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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Urizane - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
660 and 660 Ti are different chips entirely, with 660 Ti not fully enabled.chizow - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
@stun you're in for a huge upgrade either way. Makes sense to wait though, but I am not sure if 390X will change current pricing if at all. But Nvidia may also launch a cut down GM200 in that timeframe to give you another option in that $500+ range.Da W - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Usually, the last one out is the fastest.furthur - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
you're an absolute idiot if you jump on this crap. grab a 290 in the mean time and a 390x on release,Michael Bay - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Maybe he doesn`t need an equivalent of a room heater in his case like you do, brah.Phartindust - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
At 83c, you're not exactly making ice cubes with titan.cactusdog - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
Im not convinced about this TitanX and the last titan turned out to be a bad investment for the $1,000 asking price. Last time, Titan came out (at $1,000) then a matter of weeks later , the 780TI came out with the same performance for $300 less. This time, we have the 390X soon but no doubt Nvidia have a 980TI up their sleeve, so the value of these highend $1,000 cards disappears quickly making it a bad investment. I expect a $1,000 card to hold the performance crown for at least 6-12 months not a few weeks, then get out performed by a card that costs $300 less.Laststop311 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
it wasn't weeks later it was many months laterD. Lister - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
@cactusdog"Titan came out (at $1,000) then a matter of weeks later , the 780TI came out with the same performance for $300 less."
Actually the 780Ti, having a lot more CUDA cores, destroys the original Titan in gaming performance. The 780Ti equivalent was the "Titan Black", with the same amount of cores, but twice the VRAM, slightly higher default core clock, and fully unlocked compute.
Phartindust - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
^This