690 SLI or Titan SLI

[UaVaj]

decisions decisons decisons

resolution is 5760x1080 with all the eye candy on.

leaning toward the titan sli.

if you had this to make this decision. which and why?

 

[bleucharm28]

Titan, 6Gigs of Memory

 

[Keysplayr]

The Titans will be faster. SLI scaling is better than Quad-SLI. And the 6 GB of memory would be nice for Super hi res and settings multi monitor gaming.

 

[blackened23]

decisions decisons decisons

resolution is 5760x1080 with all the eye candy on.

leaning toward the titan sli.

if you had this to make this decision. which and why?

Surround would easily be better with Titan SLI. I don't believe VRAM is ever an issue even at the highest single screen resolutions, but it can be an issue with surround - limiting yourself to 2GB may prevent you from using higher than FXAA in many games. This won't be an issue with Titan. Additionally, i'm under the impression that Titan SLI is faster than 690 x2.

 

[Lepton87]

Not, Titan is not faster then 2x690 why do you guys think so? They are pretty evenly matched. 2x690 has better potential but it's limited by scaling.

But 2xTitan is still a better choice due to a much larger frame buffer.

 

[Deltaechoe]

Once the next gen of games starts to come out, a 2GB frame buffer is going to be on the low end and the GTX 690 will suffer from performance issues. Titan is a more future proof card (especially in SLI) due to enormous buffer and higher memory bandwidth

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I'd take two titans in this scenario. You'll have much better performance in situations where SLi is not working. Also as others have mentioned 6gb of memory is more future proof, and Titan will probably be much better with Direct Compute in the future titles.

 

[AdamK47]

Once the next gen of games starts to come out, a 2GB frame buffer is going to be on the low end and the GTX 690 will suffer from performance issues. Titan is a more future proof card (especially in SLI) due to enormous buffer and higher memory bandwidth

*checks join date... yep.

Future proof is a myth in the PC hardware world.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

*checks join date... yep.

Future proof is a myth in the PC hardware world.

He didn't say future proof, he said more future proof. There's a big difference if you ask me.

 

[Lepton87]

Once the next gen of games starts to come out, a 2GB frame buffer is going to be on the low end and the GTX 690 will suffer from performance issues. Titan is a more future proof card (especially in SLI) due to enormous buffer and higher memory bandwidth

What higher memory bandwidth? I agree that 2xtitans are a better choice then 2x690 but can you count? Memory capacity does not grow with SLI but memory bandwidth does, or do you really think that a card with 192 GB/s of bandwidth can achieve that performance?

If NV focused more on 3-way and 4-way SLI performance in their drivers 690SLI would be noticeably faster then Titan SLI just as one 690 is faster then one Titan, still 2GB is too little for that amount of performance.

[quote="AdamK47, post: 34692384"]*checks join date... yep.

Future proof is a myth in the PC hardware world.[/QUOTE]

not entirely, aside from bitcoin mining I went with AMD 6 series instead of NV due to 2GB of RAM instead of 1.25GB of GTX570. 2GB is still enough for me, 1.25GB would limit me like hell.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

At 5760x1080 two titans will definitely be faster. Made me laugh at linking 1600p benchmarks, the Titans due to the superior memory bus totally destroy GTX 690s at surround resolutions.

GTX 680 GPUs are 1080p monsters, that's about it.

 

[UaVaj]

What higher memory bandwidth? I agree that 2xtitans are a better choice then 2x690 but can you count? Memory capacity does not grow with SLI but memory bandwidth does, or do you really think that a card with 192 GB/s of bandwidth can achieve that performance?

do explain - since both memory are mirrored - how exactly does the bandwidth double accessing those mirrored memory?

 

[Lepton87]

do explain - since both memory are mirrored - how exactly does the bandwidth double accessing those mirrored memory?

