NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
Bringing things to a close, most of what we’ve seen with Titan has been a long time coming. Since the introduction of GK110 back at GTC 2012, we’ve had a solid idea of how NVIDIA’s grandest GPU would be configured, and it was mostly a question of when it would make its way to consumer hands, and at what clockspeeds and prices.
The end result is that with the largest Kepler GPU now in our hands, the performance situation closely resembles the Fermi and GT200 generations. Which is to say that so long as you have a solid foundation to work from, he who builds the biggest GPU builds the most powerful GPU. And at 551mm2, once more NVIDIA is alone in building massive GPUs.
No one should be surprised then when we proclaim that GeForce GTX Titan has unquestionably reclaimed the single-GPU performance crown for NVIDIA. It’s simply in a league of its own right now, reaching levels of performance no other single-GPU card can touch. At best, at its very best, AMD’s Radeon HD 7970GE can just match Titan, which is quite an accomplishment for AMD, but then at Titan’s best it’s nearly a generation ahead of the 7970GE. Like its predecessors, Titan delivers the kind of awe-inspiring performance we have come to expect from NVIDIA’s most powerful video cards.
With that in mind, as our benchmark data has shown, Titan’s performance isn’t quite enough to unseat this generation’s multi-GPU cards like the GTX 690 or Radeon HD 7990. But with that said this isn’t a new situation for us, and we find our editorial stance has not changed: we still suggest single-GPU cards over multi-GPU cards when performance allows for it. Multi-GPU technology itself is a great way to improve performance beyond what a single GPU can do, but as it’s always beholden to the need for profiles and the inherent drawbacks of AFR rendering, we don’t believe it’s desirable in situations such as Titan versus the GTX 690. The GTX 690 may be faster, but Titan is going to deliver a more consistent experience, just not quite at the same framerates as the GTX 690.
Meanwhile in the world of GPGPU computing Titan stands alone. Unfortunately we’re not able to run a complete cross-platform comparison due to Titan’s outstanding OpenCL issue, but from what we have been able to run Titan is not only flat-out powerful, but NVIDIA has seemingly delivered on their compute efficiency goals, giving us a Kepler family part capable of getting far closer to its theoretical efficiency than GTX 680, and closer than any other GPU before it. We’ll of course be taking a further look at Titan in comparison to other GPUs once the OpenCL situation is resolved in order to come to a better understanding of its relative strengths and weaknesses, but for the first wave of Titan buyers I’m not sure that’s going to matter. If you’re doing GPU computing, are invested in CUDA, and need a fast compute card, then Titan is the compute card CUDA developers and researchers have been dreaming of.
Back in the land of consumer gaming though, we have to contend with the fact that unlike any big-GPU card before it, Titan is purposely removed from the price/performance curve. NVIDIA has long wanted to ape Intel’s ability to have an extreme/luxury product at the very top end of the consumer product stack, and with Titan they’re going ahead with that.
The end result is that Titan is targeted at a different demographic than GTX 580 or other such cards, a demographic that has the means and the desire to purchase such a product. Being used to seeing the best video cards go for less we won’t call this a great development for the competitive landscape, but ultimately this is far from the first luxury level computer part, so there’s not much else to say other than that this is a product for a limited audience. But what that limited audience is getting is nothing short of an amazing card.
Like the GTX 690, NVIDIA has once again set the gold standard for GPU construction, this time for a single-GPU card. GTX 680 was a well-built card, but next to Titan it suddenly looks outdated. For example, despite Titan’s significantly higher TDP it’s no louder than the GTX 680, and the GTX 680 was already a quiet card. Next to price/performance the most important metric is noise, and by focusing on build quality NVIDIA has unquestionably set the new standard for high-end, high-TDP video cards.
On a final note, normally I’m not one for video card gimmicks, but after having seen both of NVIDIA’s Titan concept systems I have to say NVIDIA has taken an interesting route in justifying the luxury status of Titan. With the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition only available with open air or exotic cooling, Titan has been put into a position where it’s the ultimate blower card by a wide margin. The end result is that in scenarios where blowers are preferred and/or required, such as SFF PCs or tri-SLI, Titan is even more of an improvement over the competition than it is for traditional desktop computers. Or as Anand has so eloquently put it with his look at Falcon Northwest’s Tiki, when it comes to Titan “The days of a high end gaming rig being obnoxiously loud are thankfully over.”
