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

[Eureka]

Stutter or not, $1k for the Titan as a gaming card is ridiculous. Here's to hoping nv execs know what they're doing here.

As it stands, doesn't look like we'll be recommending Titan to anyone. If it was 180% faster than the 7970 GE, sure. At a measily 120-130%?

Perhaps they really don't have the availability to make it in mass numbers, or else why wouldn't they sell it for $600-700? They probably have such limited numbers they want to squeeze out every possible dime out of these chips.

Speaking of motives, there are a couple of NV focus members but at least they are overt. Those I can tune out. The hard part is figuring out who's on the AMD payroll and sniffing them out.

 

[Eureka]

Speaking of price gouging, anyone remember the ATi 9800 XT releasing for $500 USD 10 years ago?

Any company will price gouge the hell out of you if they know you want their product more than anything else. It's not a new trend...

 

[RussianSensation]

1) The plate was never an issue (cooling) with even the furnace known as 480GTX. Perhaps this is different, not having stock in hand so I cannot say for certain.

Not about the plate cooling the PCB/memory. It's about when you stagger 3 Titans, there is less air circulation as they turn into a hot sandwich. That's extra 2-3mm would make a big difference given how tight Tri-SLI Titan setup is. That's why there is no backplate. If you are running waterblocks, then it wouldn't be a problem

2) That's highly overclocked. I've been ignoring acoustics up to this point (as it's a moot point with liquid cooling) but the 7970 cooler is a hair dryer at anything over 60%! At 100% it competes with 40mm server fans on the 1U!

I was talking about Asus Matrix Platinum, not a reference 7970! I am not sure why people keep bringing up a reference 7970 since no one in their right mind would overclock those to 1200mhz+ unless they are deaf. Also, all after-market 7970s have open-air after market designs that are generally cool and quiet. 1300mhz on the Matrix would be quieter than a stock GTX690 I bet. You get higher quality PCB components than on the Titan and the cooler is awesome, which means 1300mhz x 7970 at quiet noise levels and low temperatures. Don't forget that at 1300mhz a 7970 would have 1.33 Tflops of DP for $500, unless of course you run specific CUDA apps/compute programs that just work faster on NV cards. :awe:

 

[wand3r3r]

Stutter or not, $1k for the Titan as a gaming card is ridiculous. Here's to hoping nv execs know what they're doing here.

As it stands, doesn't look like we'll be recommending Titan to anyone. If it was 180% faster than the 7970 GE, sure. At a measily 120-130%?

Perhaps they really don't have the availability to make it in mass numbers, or else why wouldn't they sell it for $600-700? They probably have such limited numbers they want to squeeze out every possible dime out of these chips.

Speaking of motives, there are a couple of NV focus members but at least they are overt. Those I can tune out. The hard part is figuring out who's on the AMD payroll and sniffing them out.

They should be checking which ones visit from NV and AMD locations. Would be a fun rat hunt.

I actually suspect employees themselves would be extremely low key and avoid exposing themselves. People who sit and blindly promote the companies are probably actually just fanbois gone over the top. Then again they can work for the company or have other ties.

 

[Lepton87]

Speaking of motives, there are a couple of NV focus members but at least they are overt. Those I can tune out. The hard part is figuring out who's on the AMD payroll and sniffing them out.

You think AMD can afford viral marketing? They are at the edge of going into chapter 7 or 11 at best.

Am I the only one appalled at the overclocking limits of that card? For that price it's ridiculous. NV wants us to think it's a LUXURY product yet they skimp on power circuitry? This is pathetic! That card should be 2x8 pin and we should have full control over voltages and clocks. Anything less then that is disappointing. Some stupid useless metal doesn't make it a luxury product, sensible people don't buy computer hardware based on looks. For that price we should get only the best components.

 

[f1sherman]

Stutter or not, $1k for the Titan as a gaming card is ridiculous. Here's to hoping nv execs know what they're doing here.

no

Here is to NV has no clue, Titan ends up gathering dust on shelves, so they have to dial it down to $700.

 

[Lepton87]

no

Here is to NV has no clue, Titan ends up gathering dust on shelves, so they have to dial it down to $700.

