NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTThe Final Word On Overclocking
Before we jump into our performance breakdown, I wanted to take a few minutes to write a bit of a feature follow-up to our overclocking coverage from Tuesday. Since we couldn’t reveal performance numbers at the time – and quite honestly we hadn’t even finished evaluating Titan – we couldn’t give you the complete story on Titan. So some clarification is in order.
On Tuesday we discussed how Titan reintroduces overvolting for NVIDIA products, but now with additional details from NVIDIA along with our own performance data we have the complete picture, and overclockers will want to pay close attention. NVIDIA may be reintroducing overvolting, but it may not be quite what many of us were first thinking.
First and foremost, Titan still has a hard TDP limit, just like GTX 680 cards. Titan cannot and will not cross this limit, as it’s built into the firmware of the card and essentially enforced by NVIDIA through their agreements with their partners. This TDP limit is 106% of Titan’s base TDP of 250W, or 265W. No matter what you throw at Titan or how you cool it, it will not let itself pull more than 265W sustained.
Compared to the GTX 680 this is both good news and bad news. The good news is that with NVIDIA having done away with the pesky concept of target power versus TDP, the entire process is much simpler; the power target will tell you exactly what the card will pull up to on a percentage basis, with no need to know about their separate power targets or their importance. Furthermore with the ability to focus just on just TDP, NVIDIA didn’t set their power limits on Titan nearly as conservatively as they did on GTX 680.
The bad news is that while GTX 680 shipped with a max power target of 132%, Titan is again only 106%. Once you do hit that TDP limit you only have 6% (15W) more to go, and that’s it. Titan essentially has more headroom out of the box, but it will have less headroom for making adjustments. So hardcore overclockers dreaming of slamming 400W through Titan will come away disappointed, though it goes without saying that Titan’s power delivery system was never designed for that in the first place. All indications are that NVIDIA built Titan’s power delivery system for around 265W, and that’s exactly what buyers will get.
Second, let’s talk about overvolting. What we didn’t realize on Tuesday but realize now is that overvolting as implemented in Titan is not overvolting in the traditional sense, and practically speaking I doubt too many hardcore overclockers will even recognize it as overvolting. What we mean by this is that overvolting was not implemented as a direct control system as it was on past generation cards, or even the NVIDIA-nixed cards like the MSI Lightning or EVGA Classified.
Overvolting is instead a set of two additional turbo clock bins, above and beyond Titan’s default top bin. On our sample the top bin is 1.1625v, which corresponds to a 992MHz core clock. Overvolting Titan to 1.2 means unlocking two more bins: 1006MHz @ 1.175v, and 1019MHz @ 1.2v. Or put another way, overvolting on Titan involves unlocking only another 27MHz in performance.
These two bins are in the strictest sense overvolting – NVIDIA doesn’t believe voltages over 1.1625v on Titan will meet their longevity standards, so using them is still very much going to reduce the lifespan of a Titan card – but it’s probably not the kind of direct control overvolting hardcore overclockers were expecting. The end result is that with Titan there’s simply no option to slap on another 0.05v – 0.1v in order to squeak out another 100MHz or so. You can trade longevity for the potential to get another 27MHz, but that’s it.
Ultimately, this means that overvolting as implemented on Titan cannot be used to improve the clockspeeds attainable through the use of the offset clock functionality NVIDIA provides. In the case of our sample it peters out after +115MHz offset without overvolting, and it peters out after +115MHz offset with overvolting. The only difference is that we gain access to a further 27MHz when we have the thermal and power headroom available to hit the necessary bins.
| GeForce GTX Titan Clockspeed Bins | |||
| Clockspeed | Voltage | ||
| 1019MHz | 1.2v | ||
| 1006MHz | 1.175v | ||
| 992MHz | 1.1625v | ||
| 979MHz | 1.15v | ||
| 966MHz | 1.137v | ||
| 953MHz | 1.125v | ||
| 940MHz | 1.112v | ||
| 927MHz | 1.1v | ||
| 914MHz | 1.087v | ||
| 901MHz | 1.075v | ||
| 888MHz | 1.062v | ||
| 875MHz | 1.05v | ||
| 862MHz | 1.037v | ||
| 849MHz | 1.025v | ||
| 836MHz | 1.012v | ||
Finally, as with the GTX 680 and GTX 690, NVIDIA will be keeping tight control over what Asus, EVGA, and their other partners release. Those partners will have the option to release Titan cards with factory overclocks and Titan cards with different coolers (i.e. water blocks), but they won’t be able to expose direct voltage control or ship parts with higher voltages. Nor for that matter will they be able to create Titan cards with significantly different designs (i.e. more VRM phases); every Titan card will be a variant on the reference design.
This is essentially no different than how the GTX 690 was handled, but I think it’s something that’s important to note before anyone with dreams of big overclocks throws down $999 on a Titan card. To be clear, GPU Boost 2.0 is a significant improvement in the entire power/thermal management process compared to GPU Boost 1.0, and this kind of control means that no one needs to be concerned with blowing up their video card (accidentally or otherwise), but it’s a system that comes with gains and losses. So overclockers will want to pay close attention to what they’re getting into with GPU Boost 2.0 and Titan, and what they can and cannot do with the card.
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chizow - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
I haven't use this rebuttal in a long time, I reserve it for only the most deserving, but you sir are retarded.Everything you've written above is anti-progress, you've set Moore's law and semiconductor progress back 30 years with your asinine rants. If idiots like you running the show, no one would own any electronic devices because we'd be paying $50,000 for toaster ovens.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
Yeah that's a great counter you idiot... as usual when reality barely glints a tiny bit through your lying tin foiled dunce cap, another sensationalistic pile of bunk is what you have.A great cover for a cornered doofus.
