[guru3d] TitanZ review

[Grooveriding]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_z_review,1.html

I knew in advance that the conclusion page would be a difficult one to write. I tried to find some sort of euphemism or analogy if you will to word the sentiment that is the GeForce GTX Titan Z. I ended up with Seinfeld. In fact, if you have noticed the first chapter title, you would have read 'Hello Newman'. Newman was the fat, slightly obtrusive character that Seinfeld didn't like but always was a friend of somehow. Somehow I have that feeling with the Titan Z. I do tend to like the product but the second I think about its pricing my eye-brows frown upon it. The overall performance is massive I mean let's face it, this is a beast of a garphics card. But it does remain slightly below par compared to the alternatives at hand. The card is running relatively nicely at 80 degrees C on the GPUs, it's silent enough... but dumps too much heat inside and outside the PC chassis. I mean, it's two Kepler GPUs tied together, backed up by 12 GB of memory and 5760 processing cores in total -- what's not to like would be my first reaction. Well yeah, I need to get back to pricing, 3000 USD / 2850 EURO is just too much by any standard. My advice would be for you to get two GTX 780 / 780 Ti or Titan / Titan Blacks and go SLI. No-matter how advanced you configure stuff you'll save a lot of money. Of course you could go team AMD as well, AMD has proven that enthusiast dual-GPU gaming doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg and then a kidney too. And as such, the Radeon R9 295x2 outclasses the Titan Z by a factor of two in pricing. In fact, I have seen them sell for as low as 1250 EUR I just realized, that's including liquid cooling, man. Nvidia emphasizes that both the GeForce GTX Titan Black and Titan Z are intended for the professional market, those who need double precision, meanwhile all Nvidia partners have launched and announced Titan Z as their ultimate gaming card. And that I am afraid will be the conclusion of this article, I cannot in good conscience recommend the GeForce GTX Titan Z. If it had been priced at the 1500 EURO mark things would have been very different, even then it would still be too expensive, the reality is that it remains to be an impressive product. But that price... it just doesn't make any sense.



That said, some serious thanks go out to Tones.be! As stated, Nvidia refuses to send out Titan Black and Titan Z samples, for obvious reasons. So we had to fall back to distribution and etail. Please give Tones.be a visit as lending out a component worth 2850 EUROs whilst getting heat and raised eye-browses from Nvidia was a gentlemanly thing for them to do.

Nice to see a review turn up on this card. Confirms that nvidia is refusing to give anyone a sample and guru3d turned to an etailor to get a loaner.


TitanZ shows abysmally in this review. Only uses 30W less power than 295X2, runs at a low clock rate to keep within the 80C temp target, overclocks poorly and is slower than the 295X2 as well. Plus it costs twice as much. They also note it makes no sense for CUDA and double precision work as well with the dual Titan Black solution being 2/3 the cost while also delivering more performance.

 

[BrightCandle]

Its just not a good card, and I don't honestly think the 295X2 is either. Neither of these cards are reasonable buys. The 295 is clearly the better buy but in all cases SLI/Crossfire is cheaper and faster and less problematic with heat. Both these cards are bad, its just TitanZ is ludicrously overpriced where the 295 is just overpriced.

 

[SlickR12345]

The 295x is actually quite nice since it uses water cooling. I always wondered why such uber fast, uber expensive cards would come with air cooling, I felt like it made them cheaper in a sense.

I'm like these people(sheeple?) are spending $1000 on a card, surely they have the setup for water cooling, so why wouldn't you make it water cooled? Heck I was thinking even including a whole water cooling system would have made sense.

So with the 295x we got that. I still think the $1500 price is huge, but blame Nvidia again with their $3000 "gaming" card which they publicly and officially presented as gaming card.

I think the Titan Z could work at a price point of $900, while the 295X could work at a price point of $1000. I think that would be the legitimate price for these cards.

 

[SPBHM]

Its just not a good card, and I don't honestly think the 295X2 is either. Neither of these cards are reasonable buys. The 295 is clearly the better buy but in all cases SLI/Crossfire is cheaper and faster and less problematic with heat. Both these cards are bad, its just TitanZ is ludicrously overpriced where the 295 is just overpriced.

the cooling solution used by the 295x looks good, I don't think it's a negative, power usage is horrible but expected, pricing is bad compared to 2 cards but not insane.

titan z have inadequate cooling, bad power usage and insane pricing.

 

[dn7309]

30 pages... I just jump to the conclusion page

 

[Grooveriding]

I tend to agree. Halo best in class video cards are never going to be about value. They will be expensive.

The 295X2 delivers on the promise of being the halo card of this generation. It's the fastest card you can buy and comes with a cooling solution better than any other stock video card. Given what the pricing of 28nm cards has been in general, $1500 is about right for having the best card of this generation.

TitanZ delivers on nothing but being the most expensive geforce card available. If that can even be considered a metric of any worth...otherwise it flops in all metrics.