Wrapping things up, on Monday we’ll be taking a look at the final piece of the puzzle: Origin’s tri-SLI full tower Genesis PC. The Genesis has been an interesting beast for its use of water cooling with Titan, and with the Titan launch behind us we can now focus on what it takes to feed 3 Titan video cards and why it’s an impeccable machine for multi-monitor/surround gaming. So until then, stay tuned.
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CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Here you are arac, some places can do things this place claims it cannot.See the massive spanking amd suffers.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/02/21/nvidia...
That's beyond a 40% lead for the nvidia Titan above and beyond the amd flagship. LOL
No problem. No cpu limited crap. I guess some places know how to test.
TITAN 110 min 156 max
7970ghz 72 min 94 max
TheJian - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
Jeez, I wish I had read your post before digging up my links. Yours is worse than mine making my point on skyrim even more valid.In your link the GTX670 takes out the 7970ghz even at 2560x1200. I thought all these dumb NV cards were bandwidth limited ;) Clear separation on all cards in this "cpu limited" benchmark on ALL resolutions.
Hold on let me wrap my head around this...So with your site, and my 3 links to skyrim benchmarks in my posts (one of them right here at anandtech telling how to add gfx, their 7970ghz article), 3/4 of them showing separations according to their GPU class...Doesn't that mean they are NOT cpu bound? Am I missing something here? :) Are you wondering if Ryan benched skyrim with the hi-res pack after it came out, found it got smacked around by NV and dropped it? I mean he's claiming he tested it right above your post and found skyrim cpu limited. Is he claiming he didn't think adding a HI-RES PACK that's official would NOT add graphical slowdowns? This isn't a LOW-RES pack right?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-...
Isn't that Ryan's article:
"We may have to look at running extra graphics effects (e.g. TrSSAA/AAA) to thin the herd in the future."...Yep I think that's his point. PUT IN THE FREAKIN PACK. Because Skyrim didn't just become worthless as a benchmark as TONS are playing it, unlike Crysis Warhead and Dirt Showdown. Which you can feel free to check the server link I gave, nobody playing Warhead today either. I don't think anyone ever played Showdown to begin with (unlike warhead which actually was fun in circa 2008).
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/23202/crysis-warhead/
Global sales .01mil...That's a decimal point right?
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70754/dirt-showdown/
It hasn't reached enough sales to post the decimal point. Heck xbox360 only sold 140K units globally. Meanwhile:
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/49111/the-elder-scrol...
2.75million sold (that's not a decimal any more)! Which one should be in the new game suite? Mods and ratings are keeping this game relevant for a long time to come. That's the PC sales ONLY (which is all we're counting here anyway).
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Official_Add-on...
The high-res patch is an OFFICIAL addon. Can't see why it's wrong to benchmark what EVERYONE would download to check out that bought the game, released feb 2012. Heck benchmark dawnguard or something. It came Aug 2012. I'm pretty sure it's still selling and being played. PCper, techpowerup, anandtech's review of the 7970ghz and now this bit-tech.net site. Skyrim's not worth benching but all 4 links show what to do (up the gfx!) and results come through fine and 3 sites show NV winning (your site of course the one of the four that ignores the game - hmm, sort of shows my bias comment doesn't it?). No cpu limit at 3 other sites who installed the OFFICIAL pack I guess, but you can't be bothered to test a HI-RES pack that surely stresses a gpu harder than without? What are we supposed to believe here?
Looks like you may have a point Cerise.
Thanks for the link BTW:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/02/21/nvidia...