When you finally face your immense error, you'll get over it.
hammer256 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Not to sound like a broken record, but for us in scientific computing using CUDA, this is a godsend.The GTX 680 release was a big disappointment for compute, and I was worried that this is going to be the trend going forward with Nvidia: nerfed compute card for the consumers that focuses on graphics, and compute heavy professional cards for the HPC space.
I was worried that the days of cheap compute are gone. These days might still be numbered, but at least for this generation Titan is going to keep it going.
ronin22 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
+1PCTC2 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
For all of you complaining about the $999 price tag. It's like the GTX 690 (or even the 8800 Ultra, for those who remember it). It's a flagship luxury card for those who can afford it.But that's beside the real point. This is a K20 without the price premium (and some of the valuable Tesla features). But for researchers on a budget, using homegrown GPGPU compute code that doesn't validate to run only on Tesla cards, these are a godsend. I mean, some professional programs will benefit from having a Tesla over a GTX card, but these days, researchers are trying to reach into HPC space without the price premium of true HPC enterprise hardware. The GTX Titan is a good middle point. For the price of a Quadro K5000 and a single Tesla K20c card, they can purchase 4 GTX Titans and still have some money to spare. They don't need SLI. They just need the raw compute power these cards are capable of. So as entry GPU Compute workstation cards, these cards hit the mark for those wanting to enter GPU compute on a budget. As a graphics card for your gaming machine, average gamers need not apply.
ronin22 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
"average gamers need not apply"If only people had read this before posting all this hate.
Again, gamers, this card is not for you. Please get the cr*p out of here.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
You have to understand, the review sites themselves have pushed the blind fps mentality now for years, not to mention insanely declared statistical percentages ripened with over-interpretation on the now contorted and controlled crybaby whiners. It's what they do every time, they feel it gives them the status of consumer advisor, Nader protege, fight the man activist, and knowledgeable enthusiast.Unfortunately that comes down the ignorant demands we see here, twisted with as many lies and conspiracies as are needed, to increase the personal faux outrage.
Dnwvf - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
In absolute terms, this is the best non-Tesla compute card on the market.However, looking at flops/$, you'd be better off buying 2 7970Ghz Radeons, which would run around $60 less and give you more total Flops. Look at the compute scores - Titan is generally not 2x a single 7970. And in some of the compute scores, the 7970 wins.
2 7970ghz (not even in crossfire mode, you don't need that for OpenCL), will beat the crap out of Titan and cost less. They couldn't run AOPR on the AMD cards..but everybody knows from bitcoin that Amd cards rule over nvidia for password hashing ( just google bitcoin bit_align_int to see why).
There's an article on Toms Hardware where they put a bunch of nvidia and amd cards through a bunch of compute benchmarks, and when amd isn't winning, the gtx 580 generally beats the 680...most likely due to its 512 bit bus. Titan is still a 384 bit bus...can't really compare on price because Phi costs an arm and a leg like Tesla, but you have to acknowledge that Phi is probably gonna rock out with its 512 bit bus.
Gotta give Nvidia kudos for finally not crippling fp64, but at this price point, who cares? If you're looking to do compute and have a GPU budget of $2K, you could buy:
An older Tesla
2 Titans
-or-
Build a system with 2 7970Ghz and 2 Gtx 580.
And the last system would be the best...compute on the amd cards for certain algorithms, on the nvidia cards for the others, and pci bandwidth issues aside, running multiple complex algorithms simultaneously will rock because you can enqueue and execute 4 OpenCL kernels simultaneously. You'd have to shop around for a while to find some 580's though.
Gamers aren't gonna buy this card unless they're spending Daddy's money, and serious compute folk will realize quickly that if they buy a mobo that will fit 2 or 4 double-width cards, depending on Gpu budget, they can get more flops per dollar with a multiple-card setup (think of it as a micro-sized Gpu compute cluster). Don't believe me? Google Jeremi Gosni oclhashcat.
I'm not much for puns, but this card is gonna flop. (sorry)
DanNeely - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Has any eta on when the rest of the Kepler refresh is due leaked out yet?HisDivineOrder - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
It's way out of my price range, first and foremost.Second, I think the pricing is a mistake, but I know where they are coming from. They're using the same Intel school of thought on SB-E compared to IB. They price it out the wazoo and only the most luxury of the luxury gamers will buy it. It doesn't matter that the benchmarks show it's only mostly better than its competition down at the $400-500 range and not the all-out destruction you might think it capable of.
The cost will be so high it will be spoken of in whispers and with wary glances around, fearful that the Titan will appear and step on you. It'll be rare and rare things are seen as legendary just so long as they can make the case it's the fastest single-GPU out there.
And they can.
So in short, it's like those people buying hexacore CPU's from Intel. You pay out the nose, you get little real gain and a horrible performance per dollar, but it is more marketing than common sense.
If nVidia truly wanted to use this product to service all users, they would have priced it at $600-700 and moved a lot more. They don't want that. They're fine with the 670/680 being the high end for a majority of users. Those cards have to be cheap to make by now and with AMD's delays/stalls/whatever's, they can keep them the way they are or update them with a firmware update and perhaps a minor retooling of the fab design to give it GPU Boost 2.
They've already set the stage for that imho. If you read the way the article is written about GPU Boost 2 (both of them), you can see nVidia is setting up a stage where they introduce a slightly modified version of the 670 and 680 with "minor updates to the GPU design" and GPU Boost 2, giving them more headroom to improve consistency with the current designs.
Which again would be stealing from Intel's playbook of supplement SB-E with IB mainstream cores.
The price is obscene, but the only people who should actually care are the ones who worship at the altar of AA. Start lowering that and suddenly even a 7950 is way ahead of what you need.