The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTFinal Words
When NVIDIA introduced the original GTX Titan in 2013 they set a new bar for performance, quality, and price for a high-end video card. The GTX Titan ended up being a major success for the company, a success that the company is keen to repeat. And now with their Maxwell architecture in hand, NVIDIA is in a position to do just that.
For as much of a legacy as the GTX Titan line can have at this point, it’s clear that the GTX Titan X is as worthy a successor as NVIDIA could hope for. NVIDIA has honed the already solid GTX Titan design, and coupled it with their largest Maxwell GPU, and in the process has put together a card that once again sets a new bar for performance and quality. That said, from a design perspective GTX Titan X is clearly evolutionary as opposed to the revolution that was the original GTX Titan, but it is nonetheless an impressive evolution.
Overall then it should come as no surprise that from a gaming performance standpoint the GTX Titan X stands alone. Delivering an average performance increase over the GTX 980 of 33%, GTX Titan X further builds on what was already a solid single-GPU performance lead for NVIDIA. Meanwhile compared to its immediate predecessors such as the GTX 780 Ti and the original GTX Titan, the GTX Titan X represents a significant, though perhaps not-quite-generational 50%-60% increase in performance. However perhaps most importantly, this performance improvement comes without any further increase in noise or power consumption as compared to NVIDIA’s previous generation flagship.
Meanwhile from a technical perspective, the GTX Titan X and GM200 GPU represent an interesting shift in high-end GPU design goals for NVIDIA, one whose ramifications I’m not sure we fully understand yet. By building what’s essentially a bigger version of GM204, heavy on graphics and light on FP64 compute, NVIDIA has been able to drive up performance without a GM204-like increase in die size. At 601mm2 GM200 is still NVIDIA’s largest GPU to date, but by producing their purest graphics GPU in quite some time, it has allowed NVIDIA to pack more graphics horsepower than ever before into a 28nm GPU. What remains to be seen then is whether this graphics/FP32-centric design is a one-off occurrence for 28nm, or if this is the start of a permanent shift in NVIDIA GPU design.
But getting back to the video card at hand, there’s little doubt of the GTX Titan X’s qualifications. Already in possession of the single-GPU performance crown, NVIDIA has further secured it with the release of their latest GTX Titan card. In fact there's really only one point we can pick at with the GTX Titan X, and that of course is the price. At $999 it's priced the same as the original GTX Titan - so today's $999 price tag comes as no surprise - but it's still a high price to pay for Big Maxwell. NVIDIA is not bashful about treating GTX Titan as a luxury card line, and for better and worse GTX Titan X continues this tradition. GTX Titan X, like GTX Titan before it, is a card that is purposely removed from the price/performance curve.
Meanwhile, the competitive landscape is solidly in NVIDIA's favor we feel. We would be remiss not to mention multi-GPU alternatives such as the GTX 980 in SLI and AMD's excellent Radeon R9 295X2. But as we've mentioned before when reviewing these setups before, multi-GPU is really only worth chasing when you've exhausted single-GPU performance. R9 295X2 in turn is a big spoiler on price, but we continue to believe that a single powerful GPU is a better choice for consistent performance, at least if you can cover the cost of GTX Titan X.
Finally on a lighter note, with the launch of the GTX Titan X we wave good-bye to GTX Titan as an entry-level double precision compute card. NVIDIA dumping high-performance FP64 compute has made GTX Titan X a better graphics card and even a better FP32 compute card, but it means that the original GTX Titan's time as NVIDIA's first prosumer card was short-lived. I suspect that we haven't seen the end of NVIDIA's forays into entry-level FP64 compute cards like the original GTX Titan, but that next card will not be GTX Titan X.
