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
@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.