***Official Reviews Thread*** Nvidia Geforce GTX Titan - Launched Feb. 21, 2013

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Haserath

Senior member
Sep 12, 2010
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RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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The Titan is an absolute joke for the price. $500 for a Asus Matrix Platinum @ 1300mhz would come within 15% of this $1000 GPU. Even if you overclock the Titan from its max boost of nearly 1Ghz it will barely beat an overclocked HD7970Ghz by more than 35%. That means by middle of 2014, 20nm $500 GPUs will beat it without a problem. This card would have been perfect at $649-699 which is what most of us kept saying but kept being attacked for it. :hmm:

Performance in compute games is underwhelming, barely beating HD7970GHz by 3-18%. NV needed a 551mm2 die to just accomplish this. Not much argument can be made for future-proofing for compute shader-based games either then.

all I have to say is Vapor-x @ 1250+ makes this card look SO overpriced

Not just that, you've enjoyed it all this time. Some people have had HD7970 @ 1200+mhz for > 12 months.
 
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railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
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The Titan is an absolute joke for the price. $500 for a Asus Matrix Platinum @ 1300mhz would come within 15% of this $1000 GPU. Even if you overclock the Titan from its max boost of nearly 1Ghz it will barely beat an overclocked HD7970Ghz by more than 35%. That means by middle of 2014, 20nm $500 GPUs will beat it without a problem. This card would have been perfect at $649-699 which is what most of us kept saying but kept being attacked for it. :hmm:



Not just that, you've enjoyed it all this time. Some people have had HD7970 @ 1200+mhz for > 12 months.

I'm reminded of a slogan from last year:

Go Premiums! :p
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
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Anands Titan unit for testing is under water....check the preview!

Ok saw that and while it may be "under water" that system has a single circuit with CPU and would be severely radiator limited. With GPU/CPU running at full load the ambient to water delta would become unacceptable. Granted GPU temps would be lower than air they are far from ideal.

Titan is a hardcore GPU and should have equally hardcore water cooling to shoot for the moon! ;)
 

f1sherman

Platinum Member
Apr 5, 2011
2,243
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Three titans = $3000

two 690s =$2000

It should be doing much better.

How so?


perfrel_2560.gif
perfrel_5760.gif



You can analyize all you want, but gap between single Titan and 680/7970GHz, is bigger than between Titan and multiGPU.

And without multiGPU hassle.
 

railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
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How so?


perfrel_2560.gif
perfrel_5760.gif



You can analyize all you want, but gap between single Titan and 680/7970GHz, is bigger than between Titan and multiGPU.

And without multiGPU hassle.

Based on an earlier conversation in this thread, reverse application:

LOL you pick the lowest numbers to show.
Maybe you could take a look at all the other graphs being shown.

bf3_1920_1200.gif

bf3_2560_1600.gif

bf3_5760_1080.gif


I'm just keeping it real, averages include the fails and the wins, can't just go by that :p
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
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485
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For that $ it should have a backplate. Aftermarket ones (EVGA) will probably surface but it should be included. I was disappointed that the 690 also omitted this!

The card is expensive but for those buying it for both intended audiences the money is well spent. If you care nothing but for FPS shooters than this card isn't for you!

Also I'm willing to bet that if you sat in front of a 30" 1600P display and actually played a game on a single titan vs. dual 7970 you'd pick the Titan for fluid game play. Benchmark numbers don't take into consideration of how smooth it "feels". Just look at the mins, that gives you an idea of what's going on.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
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May have to pick up another 7970 to celebrate what a hilarious joke titan is.

NV still obviously has an issue with compute in Kepler, and by that I mean compute shader performance. In Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Dirt Showdown, the 551mm2 Titan leads the HD7970GE by just 3-18%! There is no future-proofing value here either for next gen games that will most likely use even more compute shaders as a result of PS4/720 adopting GCN architectures and AMD pushing this heavily with GCN in AMD GE titles. Why pay $1000 when it's not hard to take an educated guess that 20nm Volcanic Islands/ Maxwell will bring even faster DirectCompute performance and overall probably match this card at just $550? For GTX690/680 SLI/ HD7970GE CF owners (especially with overclocked), you can't upgrade to a single Titan which means you need 2! :biggrin:

A more interesting question is what happens with GK114? If NV brings 20% increase at $499 by replacing GTX680, the Titan will look really overpriced imo because then it'll be just 25-30% faster than GK114 for 2x the price.
 
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RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
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Also I'm willing to bet that if you sat in front of a 30" 1600P display and actually played a game on a single titan vs. dual 7970 you'd pick the Titan for fluid game play. Benchmark numbers don't take into consideration of how smooth it "feels". Just look at the mins, that gives you an idea of what's going on.

Apparently they didn't include the backplate to give 2-3mm of room for airflow in Tri-SLI. Regarding your statement I am not so sure. The Titan is just 36% faster than a 1.05ghz HD7970 at 1600P when the Titan is near 1Ghz boost. A proper comparison for enthusiasts would mean 1300mhz HD7970 Matrix Platinums in Cross-fire because that costs $1000.

Look at these benches. A 1.3ghz 7970 is leaving GTX680 far behind. Since a single 7970 @ 1300mhz is nearly 30% faster than the GTX680, the Titan stands no chance whatsoever because the 2nd 1300mhz 7970 would add 70-80% more performance on top of 1.3x GTX680!!!
 

psolord

Platinum Member
Sep 16, 2009
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Hardware.fr's review is up as well.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/887-1/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-big-kepler-debarque-enfin.html

I have come to trust hardware.fr over the years and their review only shows titan to be 16% faster than the 7970 GE at 1080p which I am interested in. Their test suite is not bad.

As I said before, I am off to a 7950 WF3 solution. Especially now that the new consoles will be running AMD hardware, AMD will have a lot of field days. My 570 SLI system will still be here as a safety measure anyway.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
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AMD increased the prices.

I know, i know. There was never a time a 7970 cost $549 and had crappy drivers, crappy performance and a 50% higher MSRP over the 6970.

:whiste:

You seem to have lost a sense of context. It makes no difference what HD7970 cost 12 months ago. We are in the year 2013 and Titan's price should be compared to today's cards prices, not some imaginary $549 price of 925mhz 7970 that sold on Jan 9th, 2012. 1Ghz 7970 is now selling for $380 with 5 free games. Titan is 2.6x more expensive for less than 40% faster.

Here I'll do the math for you.

$499 (1 month from launch) GTX280 was 18% faster than $299 4870 ==> $11.11 for each 1% increase in performance
$499 GTX480 was 17% faster than $369 5870 ==> $7.65 for each 1% increase in performance
$499 GTX580 was 15% faster than $369 6970 ==> $8.67 for each 1% increase in performance

$999 Titan is barely 35% faster than a $430 1100mhz 7970 ==> $15.83 for each 1% increase in performance.

If you calculate the per $ premium you paid for GTX280/480/580 over 4870/5870/6970 relative to 280/480/580's performance advantages, this is the biggest price hike by NV in more than half a decade. :whiste:

This is not NV premium pricing. This is a straight up rip-off.
 
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SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
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As for Titan... would have made a good niche card at say $599. $999 is dumb.


Imho,

Let's say they did release Titan at 599 -- it would cannibalize sales for their existing sku's one may imagine. By pricing it at 999 allows Gk-104 and possibly GK-114 sku's to retain their enthusiast price-points.