- Aug 14, 2000
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Benchmarking Note
Many of my benchmarks have been designed to show very tough (and even worst-case) scenarios in these games, especially for older titles. As such they'll produce scores that may appear low. It's the tough situations that interest me because regular gameplay will typically run much faster.
Introduction
I upgraded my GTX680 to a Titan and tested 59 games at the settings I play them at, and I thought I’d share the results. Before I begin, here are the cards’ specs:
The Titan is a big chip in terms of die size. In fact it’s nVidia’s second biggest GPU ever, smaller than only the GT200. In terms of specs it sports healthy advantages across the board over the 680, though it only slightly edges the 580 with pixel fillrate.
I’ve included the 580 to show the 680 has the same memory bandwidth, but less pixel fillrate. When I tested the 680 against the 580, several games didn’t show significant performance changes. In particular, Blops, Serious Sam 2, Fear 1 and UT 99 actually posted slight performance losses on the 680, so keep an eye on them below.
Note that some settings have changed since last time so not all FPS scores are directly comparable, though the relative percentages should still hold.
System specs: i5 2500K, 16GB DDR3-1600, Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3-B3, 128GB Samsung 830, 1TB VelociRaptor, X-Fi XtremeMusic, Seasonic X 560W, Antec 902, 30" HP LP3065, 314.22 WHQL, Windows 7 (64 bit) SP1, everything at stock.
The Card
The Titan is slightly longer than the 680 by about 2 cm, and the extra TDP requires 6+8 pin connectors instead of 6+6 like on the latter. Titan’s connectors are next to each as normal and don’t annoyingly twist on opposites like the 680.
Idle fan speeds are the same, but load fan speeds are a bit lower than the 680’s, so subjectively it seems quieter at heavy GPU loads. This is impressive when you factor in the extra power draw and the much better performance.
The GEFORCE GTX logo at the top of the card glows solid green, and it looks nice in my Antec 902.
Results
At a 38.49% average performance gain over the 680, it easily clears the 680’s 24.62% average advantage over the 580.
The top scorer today is Serious Sam 2 with a 66.13% performance gain. In second place is Medal of Honor Pacific Assault with a gain of 61.27%. It should be worth noting that both of these games are almost a decade old, thereby proving yet again that old games can be extremely relevant for testing new GPUs.
As Serious Sam 2, Fear 1 and UT 99 ran slower on the 680 than the 580 but they post healthy performance gains on the Titan, they must be pixel fill and/or memory bandwidth starved. As Blops still isn’t moving, my benchmark must be CPU limited and hence the only outlier in the 59 titles.
In general, quite a few titles post significant performance gains and this extra performance can easily be traded for higher IQ if desired.
P.S. For the first time ever I’ve included a non-FPS in the list! See if you can spot it.
Conclusion
The Titan is a very expensive card but its performance as a single GPU is undeniable, and its’ cooling efficiency is excellent.
Many of my benchmarks have been designed to show very tough (and even worst-case) scenarios in these games, especially for older titles. As such they'll produce scores that may appear low. It's the tough situations that interest me because regular gameplay will typically run much faster.
Introduction
I upgraded my GTX680 to a Titan and tested 59 games at the settings I play them at, and I thought I’d share the results. Before I begin, here are the cards’ specs:
The Titan is a big chip in terms of die size. In fact it’s nVidia’s second biggest GPU ever, smaller than only the GT200. In terms of specs it sports healthy advantages across the board over the 680, though it only slightly edges the 580 with pixel fillrate.
I’ve included the 580 to show the 680 has the same memory bandwidth, but less pixel fillrate. When I tested the 680 against the 580, several games didn’t show significant performance changes. In particular, Blops, Serious Sam 2, Fear 1 and UT 99 actually posted slight performance losses on the 680, so keep an eye on them below.
Note that some settings have changed since last time so not all FPS scores are directly comparable, though the relative percentages should still hold.
System specs: i5 2500K, 16GB DDR3-1600, Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3-B3, 128GB Samsung 830, 1TB VelociRaptor, X-Fi XtremeMusic, Seasonic X 560W, Antec 902, 30" HP LP3065, 314.22 WHQL, Windows 7 (64 bit) SP1, everything at stock.
The Card
The Titan is slightly longer than the 680 by about 2 cm, and the extra TDP requires 6+8 pin connectors instead of 6+6 like on the latter. Titan’s connectors are next to each as normal and don’t annoyingly twist on opposites like the 680.
Idle fan speeds are the same, but load fan speeds are a bit lower than the 680’s, so subjectively it seems quieter at heavy GPU loads. This is impressive when you factor in the extra power draw and the much better performance.
The GEFORCE GTX logo at the top of the card glows solid green, and it looks nice in my Antec 902.
Results
At a 38.49% average performance gain over the 680, it easily clears the 680’s 24.62% average advantage over the 580.
The top scorer today is Serious Sam 2 with a 66.13% performance gain. In second place is Medal of Honor Pacific Assault with a gain of 61.27%. It should be worth noting that both of these games are almost a decade old, thereby proving yet again that old games can be extremely relevant for testing new GPUs.
As Serious Sam 2, Fear 1 and UT 99 ran slower on the 680 than the 580 but they post healthy performance gains on the Titan, they must be pixel fill and/or memory bandwidth starved. As Blops still isn’t moving, my benchmark must be CPU limited and hence the only outlier in the 59 titles.
In general, quite a few titles post significant performance gains and this extra performance can easily be traded for higher IQ if desired.
P.S. For the first time ever I’ve included a non-FPS in the list! See if you can spot it.
Conclusion
The Titan is a very expensive card but its performance as a single GPU is undeniable, and its’ cooling efficiency is excellent.
Last edited:
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