The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X Review
by Ryan Smith on March 17, 2015 3:00 PM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
Though not as intricate as Crysis 3 or Shadow of Mordor, Civilization still requires a very powerful GPU to run it at 4K if you want to hit 60fps. In fact of our single-GPU configurations the GTX Titan X is the only card to crack 60fps, delivering 69fps at the game’s most extreme setting. This is once again well ahead of the GTX 980 – beating it by 31% at 4K – and 40%+ ahead of the GK110 cards. On the other hand this is the closest AMD’s R9 290XU will get, with the GTX Titan X only beating it by 23% at 4K.
Meanwhile at 1440p it’s entirely possible to play Civilization at 120fps, making it one of a few games where the GTX Titan X can keep up with high refresh rate 1440p monitors.
When it comes to minimum framerates the GTX Titan X doesn’t dominate quite like it does at average framerates, but it still handily takes the top spot. Even at its worst, the GTX Titan X can still deliver 44fps at 4K under Civilization.
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FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
Wow, it's stomping all over 2 of AMDs best gpu's combined.It's a freaking monster.
cykodrone - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
I actually went to the trouble to make an account to say sometimes I come here just to read the comments, some of the convos have me rolling on the floor busting my guts laughing, seriously, this is free entertainment at its best! Aside from that, the cost of this Nvidia e-penis would feed 10 starving children for a month. I mean seriously, at what point is it overkill? By that I mean is there any game out there that would absolutely not run good enough on a slightly lesser card at half the price? When I read this card alone requires 250W, my eyes popped out of my head, holy electric bill batman, but I guess if somebody has a 1G to throw away on an e-penis, they don't have electric bill worries. One more question, what kind of CPU/motherboard would you need to back this sucker up? I think this card would be retarded without at least the latest i7 Extreme(ly overpriced), can you imagine some tool dropping this in an i3? What I'm saying is, this sucker would need an expensive 'bed' too, otherwise, you'd just be wasting your time and money.sna1970 - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
What dual GTX 980 Anand ?for 2 x $300 Gtx 970 you will get the same or better performance than Titan X for $600 ONLY.
almost same power as well.
$1000 for this card is too much , Just tooooo much.
rolfaalto - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
So much silly complaining about value. This is an incredible bargain for compute compared to Tesla -- absolutely crushes at single precision for a fraction of the price! For my application the new Titan X is the absolute best that money can buy, and it's comparatively cheap. So, I'll buy 10 of them, and 100 more if they work out.rolfaalto - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link
... and the 12GB is the deal maker, 6 GB on the previous Titans was way too little.yiling cao - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
for people using cuda, there is just no AMD option, Upgrading every nvidia new releases.Antronman - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
Or, if you're the kind of person who actually needs CUDA and isn't just using it because they made a mistake in choosing their software and just chose something with a bloated price tag and fancy webpage then you get a Quadro card instead of wasting your money on a Titan.You know. The sort of people who need Solidworks because they're working for a multimillion or even multibillion dollar corporation that wants 3D models or is using GPU computing, or if you're using Maya to animate a movie for a multimillion dollar studio.
Even if you're an indie on a budget, you don't buy a Titan. Because you won't be using software with CUDA or special Nvidia optimization. Because you won't be using iRay.
With the exception of industry applications (excluding individual/small businesses), Nvidia is currently just a choice for brand loyalists or people who want a big epeen.
r13j13r13 - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
titan x vs R9 295x2MyNuts - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
Ill take 2 pleaseXsjado Koncept - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
Your "in-house project developed by our very own Dr. Ian Cutress" is garbage and is obviously not dividing workloads between multi-GPUs, a very simple task for any programmer with access to Google.It's plain as day to see, but gives NV the lead in another benchmark - was this the goal of such awful programming?