than a generational jump in tessellation performance, nearly tripling GTX 580’s tessellation performance. Though at this time it’s not at all clear just what such tessellation performance is good for, as we seem to be reaching increasingly ridiculous levels.
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chizow - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
The usage is fine, as it's in reference to Nvidia's practice of overcharging it's customers with exorbitant price increases. That's usury.The "entitlement" comes from helping to build Nvidia from a rinky dink GPU company into the global factor it is today by spending a few thousand dollars every few years on their glorified gaming machines.
The outrage comes from that company thinking it's OK to suddenly up the ante and charge you 2x as much for the same class and level of performance you'd expect from what you've paid every few years in an upgrade.
It's obvious you've never bought into this market before, because you'd feel more invested in what has happened in the landscape of desktop GPUs since the 7970 launch and the rest of Kepler launch and understand what is happening here. I don't plan to buy it as most others I know who have bought in this range of GPU before, most of whom have similar sense of disappointment and disdain for Nvidia's Titan pricing strategy.
As for the last bit...Nvidia has sold their 500+mm^2 ASIC GPUs for much less than even $500 in the past, hell the GTX 285 sold for as low as $330 and even the past GPUs with reported "terrible" yields like the GT200 and GF100 were sold for $500 in quarters where Nvidia still turned a profit. TSMC is charging slightly more per 300mm wafer at 28nm than previous nodes, but nothing close to the 100% premium being asked for with TITAN. So obviously they could sell it for less and still profit, they just chose not to.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
You're an IDIOT.nVidia sells these for THOUSANDS EACH, and production is LIMITED, you idiot gasbag fool.
The fact that they spare a few dies for a grand shows they are being extremely generous with their profit potential and giving you sick ungrateful whining losers a big freaking break !
But you're FAR TOO STUPID to know that. That's why nVidia has a REAL CEO and you're a crybaby whiner FOOL on the internet, who cannot think past his own insane $360 card budget, AND GETS IT 100% INCORRECT.
When nVidia sells one of these limited production monsters to one of you whining ungrateful OWS crybaby losers for a $1000.00, they are LOSING A COUPLE GRAND IN PROFITS, YOU IDIOT !
Have a nice, dumbed down, idiot crybaby loser day.
chizow - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Production isn't limited, Nvidia and the article have shot that down from the outset, so please stop trying to use that as some "limited" production excuse.Nvidia will make as many of these as demand dictates, but they could've just as easily charged $300-400 less and sold untold magnitudes more GK110-based cards. That's the general impression I'm getting from all over the internet and from the circles of enthusiast I've encountered, anyways.
Pricing these at $1K is like stealing candy from a retarded kid (you), but $600-$700 would be justified based on expected price and performance relative to previous generations and worth a look at 1 or even 2 for any enthusiast who purchased in the enthusiast range before and still allowed Nvidia to charge a premium for Kepler's overachieving performance numbers.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
No, they shot down the only 10,000 amd fanboy liar rumor, and claimed there will be "continuing availability".So you're a liar and a fool.
chizow - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
Exactly, you said these were "limited" when they are not, so you stand corrected.Looks like you're the liar and the fool, but why state the obvious?
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
They are limited, production is NOT limitless, a gradeB skumbag fool who needs a clue from a real authority to use common sense (to paraphrase your prior stupid remark) would know that.nVidia CANNOT produce whatever demand is whenever demand goes over production capacity, and the price you want, you have implied it would.
So go blow it out your tinfoil hat.
chizow - Monday, February 25, 2013 - link
Production is limited by demand with GK110, not some artificial "limited" production warranting the $1K price tag as you implied. But why state the obvious about the law of supply and demand?Please stop trying to cover your tracks with dishonesty, you were wrong to say Titan is limited when it was not, now move along.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
Moving along would be you checking production capacity and the dates in question, of course instead you've gourd bolted reynolds wrap.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Yes mlambert908, they are spoiled lying crybaby children.Thanks for being another sane voice in the wilderness.
The crybabies need to become men and earn a living, so they stop embarrassing themselves. Not that they know or understand that, nor that they ever will, but it gets sickeningly redundant when they poo their diapers all over the place every time.
How about they grow up, get to work, and buy a video card once without whining like spoiled brats for months on end over the evil overlords who just won't give them a huge break because... they demand it.
Maybe the Illegal Usurper will start enforcing price controls for them in this crappy economic worldwide situation where ALL prices have been rising greatly for a number of years.
Perhaps the fantasy world the brat fanboy crybabies live in is actually a sheltered virtual unreality absolutely separate from RL.
Charlie D's slaves, with deranged fantasy brains, and like you said, one of the sickest cases of entitlement the world has ever seen.
chizow - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
It's funny that you keep mentioning Charlie D., your asinine rants make him look like a genius and a prophet.