The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTOverclocking
Finally, no review of a GTX Titan card would be complete without a look at overclocking performance.
From a design standpoint, GTX Titan X already ships close to its power limits. NVIDIA’s 250W TDP can only be raised another 10% – to 275W – meaning that in TDP limited scenarios there’s not much headroom to play with. On the other hand with the stock voltage being so low, in clockspeed limited scenarios there’s a lot of room for pushing the performance envelope through overvolting. And neither of these options addresses the most potent aspect of overclocking, which is pushing the entirely clockspeed curve higher at the same voltages by increasing the clockspeed offsets.
GTX 980 ended up being a very capable overclocker, and as we’ll see it’s much the same story for the GTX Titan X.
| GeForce GTX Titan X Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1002MHz | 1202MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1076Mhz | 1276MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1215MHz | 1452MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 7GHz | 7.8GHz | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.162v | 1.218v | ||
Even when packing 8B transistors into a 601mm2, the GM200 GPU backing the GTX Titan X continues to offer the same kind of excellent overclocking headroom that we’ve come to see from the other Maxwell GPUs. Overall we have been able to increase our GPU clockspeed by 200MHz (20%) and the memory clockspeed by 800MHz (11%). At its peak this leads to the GTX Titan X pushing a maximum boost clock of 1.45GHz, and while TDP restrictions mean it can’t sustain this under most workloads, it’s still an impressive outcome for overclocking such a large GPU.
The performance gains from this overclock are a very consistent 16-19% across all 5 of our sample games at 4K, indicating that we're almost entirely GPU-bound as opposed to memory-bound. Though not quite enough to push the GTX Titan X above 60fps in Shadow of Mordor or Crysis 3, this puts it even closer than the GTX Titan X was at stock. Meanwhile we do crack 60fps on Battlefield 4 and The Talos Principle.
The tradeoff for this overclock is of course power and noise, both of which see significant increases. In fact the jump in power consumption with Crysis is a bit unexpected – further research shows that the GTX Titan X shifts from being temperature limited to TDP limited as a result of our overclocking efforts – while FurMark is in-line with the 25W increase in TDP. The 55dB noise levels that result, though not extreme, also mean that GTX Titan X is drifting farther away from being a quiet card. Ultimately it’s a pretty straightforward tradeoff for a further 16%+ increase in performance, but a tradeoff nonetheless.
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D. Lister - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
@packermanSo all I saw was that AMD was wiping the floor with it for 300 dollars less. Am I missing something.
While I agree with the new Nvidia card being overpriced, ultimately one cannot disregard the facts that the 295x2,
- is Dual GPU, so its added performance is tied to a crossfire profile.
- consumes nearly twice the power under load, inevitably needing a much more expensive PSU.
- comes with factory water-cooling, and hence the added space requirement.
- is limited to the DX12.0 feature set, compared the DX12.1 for the Titan x.
- launched at $500 more.
Railgun - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
"the original GTX Titan's time as NVIDIA's first prosumer card was short-lived"I don't know about that. What's the definition of a prosumer card now? It was originally because of FP64 performance. Now, this doesn't have that that. Granted, single precision is better, but not astronomical compared to the original. I'd argue it's not a prosumer part (anymore), just a really good consumer part.
dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
I think that's precisely what he's trying to say.testbug00 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Why is the 290x ueber mode not highlighted on the charts? For people that this segment aims at, they would use that. Makes a review that is good put a bad taste in my mouth. Nice card for gamers (if you can pay the price) still :)testbug00 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
On a side note, if you do use both 290x versions, please note so under "the test" as to be more clear. Thanks.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
So the super rebranded, overclocked tricked out cranked to the max housefire no new card. card ?Why don't we just strap on a liquid nitrogen tank below a block of dry ice and compare ?
chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Monster of a card, I was pretty anti-Titan when they first released it but this one actually makes sense now that Nvidia shed all the false pretenses of it doubling as a "Compute" card.But in comparison we see Titan:
1) fully enabled ASIC from the outset
2) first launched GM200
3) Quadruple standard VRAM of last major flagship GPU
4) Nearly double performance of previous flagship (GK210)
5) ~1.5x perf of same-gen performance 980, and just slower than 2x980 in SLI ($1100).
Nvidia's sales strategy is odd though, going direct sales first, hopefully that doesn't anger their retailers and partners too much. Made sense though given Nvidia has been selling self-branded cards at BestBuy for awhile now.
I was going to either pick up a 2nd 980 for less or one of these, looks like it will be one of these. Was all set to check out til I was hit with sales tax, I'll have to wait a few weeks for Newegg and I'll just pick up EVGA's SuperClocked version for the same total price.
AMD will most likely launch a comparable performance part in the 390X in a few weeks/months, but it will most likely come with a bunch of caveats and asterisks. Good option for AMD fans though!
joeh4384 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
I think AMD might actually win this generation due to having a head start on HBM. Hopefully there arent long delays though. I think AMD's problem isn't their cards, just that they have been late to the dance the last couple of generations.chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
I guess we will see, I don't think HBM will make the impact people think it will. Titan X has what 30% more bandwidth than the 980 and still seems to scale better with core overclocking (same for 980).In any case, changed my mind and placed my order, figure no point in waiting a few weeks to save $60 when I'm already dropping $999 and $30 on next day shipping lol.
dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
... Titan X has 50% more bandwidth than the 980.