The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTBattlefield 4
Kicking off our 2015 benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has since become a challenging game in its own right and a showcase title for low-level graphics APIs. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer.
After stripping away the Frostbite engine’s expensive (and not wholly effective) MSAA, what we’re left with for BF4 at 4K with Ultra quality puts the GTX Titan X in a pretty good light. At 58.3fps it’s not quite up to the 60fps mark, but it comes very close, close enough that the GTX Titan X should be able to stay above 30fps virtually the entire time, and never drop too far below 30fps in even the worst case scenario. Alternatively, dropping to Medium quality should give the GTX Titan X plenty of headroom, with an average framerate of 94.8fps meaning even the lowest framerate never drops below 45fps.
From a benchmarking perspective Battlefield 4 at this point is a well optimized title that’s a pretty good microcosm of overall GPU performance. In this case we find that the GTX Titan X performs around 33% better than the GTX 980, which is almost exactly in-line with our earlier performance predictions. Keeping in mind that while GTX Titan X has 50% more execution units than GTX 980, it’s also clocked at around 88% of the clockspeed, so 33% is right where we should be in a GPU-bound scenario.
Otherwise compared to the GTX 780 Ti and the original GTX Titan, the performance advantage at 4K is around 50% and 66% respectively. GTX Titan X is not going to double the original Titan’s performance – there’s only so much you can do without a die shrink – but it continues to be amazing just how much extra performance NVIDIA has been able to wring out without increasing power consumption and with only a minimal increase in die size.
On the broader competitive landscape, this is far from the Radeon R9 290X/290XU’s best title, with GTX Titan X leading by 50-60%. However this is also a showcase title for when AFR goes right, as the R9 295X2 and GTX 980 SLI both shoot well past the GTX Titan X, demonstrating the performance/consistency tradeoff inherent in multi-GPU setups.
Finally, shifting gears for a moment, gamers looking for the ultimate 1440p card will not be disappointed. GTX Titan X will not get to 120fps here (it won’t even come close), but at 78.7fps it’s well suited for driving 1440p144 displays. In fact it’s the only single-GPU card to do better than 60fps at this resolution.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
276 Comments
View All Comments
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.