No way, NV have apple-like customers that means they can release a cows turd for 1000$ and say it's a luxury turd and people are still going to buy it.

 

[blastingcap]

You know, there will probably be more GK110 parts, cut down to fewer SMX, like 13, 11, 9, or whatever, so the $500 gap between it and GTX 6xx will be filled out. Doesn't mean price/perf will be any better though. But this is a DP arch first, that happens to play games. For the masses they can buy GK104-derived parts instead.

The fact that this card was NOT given a number like GTX 780 or GTX 695 or whatever, but an actual NAME Titan, as in, the Titan supercomputer built with similar video cards for the U.S. government, should be a huge clue that this card is meant to be more than a gaming card. It's a small slice of a supercomputer that isn't DP-crippled and will find its niche in labs and other small-scale DP-compute labs. If some rich gamers want to use it just for gaming they can tag along for the ride, too. Else they can buy GK104 parts which were architected for gaming.

 

[SirPauly]

Speaking of price gouging, anyone remember the ATi 9800 XT releasing for $500 USD 10 years ago?

100 dollar premium for around 10 percent more performance and double the ram! Personally had a 9700 pro, 9800 pro and 9800XT.

 

[Eureka]

You know, there will probably be more GK110 parts, cut down to fewer SMX, like 13, 11, 9, or whatever, so the $500 gap between it and GTX 6xx will be filled out. Doesn't mean price/perf will be any better though. But this is a DP arch first, that happens to play games. For the masses they can buy GK104-derived parts instead.

The fact that this card was NOT given a number like GTX 780 or GTX 695 or whatever, but an actual NAME Titan, as in, the Titan supercomputer built with similar video cards for the U.S. government, should be a huge clue that this card is meant to be more than a gaming card. It's a small slice of a supercomputer that isn't DP-crippled and will find its niche in labs and other small-scale DP-compute labs. If some rich gamers want to use it just for gaming they can tag along for the ride, too. Else they can buy GK104 parts which were architected for gaming.

I honestly think this is the reason why it's still priced so high. NV isn't aiming for the gaming crowd, at least in terms of sales. It's proving that, yes it does have the fastest GPU in terms of gaming performance. However, they don't have enough quantity to make it into a commodity and rather keep it as a halo/niche product. And the labs won't mind paying $1000 at all for the card, and neither will Tri-SLI gamers.

Is it NV themselves that actually pitched it as a luxury product, or is that the work of gaming reviewers?

 

[SirPauly]

You know, there will probably be more GK110 parts, cut down to fewer SMX, like 13, 11, 9, or whatever, so the $500 gap between it and GTX 6xx will be filled out. Doesn't mean price/perf will be any better though. But this is a DP arch first, that happens to play games. For the masses they can buy GK104-derived parts instead.

The fact that this card was NOT given a number like GTX 780 or GTX 695 or whatever, but an actual NAME Titan, as in, the Titan supercomputer built with similar video cards for the U.S. government, should be a huge clue that this card is meant to be more than a gaming card. It's a small slice of a supercomputer that isn't DP-crippled and will find its niche in labs and other small-scale DP-compute labs. If some rich gamers want to use it just for gaming they can tag along for the ride, too. Else they can buy GK104 parts which were architected for gaming.

What if the GK-114 core is for GTX 780 and GTX 7XX derivatives?

Titan name may transcend their conventional numbering Kepler scheme and may translate to a new pricing tier for nVidia moving forward without competition.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

What if the GK-114 core is for GTX 780 and GTX 7XX derivatives?

Titan name may transcend their conventional numbering Kepler scheme and may translate to a new pricing tier for nVidia moving forward without competition.

If GK114 is the 780 I might just get a console, I'm not elite enough to pay $500 for each generations mid-range node capability

 

[Eureka]

Thing is, I doubt we're at a point where AMD is far behind. AMD is still competitive on a tier-to-tier basis with most of Nvidia's products.

