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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Tetracycloide - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
That's the thing, it's not a 'consumer gaming card.' It's a consumer compute card. Obviously the price for performance for gaming makes no sense but that's not their target market.ronin22 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
This exactly!It's an amazing card for computing.
I wish I could get one...
Blazorthon - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
In reply to both of your comments, I have to ask this: If that is justification for its price, then why is it that AMD doesn't have their Tahiti cards priced like that and why didn't Nvidia price their previous consumer compute cards like that (GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 480, GTX 580, etc.)?CommandoCATS - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
Because this seems like a specialized thing for people who care about compute tasks within NVidia's CUDA universe (and things like iRay, which didn't exist when previous generations first came out).The truth is that in academia and research, CUDA is still the top dog (just do a google scholar search). I'm sure for most gamers, the GTX 680 is the way better deal. However, this is essentially a Tesla K20 for 1/3rd of the cost, so it's kind of a bargain from that perspective.
cheersloss - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Exactly right. There is nothing about this card that is a value. The same compute functions were there in the older flagships as well, the gtx 580, 480, 280 etc.Titan is just an overpriced, overhyped trainwreck. Another attempt at a cashgrab on the gullible.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
The gullible that have the several thousands of extra they can spend that you don't have and cannot spend.Certainly poorboy feels better after having called his superiors gullible. The jelly is seeping through at an extraordinary rate.
cheersloss - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Exactly right. There is nothing about this card that is a value. The same compute functions were there in the older flagships as well, the gtx 580, 480, 280 etc.Titan is just an overpriced, overhyped trainwreck. Another attempt at a cashgrab on the gullible.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
LOLGood you run the 280, and I'll run the Titan, and we can be equal and best friends, and I'll tell you over and over all the benchmarks and games and fps scores and compute tests are lying and your 280 is just as good and the same and you're right and I wish so badly that I was as poor as you and just bought a used 3 gen back nVidia card, but they fooled me, the gullible gamer.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
ROFL - aww poor baby, now tessellation and compute is a total loss for amd, too as you conveniently forgot to include the 680, 670 660Ti 660 650Ti 650. hahahahha u people suck.So I can buy 2 amd cards that crash and don't run CF at all 33% of the time, or I can buy the most awesome top card in the entire world of gaming and play all the titles and be just great, or I can buy 2 nVidia cards and SLI them and have every game run except correctly except 1 while amd CF fails often...
I can buy the most stable, fully featured, many more featured nVidia card, or I can buy the dying no catalyst driver writers worth their salt (fired for savings) or left for better waters or headhunted, crashing piece of rotten unsupported glitching amd crap.
$999 looks like a bargain basement price to me. I can hardly wait to own The Shield, too.
Innovation. Awesomeness. New features. Unified drivers THAT JUST WORK.
Features ported BACKWARDS to prior generations.
Cuda
PhysX
Frame Rate Target
Boost
Stable dual card setups
Same game day drivers
Honest company not cheating liars like amd
I BUILT THIS co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang current CEO, a perfect example of the awesomeness of capitalism and personal success and the American Dream in REAL LIFE. lol
( Oh I bet those little OWS activist amd fanboys we have here are shooting blood through every pore)
Why in the world would I buy an amd card ? There's only one reason - to try to save a dying loser in a kind act of CHARITY - and frankly, what we have for amd fanboys is nothing short of the most evil little penny pinching crying whining baby SCROOGES I have ever seen.
So we can FORGET IT when it comes to the amd fanboy rabble here supporting AMD - they support only their own selfish fanboy agenda and psychotic public pocketbook panhandling.
I'd like to thank TheJian for pointing out amd fail coverage, vs the ignoring of the nVidia FINANCIAL SUCCESS STORY:
amd Q earnings coverage
"
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5465/amd-q411-fy-201...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5764/amd-q112-earnin...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6383/amd-q3-2012-ear...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6690/amd-q412-and-fy...
"
nVidia Q earnings coverage
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6746/tegra-4-shipmen...
LOL - let it burn you crybabies to the CORE, I hope blood shoots from your eyes...
xaml - Sunday, March 3, 2013 - link
Don't leave out the biggest "crybaby" of all, yourself.