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Denithor - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Correct, but then they should have priced it around $800, not $1k. The reason they could demand $1k for the original Titan was due to the FP64 compute functionality on board.This is exactly what they did when they made the GTX 560 Ti, chopped out the compute features to maximize gaming power at a low cost. The reason that one was such a great card was due to price positioning, not just performance.
chizow - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
@Denithor, I disagree, the reason they could charge $1K for the original Titan was because there was still considerable doubt there would ever be a traditionally priced GeForce GTX card based on GK110, the compute aspect was just add-on BS to fluff up the price.Since then of course, they released not 1, but 2 traditional GTX cards (780 and Ti) that were much better received by the gaming market in terms of both price and in the case of the Ti, performance. Most notably was the fact the original Titan price on FS/FT and Ebay markets quickly dropped below that of the 780Ti. If the allure of the Titan was indeed for DP compute, it would have held its price, but the fact Titan owners were dumping their cards for less than what it cost to buy a 780Ti clearly showed the demand and price justification for a Titan for compute alone simply wasn't there. Also, important to note Titan's drivers were still GeForce, so even if it did have better DP performance, there were still a lot of driver limitations related to CUDA preventing it from reaching Quadro/Tesla levels of performance.
Simply put, Nvidia couldn't pull that trick again under the guise of compute this time around, and people like me who weren't willing to pay a penny for compute over gaming weren't willing to justify that price tag for features we had no use for. Titan X on the other hand, its 100% dedicated to gamers, not a single transistor budgeted for something I don't care about, and no false pretenses to go with it.
Samus - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
The identity crisis this card has with itself is that for all the effort, it's still slower than two 980's in SLI, and when overclocked to try to catch up to them, ends up using MORE POWER than two 980's in SLI.So for the price (being identical) wouldn't you just pick up two 980's which offer more performance, less power consumption and FP64 (even if you don't need it, it'll help the resell value in the future)?
LukaP - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link
The 980 have the same 1/32 DP performance as the Titan X. And Titan never was a sensible card. Noone sensible buys it over a x80 of that generation (which i assume will be 1080 or whatever they call it, based on GM200 with less ram, and maybe some disabled ROPs).The Titan is a true flagship. making no sense economically, but increasing your penis size by miles
chizow - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
I considered going this route but ultimately decided against it despite having used many SLI setups in the past. There's a number of things to like about the 980 but ultimately I felt I didn't want to be hamstrung by the 4GB in the future. There are already a number of games that push right up to that 4GB VRAM usage at 1440p and in the end I was more interested in bringing up min FPS than absolutely maxing out top-end FPS with 980 SLI.Power I would say is about the same, 980 is super efficient but once overclocked, with 2 of them I am sure the 980 set-up would use as much if not more than the single Titan X.
naxeem - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
You're forgetting three things:1. NO game uses even close to 8GB, let alone 12
2. $1000/1300€ puts it to exactly double the price of exactly the same performance level you get with any other solution: 970 SLI kicks it with $750, 295x2 does the same, 2x290X also...
In Europe, the card is even 30% more expensive than in US and than other cards so even less people will buy it there.
3. In summer, when AMD releases 390X for $700 and gives even better performance, Nvidia will either have to drop TitanX to the same price or suffer being smashed around at the market.
Keep in mind HBM is seriously a performance kicker for high resolutions, end-game gaming that TitanX is intended for. No amount of RAM can counter RAM bandwidth, especially when you don't really need over 6-7GB for even the most demanding games out there.
ArmedandDangerous - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
Or they could just say fuck it and keep the Titan at it's exact price and release a x80 GM200 at a lower price with some features cut that will still compete with whatever AMD has to offer. This is the 3rd Titan, how can you not know this by now.naxeem - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Well, yes. But without any compute performance of previous Titans, who would any why buy a 1000 Titan X while having exact same performance in some 980Ti or alike?Those who need 12GB for rendering may as well buy Quadros with more VRAM... When you need 12, you need more anyway... For gaming, 12GB means jack sht.
Thetrav55 - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link
Well its only the fastest card in the WORLD look at it that way the fattest card in the world ONLY 1000$ I know I know 1000 does not justify the performance but its the fastest card in the WORLD!!!agentbb007 - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
LOL had to laugh @ farealstarfareal's comment that the 390X would likely blow the doors off the Titan X, the 390X is nowhere near the Titan X, it's closer to a 980. The all mighty R9 FuryX reviews posted this morning and it's not even beating the 980ti.