 

[lyssword]

I predict titanz drops to 2k in a month or two then nv fanboys will think its a bargain and will outsell 295

 

[dn7309]

TitanZ delivers on nothing but being the most expensive geforce card available. If that can even be considered a metric of any worth...otherwise it flops in all metrics.

If you can't take the performance crown, might as well make history by taking the most expensive crown.

 

[Erenhardt]

If you can't take the performance crown, might as well make history by taking the most expensive crown.

And the uninformed market may assume the price correlates with performance. Most expensive = fastest?

 

[BrightCandle]

If you buy a TitanZ without doing any research you deserve to be fleeced. I just can't really recommend these dual cards, they are nothing like the dual cards like the 5970 or the 4870X2 before it that were the fastest cards but also reasonable in their power consumption. AMD has abandoned the strategy of competing with Nvidia's single card high end with a dual card so now we have these ludicrously expensive dual cards that don't really make sense for anybody. Get 290 crossfire or 780 sli, don't buy one of these things for the purpose of saving a PCI-E slot, there is nothing but a performance detriment to getting it all in one card and 8x/8x isn't a problem on 3.0 on a standard consumer board. TitanZ is just ridiculous and it needs to half that price to even be competing with AMDs card, I don't know what Nvidia is thinking but its not going to sell well.

 

[Lepton87]

I don't know why people negatively harp on 295X2, it's cooler and quieter and in most cases faster then 290X CF, which was never the case with dual cards. The only downside is the price, in all other metrics it's a better card then dual GPU cards from the past. And don't even get me started on micro-stuttering of those cards.

if you buy a TitanZ without doing any research you deserve to be fleeced.

I think someone who does that doesn't even notice that 3k $ less in his wallet, it's like a bottle of wine. One less or more, why would he care?

 

[SolMiester]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_z_review,1.html






Nice to see a review turn up on this card. Confirms that nvidia is refusing to give anyone a sample and guru3d turned to an etailor to get a loaner.


TitanZ shows abysmally in this review. Only uses 30W less power than 295X2, runs at a low clock rate to keep within the 80C temp target, overclocks poorly and is slower than the 295X2 as well. Plus it costs twice as much. They also note it makes no sense for CUDA and double precision work as well with the dual Titan Black solution being 2/3 the cost while also delivering more performance.

Probably poor wording there!...Do you not have another descriptive for the worlds 2nd fastest card? The only reason the 295x2 runs cooler and clocks better is the cooling solution.
Cost is the only pit fall of this card!

 

[The Alias]

The comparison is like cod vs battlefield in which cod is titanz and bf is 295x2. Bf is arguably the better game with better graphics, sounds etc, but cod continually sells more. But in this iteration, cod costs $180 instead of the normal $60. Therefore all its flaws as a game are magnified and it doesn't sell nearly as well.

 

[3DVagabond]

Probably poor wording there!...Do you not have another descriptive for the worlds 2nd fastest card? The only reason the 295x2 runs cooler and clocks better is the cooling solution.
Cost is the only pit fall of this card!

It's 2X as expensive, slower, and with a poorer cooling solution. I can't think of too many kinder words to describe it.

 

[Lonyo]

Probably poor wording there!...Do you not have another descriptive for the worlds 2nd fastest card? The only reason the 295x2 runs cooler and clocks better is the cooling solution.
Cost is the only pit fall of this card!

Cost is the only pitfall.
Yes, and it's such a big pitfall that the word abysmal is appropriate.

You could buy a fully capable gaming PC for the price premium of a Titan Z over dual Titans, as well as having your dual Titans which are faster than Titan Z.

It has no reason to exist.

The 295X is marginally better because the price premium isn't as significant, and it includes watercooling which, if you were planning to use it, would negate most of that premium, since 290X's with pre-fitted waterblock are $700 each. With the Titan Z the premium is just because NV want to charge extra, and you don't get any other value you can put on that premium other than it only uses 1 PCIe slot.

 

[NTMBK]

As someone who has never watched Seinfeld, that conclusion was almost unreadable.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Probably poor wording there!...Do you not have another descriptive for the worlds 2nd fastest card? The only reason the 295x2 runs cooler and clocks better is the cooling solution. Cost is the only pit fall of this card!

Lol, are you serious, the Titan Z is a total disaster especially at this price its almost embarrassing for the whole GPU history.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Its just not a good card, and I don't honestly think the 295X2 is either

I beg to disagree. The 295X2 is a great card as it has very robust cooling, great performance all around and it's not noisy. The price is HALF of what Nvidia is asking for Titan Z.
You can easily build a fast system with 295X2 for $3000 or less. AMD did charge a bit more than they should, but when you have Titan Blacks going for $1000...

 

[BrightCandle]

I beg to disagree. The 295X2 is a great card as it has very robust cooling, great performance all around and it's not noisy. The price is HALF of what Nvidia is asking for Titan Z.
You can easily build a fast system with 295X2 for $3000 or less. AMD did charge a bit more than they should, but when you have Titan Blacks going for $1000...