Speaking of which, people are upset over a 7970 launch price of $550, but historically this isn't a high. It's just a recent high because AMD sucked for a couple of years, so to speak. The X850XTPE was also released for $550. If you count in inflation, prices have were even higher back then. ATi/AMD lost their edge, prices dropped to stay competitive, but we're back again.

My God, this is taking me down nostalgia lane, but I miss when team red was still ATi and they were still extremely competitive. But yeah, I think we had this argument 10 years ago about the price of video cards breaching $800... and we're back again.

 

[blastingcap]

What if the GK-114 core is for GTX 780 and GTX 7XX derivatives?

Titan name may transcend their conventional numbering Kepler scheme and may translate to a new pricing tier for nVidia moving forward without competition.

I suppose Titan could be a Tesla Jr. of some sort. I guess NV will watch carefully what happens with Titan and if they decide there is more money to be made making a Tesla Jr. AND a Tesla, then we may see more Titans down the line. But if Tesla Jr. simply cannibalizes Tesla sales and they make LESS money, then maybe this is the one and only Titan we'll see. There is also something to be said for getting people hooked on CUDA and such early in their programming careers so Titan/Tesla Jr. could be a trojan horse whose real purpose is to keep CUDA in a dominant position.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

From what I recall a 9800xt was 2-5% faster than a 9800pro in 90% cases and greater than 5% in 10% cases perhaps. And no game in the near future from that time used more than 128mb VRAM and those that did required 2x the power of a 9800pro, at least. Shortly afterwards the 6600gt was launched and that beat the 9800xt/5950xt ultra fair and square with nearly no defeats. And that was a sub $200 card msrp.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Thing is, I doubt we're at a point where AMD is far behind. AMD is still competitive on a tier-to-tier basis with most of Nvidia's products.

You're looking at it wrong.

Nvidia is considerably ahead, they're milking the crud out of much cheaper gpus against AMD's more expensive (to produce) chips.

The full potential of Nvidia is displayed with the Titan, from there you could release a non DP version, a -1 SMX version with smaller bus, there are lots of additional configs Nvidia could use and still be noticeably faster /w better perf/w.

Hopefully AMD was just mean mugging when they said no new chips, they need something 20%~ faster to get Nvidia out of elitist mode.

Edit: Not for them, for us... Nobody here doesn't want Titan's performance, what we don't want is Titans price tag. The only way we can get there is if AMD can push against them, because Nvidia/AMD will milk a money machine until the cow dies.

 

[SirPauly]

I suppose Titan could be a Tesla Jr. of some sort. I guess NV will watch carefully what happens with Titan and if they decide there is more money to be made making a Tesla Jr. AND a Tesla, then we may see more Titans down the line. But if Tesla Jr. simply cannibalizes Tesla sales and they make LESS money, then maybe this is the one and only Titan we'll see. There is also something to be said for getting people hooked on CUDA and such early in their programming careers so Titan/Tesla Jr. could be a trojan horse whose real purpose is to keep CUDA in a dominant position.

This is a grand experiment to me - pardon the pun!

 

[Vesku]

I honestly think this is the reason why it's still priced so high. NV isn't aiming for the gaming crowd, at least in terms of sales. It's proving that, yes it does have the fastest GPU in terms of gaming performance. However, they don't have enough quantity to make it into a commodity and rather keep it as a halo/niche product. And the labs won't mind paying $1000 at all for the card, and neither will Tri-SLI gamers.

Is it NV themselves that actually pitched it as a luxury product, or is that the work of gaming reviewers?

I can see this if the Titan drivers are certified for professional software use, anyone know if this will be the case?

 

[RussianSensation]

you are absolutely right.....here's benchmark 7950 Crossfire vs 680 SLI at 5760*1080 (Eyefinity/Surround)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18455827

Awesome link. HD7950 CF overclocked is some serious ass kicking. That's why I am not even kidding when I say that $560 HD7950 CF OC could beat a Titan OC. Even when CF is broken, a single 7950 @ 1130mhz+ ~ HD7970GE. Amazing value for $280-300.

 

[moonbogg]

Someone do something with this guy's mug. A "haha suckers" meme is in order.

 

[mv2devnull]

the labs won't mind paying $1000 at all for the card, and neither will Tri-SLI gamers.