How not? In AFR each GPU works on its own frame and accesses whatever texture it needs. How would you get almost 4x the frame rates on an already bandwidth starved GK104 if it still had the same memory bandwidth? Each GPU has its own bus to its own memory pool. So GTX690 has 512bit bus and 384GB/s of aggregate bandwidth with a total of 4GB of memory but only 2GB effective memory capacity. With GTX690SLI It's kind of like having four hard drives with the same data, you can't say that you get the same performance with a single drive. Imagine it is like opening 4 instances of the same program, try to open them from one drive and then try to open them from 4 drives with each copy from different drive, assuming that I/O is the bottleneck not the CPU.

 

[cmdrdredd]

He didn't say future proof, he said more future proof. There's a big difference if you ask me.

If you can't future proof, you can't have more of it by default.

 

[UaVaj]

How not? In AFR each GPU works on its own frame and accesses whatever texture it needs. How would you get almost 4x the frame rates on an already bandwidth starved GK104 if it still had the same memory bandwidth? Each GPU has its own bus to its own memory pool. So GTX690 has 512bit bus and 384GB/s of aggregate bandwidth with a total of 4GB of memory but only 2GB effective memory capacity. With GTX690SLI It's kind of like having four hard drives with the same data, you can't say that you get the same performance with a single drive. Imagine it is like opening 4 instances of the same program, try to open them from one drive and then try to open them from 4 drives with each copy from different drive, assuming that I/O is the bottleneck not the CPU.

that seems to make logical sense. with the exception - as long as the data being pulling by each gpu to render the next frame is available in vram.

so instead of 690 sli. perhap it should be 680 4gb quad sli or titan sli.

thanks for that education.

 

[Majcric]

Not, Titan is not faster then 2x690 why do you guys think so? They are pretty evenly matched. 2x690 has better potential but it's limited by scaling.

But 2xTitan is still a better choice due to a much larger frame buffer.

I'm going to guess after a couple more driver releases for titan this will change. On the other hand, the GTX 690 is at the end of the road for potential gains.

 

[Lepton87]

that seems to make logical sense. with the exception - as long as the data being pulling by each gpu to render the next frame is available in vram.

If the data is not in the V-RAM, mGPU has nothing to do with it, you're being limited by PCI-E bandwidth and you're bound to get a stutter. That always happen when you run out of V-RAM.

 

[Lepton87]

I'm going to guess after a couple more driver releases for titan this will change. On the other hand, the GTX 690 is at the end of the road for potential gains.

Why? It's not like Titan is a new micro-architecture like tahiti was. My guess is that it is easier to improve 4 GPUs scaling then general gaming performance, 4 gpus scaling is far from perfect at the moment. In titan's case it's so bad that 4-way SLI is not officially supported with a titan SKU. Also, most gains in performance of titan thru drivers should translate to other kepler cards. I don't think that titan's compute girth is going to help much in games.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Titan also uses less power and runs much cooler and quieter if that matters to you.

 

[PowerK]

I'm going to guess after a couple more driver releases for titan this will change. On the other hand, the GTX 690 is at the end of the road for potential gains.

Titan really isn't new marchitecture. It still belongs to the same 28nm Kepler (670/680 = GK104, Titan = GK110) line. So, driver should be already pretty mature. Plus, performance gain from further driver update should equally benefit 670/680 (GK104) as well as Titan (GK110).

 

[AdamK47]

I vote 690s. Get some 690s.

 

[Attic]

decisions decisons decisons

resolution is 5760x1080 with all the eye candy on.

leaning toward the titan sli.

if you had this to make this decision. which and why?

TriSli Titans. It's the best there is, which sounds like what you want.

 

[NuBpC]

690's yup

 

[thm1223]

Not, Titan is not faster then 2x690 why do you guys think so? They are pretty evenly matched. 2x690 has better potential but it's limited by scaling.

But 2xTitan is still a better choice due to a much larger frame buffer.

Makes me sad to see that my Xfire'd 7970 VaporX's are so far down (well I guess up) on the totem pole.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Crysis 3 already seems to be a game that will benefit from the 6GB of memory at 5760x1080 according to PC Per.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...ance-Review-and-Frame-Rating-Update/Crysis--0