You can consider witcher 2 added as a 15th benchmarkable game you left out Ryan. Just wish they'd turn on ubersampling. As mins are ~55 for titan here even at 2560x1600. Clearly with it on this would be a NON cpu limited game too (it isn't cpu limited even off). Please refrain from benchmarking games with less than a 100K units in sales. By definition that means nobody is playing them OR buying them right? And further we can extrapolate that nobody cares about their performance. Can anyone explain why skyrim with hires (and an addon that came after) is excluded but TWO games with basically ZERO sales are in here as important games that will be hanging with us for a few years?
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
Yes, appreciate it thanks, and your links I'll be checking out now.They already floated the poster vote article for the new game bench lineup, and what was settled upon already was Never Settle heavily flavored, so don't expect anything but the same or worse here.
That's how it goes and there's a lot of pressure and PC populism and that great 2 week yearly vacation, and certainly attempting to prop a dying amd ship that "enables" this whole branch of competition for review sites is certainly not ignored. A hand up, a hand out, give em hand !
lol
Did you see where Wiz there at TPU in Titan review mentioned nVidia SLI plays 18 of 19 in house game tests and amd CF fails on 6 of them... currently fails on 6 of 19.
" NVIDIA has done a very good job here in the past, and out of the 19 games in our test suite, SLI only fails in F1 2012. Compare that to 6 out of 19 failed titles with AMD CrossFire. "
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...
So the amd fanboys have a real problem recommending 79xx rather 7xxx or 6xxx doubled or tripled up as an alternative with equal or better cost and "some performance wins" when THIRTY THREE PERCENT OF THE TIME AMD CF FAILS.
I'm sorry, I was supposed to lie about that and claim all of amd's driver issues are behind it and it's all equal and amd used to have problems and blah blah blah the green troll company has driver issues too and blah blah blah...
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
Oh man, investigative reporting....lol" http://www.vgchartz.com/game/23202/crysis-warhead/
Global sales .01mil...That's a decimal point right?
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70754/dirt-showdown/
It hasn't reached enough sales to post the decimal point. Heck xbox360 only sold 140K units globally. Meanwhile:
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/49111/the-elder-scrol...
2.75million sold (that's not a decimal any more)! Which one should be in the new game suite? "
Well it's just a mad, mad, amd world ain't it.
You have a MASSIVE point there.
Excellent link, that's a bookmark.
Zingam - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
GeForce Titan "That means 1/3 FP32 performance, or roughly 1.3TFLOPS"Playstation 4 "High-end PC GPU (also built by AMD), delivering 1.84TFLOPS of performance"
Can somebody explain to me how that above could be? GeForce Titan $999 graphics card has much lesser performance than what would be in basically (if I understand properly) an APU by AMD for $500 for the full system??? I doubt that Sony will accept $1000 or more loss but what I find even more doubtful that an APU could have that much performance.
Please, somebody clarify!
chizow - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
1/3 FP32 is double-precision FP64 throughput for Titanic. The PS4 must be quoting single-precision FP32 throughput and 1.84TFlops is nothing impressive in that regard. I believe GT200/RV670 were producing numbers in that range for single-precision FLOPs.Blazorthon - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
You are correct about PS4 quoting single precision and such, but I'm sure that you're wrong about GT200 being anywhere near 1.8TFLOPS in single precision. That number is right around the Radeon 7850.chizow - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
GT200 was around 1TFlop, I was confused because the same gen cards (RV670) were in the 1.2-1.3TFLOP range due to AMD's somewhat overstated VLIW5 theoretical peak numbers. Cypress for example was ~2.5TFlops so I wasn't too far off the mark in quoted TFLOPs.But yes if PS4 is GCN the performance would be closer to a 7850 in an apples to apples comparison.
frogger4 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Yep, the quoted number for the PS4 is the single precision performance. It's just over the single precision FP for the HD7850 at 1.76flops, and it has one more compute unit, so that makes sense. The double precision for Pitcairn GPUs is 1/16th of that.The single precision performance for the Titan is (more than) three times the 1.3Tflop double precision number. Hope that clears it up!
StealthGhost - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Why are the settings/resolution used for, at least Battlefield 3, not consistent with those used in previous tests on GPUs, most directly those in Bench? Makes it harder to compare.Bench is such a great tool, it should be constantly updated and completely relevant, not discarded like it seems to be with these tests.