It is cheap compared to Quadro 6000 / K5000, or Tesla K20. Too bad it probably is no good for quad-buffered OpenGL 3D, aka "graphical work".

 

[SolMiester]

I hate to say it, but really, all the Titan is doing in ATs review is showing what fantastic perf/$ the 7970GE is, and the latest card they are using has great thermals and noise!...
Titan is going to be a very hard sell IMHO...I really thought it was going to be a wider gap...heres hoping the immature drivers will improve....or maybe not, cause surely NV will have to drop the price on this....

 

[Eureka]

You know, arguing price/perf here isn't the point. Yes, we like to squabble over the prices but we're a small minority. What this sends out to the world is that nv is still the best GPU manufacturer price be damned, and to the majority of the buyer that is more important. Sure, they won't op for the $1000 Titan, but at the $430 range with a 680 and a 7970 GE, NV gains a foothold again. For the big buyers, the industrial/scientific users, price doesn't matter as long as it's within the threshold for pcard purchases. $1000 Titan will easy make the mark for most purchases, and all we care is that it's better than the equivalent AMD offering.

 

[RussianSensation]

"None of this of course accounts for compute. Simply put, Titan stands alone in the compute world. As the first consumer GK110 GPU based video card there’s nothing quite like it. We’ll see why that is in our look at compute performance, but as far as the competitive landscape is concerned there’s not a lot to discuss here."

Ya I read that section and I don't even remotely agree with that part of the review.

Can you please explain what compute advantage the Titan has exactly for its $1000 price? AT included the ElcomSoft's password cracking. AMD cards would destroy the Titan there in 2 seconds.

"If we look at Wireless Security Auditor, ElcomSoft's most popular tool the situation changes slightly, as a single K20 delivers 85,000 passwords per second, compared to the 65,000 on the GTX 690. Then again, Nvidia still lags behind AMD, as the three year old Radeon HD 5970 handles 103,000 passwords per second, and HD 6990 increased that to 129,000. In that aspect, not even the K20 can reach performance achieved by a single consumer AMD card. This is also the reason why a sea of secy agencies went forward and acquired AMD Radeon HD 5990 and HD 6990 cards, instead of going professional with the Tesla and FirePro cards." ~ Source

If you need password hacking, you aren't buying an NV card, period.

Bitcoin mining = fail on NV
OpenCL compute = fail on NV
Double Precision = For $500 Asus Matrix Platinum @ 1300mhz gives you 1.33 Tflops. That's half the price for a similar level of DP.

The only way you can justify the compute advantage here is if you use very specific compute programs that rely on CUDA. If you do and it really matters, you are probably a professional at which point you are rocking a Quadro. If you are need DP for semi-pro work, your company will probably buy you these cards if your department really need them and can save costs on not going with Quadros. Of course there are very niche consumers who might find this card a bargain but I wouldn't at all agree that on the "Compute side" it has no equal.

Besides RayTracing, the Titan's compute isn't looking so hot for that $1k:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2013/test-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan/12/

And if you compare DP performance of Tahiti XT OC, the Titan is even bigger compute failure for the price than it is in gaming.

AMD had DP compute in spades for more than half a decade and now that NV brought it to a consumer card, people are talking about it as a "killer" feature that justifies the $1K price. I don't remember this talk when HD5870/6970 mopped the floor with 480/580 in DP. Go Premiums!!!

---

I have no doubt in my mind 20nm GPUs will show just how overpriced this card was in hindsight.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Awesome link. HD7950 CF overclocked is some serious ass kicking. That's why I am not even kidding when I say that $560 HD7950 CF OC could beat a Titan OC. Even when CF is broken, a single 7950 @ 1130mhz+ ~ HD7970GE. Amazing value for $280-300.

Sadly value doesn't replace performance in any situation for people who actually need the performance.

There is no amount of money you can throw at AMD to get results possible with Nvidia.

As far as you completely avoiding the issue of MS in single, and MGPU solutions for AMD... Well honestly it's what I'd expect from someone who works for AMD, not from an impartial forum user.