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 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
And custom-cooled, higher clocked cards should? It took months for AMD to bring those to market and many of them cost more than the original reference cards and are also overclocked.http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...
Like I said, AMD fanboys made this bed, time to lie in it.
Witchunter - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
I hope you do realize calling out AMD fanboys in each and every one of your comments essentially paints you as Nvidia fanboy in the eyes of other readers. I'm here to read some constructive comments and all I see is you bitching about fanboys and being one yourself.chizow - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
@Witchunter, the difference is, I'm not afraid to admit I'm a fan of the best, but I'm going to at least be consistent on my views and opinions. Whereas these AMD fanboys are crying foul for the same thing they threw a tantrum over a few years ago, ultimately leading to this policy to begin with. You don't find that ironic, that what they were crying about 4 years ago is suddenly a problem when the shoe is on the other foot? Maybe that tells you something about yourself and where your own biases reside? :)Crunchy005 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
@chizow either way you don't really offer constructive criticism and you call people dishonest without proving them wrong in any way and offering facts. You are one of the biggest fanboys out there and it kind of makes you lose credibility.Crunchy005 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Ok wanted to add to this, I do like some of the comments you make but you are so fan boyish I am unable to take much stock in what you say. If you could offer more facts and stop just bashing AMD and praising the all powerful Nvidia is better in every way, despite the fact that AMD has advantages and has outperformed Nvidia in many ways, so has Nvidia outperformed AMD, they leap frog...if you did that we might all like to hear what you have to say.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
I know what the truth is so I greatly enjoy what he says.If you can't handle the truth, that should be your problem, not everyone else's, obviously.
chizow - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Like I said, I'm not here to sugarcoat things or keep it constructive, I'm here to set the record straight and keep the discussion honest. If that involves bruising some fragile AMD fanboy egos and sensibilities, so be it.I'm completely comfortable in my own skin knowing I'm a fan of the best, and that just happens to be Nvidia for graphics cards for the last near-decade since G80, and I'm certainly not afraid to tell you why that's the case backed with my usual facts, references etc. etc. You're free to verify my sources and references if you like to come to your own conclusion, but at the end of the day, that's the whole point of the internet, isn't it? Lay out the facts, let informed people make their own conclusions?
In any case, the entire discussion and you can be the judge of whether my take on the topic is fair, you can clearly see, AMD fanboys caused this dilemma for themselves, many of which are the ones you see crying in this thread. Queue that Alanis Morissette song....
http://anandtech.com/comments/3987/amds-radeon-687...
http://anandtech.com/show/3988/the-use-of-evgas-ge...
Phartindust - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Um, AMD doesn't manufacture after market cards.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
"use less power"...right, and why would these non reference cards consume less power? Just hypothetically speaking, ignoring for a moment all the benchmarks out there that suggest otherwise.
squngy - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Undervolting?