Its overpriced when you compare it to its competition, which is 2x 290/290X or 2x 780/780 ti's. Its not so ludicrously overpriced as the TitanZ which makes you laugh its so insanely ridiculous but its also really hard to justify its price for the purpose of saving a PCI-E slot. You can even water cool a pair of 290's cheaper than the 295X, its just bad value. Not as bad values as the TitanZ, that is obviously a dumb price, but its more just bad price compared to history.

When I bought a 4870X2 and the 5970 it worked out cheaper for me than buying two 4870's or 2x 5850's. Partly because of the waterblocks I used because 1 block for a dual card is about £70 but a single block for a card is £50 and partly because the price of crossfire similar performance was almost identical to the dual cards. The premium was minimal. The premium to get a card like the 295X is not minimal, its quite a lot because it needs watercooling and a mighty cooler, because it breaks the PCI-E specification for power impressively. These aren't just halo cards, they are overpriced and out of spec cards. I just can't really recommend either because the alternative (2 cards) is actually better.

Does anyone know for example if in the 295X drivers whether you can turn crossfire off? With the 5970 it wasn't possible, you couldn't disable it with any software AMD directly provided. You could use external tools to do it, and you need it because in quite a few games crossfire negatively scaled. Its actually one of the reasons I bought 2x 7970's because I had had enough of not being able to just turn crossfire off when it was a problem. It would be nice to know they have fixed this oversight now.

 

[Lonyo]

If you want to roll your own watercooling, then maybe, but if you want off the shelf or pre-setup watercooling it's pretty much a wash cost wise.

So while it may not be as good value as if you do everything yourself, it's equal value as getting two pre-watercooled 290X's (although the cooling for those will be better since it's individual cooling for each card).
Of course with the 295X you have no choice but to be given a watercooled card, so if you wouldn't otherwise pay the water premium it's not worth it.

 

[KaRLiToS]

If you want to roll your own watercooling, then maybe, but if you want off the shelf or pre-setup watercooling it's pretty much a wash cost wise.

So while it may not be as good value as if you do everything yourself, it's equal value as getting two pre-watercooled 290X's (although the cooling for those will be better since it's individual cooling for each card).
Of course with the 295X you have no choice but to be given a watercooled card, so if you wouldn't otherwise pay the water premium it's not worth it.

But you need to buy pumps, radiators, fittings, hose, have a compatible case for all that.

 

[Gikaseixas]

But you need to buy pumps, radiators, fittings, hose, have a compatible case for all that.

Exactly with this card you just have to get a mid or mini case with a 120mm exhaust fan in the back.

Let's see, each 780TI will cost on average $700 so that's $1400 for two. To watercool these things you'll HAVE to spend much more than $100

I'd rather get a 295X2 and save a PCIe slot while getting lower temps.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Its overpriced

See my reply above

 

[Erenhardt]

If you want to roll your own watercooling, then maybe, but if you want off the shelf or pre-setup watercooling it's pretty much a wash cost wise.

So while it may not be as good value as if you do everything yourself, it's equal value as getting two pre-watercooled 290X's (although the cooling for those will be better since it's individual cooling for each card).
Of course with the 295X you have no choice but to be given a watercooled card, so if you wouldn't otherwise pay the water premium it's not worth it.

295x2 have the same advantage as titanZ. It only uses 1 PCIe slot, which by some people here is worth 1500$ premium.
1500$ for 295x2 -1500$ for saved PCIe slot = 0$ cost of 295x2 gpu

 

[ocre]

The titan Z would be a terrible choice for a gaming card. But this is only true when we look at the price. Its like what the..........

I mean, if they were free.........i would surely take 2.

The current price absolutely blows my mind. Someone said you can buy a whole gaming PC for that price. Well that has been true since the original titan launched. Heck, you could build a "gaming" PC for the price of a 780ti. The difference here is one could by a top of the line, gaming elite PC for the price of a titan z. Not a budget or mid ranged PC..............

a top of the line sweet gaming PC for the price of one titan Z!!!!

I seriously would hope that no one buys a Titan Z if all they are is a gamer. Most programers needs would be met better with a real tesla. But i guess there could be a small small group of people that game and do CUDA. Perhaps they can get their employer to invest in some of these.

This really must be a ultra low volume product. There is no way that even Nvidia expects this thing to sell in any real quantity. But you have to wonder whats up with it and why it exist.

To me this seems like a really stupid card. But perhaps Nvidia really does have a market for it. Perhaps their are companies/people out there that would buy them. I could think of the gaming/movie industry. This product would have to have the professional in mind. And to a business, it would be a tax write off anyway.

This is not a product for the rest of us and for that, we should just drop it.
Or we could have post after post stating the obvious, over and over and over.
Its way to high. Not something any gamer should buy.
/end of story