The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
Though not as intricate as Crysis 3 or Shadow of Mordor, Civilization still requires a very powerful GPU to run it at 4K if you want to hit 60fps. In fact of our single-GPU configurations the GTX Titan X is the only card to crack 60fps, delivering 69fps at the game’s most extreme setting. This is once again well ahead of the GTX 980 – beating it by 31% at 4K – and 40%+ ahead of the GK110 cards. On the other hand this is the closest AMD’s R9 290XU will get, with the GTX Titan X only beating it by 23% at 4K.
Meanwhile at 1440p it’s entirely possible to play Civilization at 120fps, making it one of a few games where the GTX Titan X can keep up with high refresh rate 1440p monitors.
When it comes to minimum framerates the GTX Titan X doesn’t dominate quite like it does at average framerates, but it still handily takes the top spot. Even at its worst, the GTX Titan X can still deliver 44fps at 4K under Civilization.
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dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Had no idea that non reference Hawaii cards were generally undervolted resulting in lower power consumption. Source?chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
There is some science behind it, heat results in higher leakage resulting in higher power consumption. But yes I agree, the reviews show otherwise, in fact, they show the cards that dont' throttle and boost unabated draw even more power, closer to 300W. So yes, that increased perf comes at the expense of higher power consumption, not sure why the AMD faithful believe otherwise.FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
Duh. It's because they hate Physx.Kutark - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Yes, some of the new designs from aftermarket are cooler and quiter, but they dont use less power, the GPU is generating the power, the aftermarket companies can't alter that. They can only tame the beast, so to speak.Yojimbo - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Would be a good point if the performance were the same. But the Titan X is 50% faster. The scores are also total system power usage under gaming load, not card usage. Running at 50% faster frame rates is going to tax other parts of the system more, as well.Kutark - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
You're kidding right. Your framerate in no way affects your power usage.nevcairiel - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Actually, it might. If the GPU is faster, it might need more CPU power, which in turn can increase power draw from the CPU.DarkXale - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Of course. Its the entire point of DX12/Mantle/Vulcan/Metal to reduce per-frame CPU work, and as a consequence per-frame CPU power consumption.Yojimbo - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
The main point of my post is that Titan X gets 50% more performance/system watt. But yes, your frame rate should affect your power usage if you are GPU-bound. The CPU, for instance, will be working harder maintaining the higher frame rates. How much harder, I have no idea, but it's a variable that needs to be considered before testbug00's antecedent can be considered true.dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Actually frame rates have a lot to do with power usage.I don't think that needs any further explanation, anyone who's even moderately informed knows this, and even if they didn't could probably figure out why this might be the case in about 10 seconds.