NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTDiRT: Showdown
Racing to the front of our 2013 list will be our racing benchmark, DiRT: Showdown. DiRT: Showdown is based on the latest iteration of Codemasters’ EGO engine, which has continually evolved over the years to add more advanced rendering features. It was one of the first games to implement tessellation, and also one of the first games to implement a DirectCompute based forward-rendering compatible lighting system. At the same time as Codemasters is by far the most prevalent PC racing developers, it’s also a good proxy for some of the other racing games on the market like F1 and GRID.
DiRT: Showdown is something of a divisive game for benchmarking. The game’s advanced lighting system, while not developed by AMD, does implement a lot of the key concepts they popularized with their Leo forward lighting tech demo. As a result performance with that lighting system turned on has been known to greatly favor AMD cards. With that said, since we’re looking at high-end cards there’s really little reason not to be testing with it turned on since even a slow card can keep up. That said, this is why we also test DiRT with advanced lighting both on and off starting at 1920x1080 Ultra.
The end result is perhaps unsurprising in that NVIDIA already starts with a large deficit with the GTX 680 versus AMD’s Radeon cards. Titan closes the gap and is enough to surpass the 7970GE at every resolution except 5760, but just barely. This is the one game like this and as a result I don’t put a ton of stock into these results on a global level, but I thought it would make for an interesting look none the less.
This also settles some speculation of whether DiRT and its compute-heavy lighting system would benefit from the compute performance improvements Titan brings to the table. The answer to that is yes, but only by roughly as much as the increase in theoretical compute performance over GTX 680. We’re not seeing any kind of performance increase that could be attributed to improved compute efficiency here, which is why Titan can only just beat the 7970GE at 2560 here. However the jury is still out on whether this means that DiRT’s lighting algorithm doesn’t map well to Kepler period, or if it’s an implementation issue. We also saw some unexpected weak DirectCompute performance out of Titan with our SystemCompute benchmark, so this may be further evidence that DirectCompute isn’t currently taking full advantage of everything Titan offers.
In any case, at 2560 Titan is roughly 47% faster than the GTX 680 and all of 3% faster than the 7970GE. It’s enough to get Titan above the 60fps mark here, but at 5760 no single GPU, not even GK110, can get you 60fps. On the other hand, the equivalent AMD dual-GPU products, the 7970GECF and the 7990, have no such trouble. Dual-GPU cards will consistently win, but generally not like this.
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Alucard291 - Friday, March 8, 2013 - link
And once again you spew your b/s out of every orifice.But you still haven't said why you think your walls of nonsense make any difference :)
To 4chan with ya
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
You people literally are pathetic. Right now, the cheapest gtx 670 is $720 sli, right ?Get your sli motherboard, get ready for extra heat, a better PS ( already stated botiques are launching these with 450W PS.
So how many months after 670 launch with reduced prices are you only 25% off the single fastest video card in the world, while you take the cheapest version you can find ?
You people are seriously filling your diapers at an unbelievable rate.
I'll note once again for all you fools who continuously missed it, and still do, because of course, your gigantic flapping lips wraped around the gourd so many times they sealed off oxygen flow to the brain that you not only don't want to face reality, but choose not to on purpose:
There was a manufacturing shortage for die space in Jan 2012 when 79xx did a near paper launch. Availability for that card was short till a day before the small in comparison 680 die hit the shelves far over half a year later, and the SINGLE factory in the entire world for production was busily building out well over 2 BILLION in emergency production space desperately trying to keep up with bare minimum demands.
THERE WAS NO CAPACITY to produce a 7.1B transistor chip. The design of the chips follows a very slow SEVERAL YEAR slog, and even now, yield on the most complex chip ever is no doubt too low for comfort, and far too low to have been "launched" WHEN YOU IDIOT TIN FOIL HAT WEARING CHARLIE D BUTT KISSING MIND SLAVE FOOLS claim the conspiracy against all gamers was undertaken by "the greedy nVidia".
You people suck.
ronin22 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Common, stupid..If you are expecting a gaming card, go buy your AMD whatever.
The real magic of Titan is its compute power.
You were stupid to expect anything else from a GK110
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Good to know amd absolutely failed to produce a top end videocard and has stuck all you tards with their only release, a mid range, at $579+ in comparison.
Be a mid ranger, buy amds flagship, the half mast loser card mid range.
piiman - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Come on it's priced , for now, for the Geeks that have to have the biggest most bad ass card out. It will come down once those suckers...oops I mean enthusiast are sucked dry. :-)CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Since amd is a sucked dry shriveling corpse (excellent fanboy mistreatment by the tightwad whining poorboy amd penny pinching freaks), your theory, if we give a single deformed brain cell of credit to the amd fanboys, when they wail without amd everything will be a thousand bucks, may not pan out.AMD is dying, and when gone, a thousand bucks will be standard, right all you amd fanboys ?
Start getting used to it.
L O L
atlr - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Agreed. I was hoping for an initial price somewhat proportional to the performance like US$700. Perhaps ebay will be flooded with enough 680's and 690's from the early 'ticket' buyers which will cause retail prices of the same to drop.wongwarren - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Guess you guys didn't read the article properly:With a price of $999 Titan is decided out of the price/performance race; Titan will be a luxury product, geared towards a mix of low-end compute customers and ultra-enthusiasts who can justify buying a luxury product to get their hands on a GK110 video card.
Alucard291 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Wait wait wait, a GPU is now a luxury product?There was me thinking that all pc components have long since become commodities...
JeffFlanagan - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
I agree that talk of a luxury GPU seems odd. Is there any game that will actually look better with this card rather than a $400 card?It may allow the user to up the resolution, but is anyone even shipping textures with detail beyond 1080p these days?
I haven't bought a video card in several years, and can still select Ultra settings on new games at 1080p.