The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTOur 2015 GPU Benchmark Suite
Also kicking off alongside GTX Titan X today will be the first article to use our new 2015 GPU benchmark suite.
For 2015 we have upgraded or replaced most of our games, retiring several long-time titles including Bioshock: Infinite, Metro, and our last DirectX 10 game, Crysis Warhead. Our returning titles are Battlefield 4 and Crysis 3, the former of which is still a popular MP title to this day, and the latter continuing to pulverize GPUs well before we hit its highest settings.
Joining these 2 games are 7 new titles. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Far Cry 4 are our new action/shooter games, while Dragon Age: Inquisition rides the line between an action game and an RPG. Meanwhile for strategy games we have Civilization: Beyond Earth and Total War: Attila, these two games representing the latest entries in their respective series. Rounding out our collection is GRID Autosport, the latest GRID game from Codemasters, and the unique first person puzzle/exploration game The Talos Principle from Croteam.
| AnandTech GPU Bench 2015 Game List | ||||
| Game | Genre | API(s) | ||
| Battlefield 4 | FPS | DX11 + Mantle | ||
| Crysis 3 | FPS | DX11 | ||
| Shadow of Mordor | Action/Open World | DX11 | ||
| Civilization: Beyond Earth | Strategy | DX11 + Mantle | ||
| Dragon Age: Inquisition | RPG | DX11 + Mantle | ||
| The Talos Principle | First Person Puzzle | DX11 | ||
| Far Cry 4 | FPS | DX11 | ||
| Total War: Attila | Strategy | DX11 | ||
| GRID Autosport | Racing | DX11 | ||
With new low-level APIs ramping up in 2015, we’re going to be paying particular attention to APIs starting this year, as everyone is interested in seeing what Vulkan (née Mantle) and DirectX 12 can do. Unless otherwise noted, going forward all benchmarks will be using low-level APIs when available, meaning DX12/Vulkan/Mantle when possible.
Meanwhile from a design standpoint our benchmark settings remain unchanged. For lower-end cards we’ll look at 1080p at various quality settings when practical, and for high-end cards we’ll be looking at 1080p and above at the highest quality settings. The one exception to this is 4K, which at 2.25x the resolution of 1440p remains difficult to hit playable framerates, in which case we’ll also include a lower quality setting to showcase what kind of quality hit it takes to make 4K playable on current video cards.
The Test
As for our hardware testbed, it remains unchanged from 2014, being composed of an overclocked Core i7-4960X hosed in an NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition case.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: | AMD Radeon R9 295X2 AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon HD 7990 NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 347.84 Beta AMD Catalyst Cat 15.3 Beta |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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D. Lister - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
@testbug00If this is a 250W card using about the same power as the 290x under gaming load, what does that make the 290x?
Considering the several tens of percent of performance lead over the 290x, I would say it makes the 290x appear laughably inefficient by comparison.
testbug00 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
You misunderstand my point. The 290x was labeled as a 300W TPD (unofficial) card by Anandtech when they reviewed. Everyone refers to it as 300W, sometimes 290W. So, is the 290x a 250W card like the Titan X, or are they both closer to 300W?I understand that TPDs don't mean power draw, but, they are used to express power draw by everyone. Sigh. Partially trying to highlight that issue also. Just like Intel TPD versus AMD TPD, Nvidia's and AMD's TPDs also mean the same thing (I believe Nvidia's is the TPD under heavy load at the base clock, not 100% sure)
D. Lister - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Oh right, sorry for the misunderstanding. TDP (Thermal Design Power) deals with the heat that a processor releases when under load. Watt is a unit that can be used to measure the flow of any type of energy, not just electricity. "Heat", just like electricity, is a form of energy, so the rate of its flow can also be measured in Watts.You may want to check out the following wiki for further reading about TDP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power
will54 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
well the cpu uses more power when the graphics hit higher frames so I'm assuming that the Titan X uses less power than the 290x but since it gets higher frames the CPU has to work harder to feed it so the CPU power draw goes up.packerman - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
So all I saw was that AMD was wiping the floor with it for 300 dollars less. Am I missing something.Intervenator - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Didnt you read the review? It was explained *multiple* times...smilingcrow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Yes, a brain.packerman - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Really explain idiot. The benchmarks reflect that the 295x2 destroyed the card. So it's better because it's the best single gpu option available. Who cares. It 300 dollars less and still wipes the floor. Benchmarks are really what matters.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Benchmarks are what really matter now? That's kind of ironic.Kutark - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Man, that guys comment was a serious /facepalm.