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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chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
AMD fanboys went apeshit when AT used non-ref cooled GTX 460s that showed those cards in better light than the reference coolers, AMD fanboys need to pick a story and stick to it tbh.evolucion8 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Ahh, we can't never miss your daily dose of AMD bashing under any GPU article, thanks for the fun.shing3232 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Yep, it is quite entertaining.Kutark - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Entertaining but still accurate. Fanbois are fanbois, they're stupid regardless of what side of the isle they're on.chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Like I said, happy to keep the AMD fanboys honest. as I did again here.Stuka87 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
That had nothing to do with non-ref cooled 460's. It was using FTW versions, which were heavily overclocked vs stock clocked AMD cards. It had nothing to do with what cooler was on them. Just the overclocked being portrayed as though they were standard edition cards. The article was later changed as I recall to state that they were overclocked cards and not stock 460s.chizow - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Its the same difference, the AMD cards are no more "stock" with custom coolers than those FTW editions. AMD baked an overclock into their boost that they weren't able to sustain without extravagant cooling. And when I mean extravagant cooling, I am talking about the Cadillac Aluminum Boat we used to be like "Oh wow, maybe one day I will fork out $60 for that massive Arctic Cooling cooler".So yeah, now you get "stock clocked, stock cooled reference cards", if you want AMD to show better in benchmarks, have them design either 1) better cooling or 2) less power hungry cards.
chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
@Ryan, we can't revisit all the nerdrage and angst from AMD fanboys over EVGA sending you non-reference cooled GeForce cards because they were too good over reference? Funny what happens when the shoe is on the other foot!My solution: AMD should design cards that are capable of comfortably fitting within a 250W TDP and cooler designed to dissipate that much heat, and not have to resort to a cooler that looks like an Autobot. I'm not kidding, briefly owned a Sapphire Tri-X 290X and the thing doubles as its own appliance.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Stop stating that it was because of the cooler. As I mentioned above, FTW cards are heavily overclocked and should not be portrayed as standard edition cards.MrSpadge - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Go back and read that article. The factory-OC was clearly stated.