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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joeh4384 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Old news.joeh4384 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
I bet if you overclock the crap out of this, its TDP shoots north of 300 watts.cmdrdredd - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
People buying this don't care about TDP.Kutark - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Which means even with OC it would still be at or under a 290x. I'm failing to see the problem here.TDP is really only super important for compute cards that will be running for hours on end at 100% load.
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
I didn't care either, my $800 FX9590 loved 320 watts and my "uber" two niner zeroX loved double dipping that 320 watts, so I converted my carbon arc Linclon 220 welder to handle the AMD juice load and my DVD/RW/DL/LS melted tight to my CM heavy tower and dripped bubbling fire plastic drops through my liquid AMD loop... bye bye overclockshing3232 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
It does not make anything, because 290x is a old CardStuka87 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
You can't take those numbers seriously though, as they are wrong. Anandtech is *STILL* using reference cards for these tests. You have not been able to buy reference cards for over a year now. The current cards are run MUCH cooler, MUCH quieter, use less power, and have better performance.Stuka87 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Quick edit, it seems XFX is still selling a reference 290X. No clue why, but they are. You can get custom cooled AIB cards for less. Could just be leftover stock though I suppose.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Using reference cards is consistent with our long-standing policy to use them. Aside from the immediate definition of reference, I believe that it is very important not to cherry pick results. The results you in our reviews should be equal to or lower than the results you will get with a retail card - we specifically want to avoid publishing results higher than what the buyer can get.* We don't want to overstate the performance of a card.* Using the same testbed hardware as us of course.
beginner99 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
Still it shows the 290(x) in a way poorer light than is actually true. At least that should be stated but better would be to add a AIB card to the reviews,