Titan X Announced

[therealnickdanger]

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/26/how-pixar-uses-gpus/

Pixar is moving to GPUs.

I could look through my CGW articles to double check, but I'm pretty sure this is still only for pre-vis and storyboarding, not final rendering.

 

[Grooveriding]

Titan X could very well be a bust for DP performance. Point being, we won't know until the specs are detailed.

If it fails on DP performance and doesn't eclipse Titan Black, why give it the Titan moniker ? The idea could simply be that the Titan brand opens it up to having a huge price tag even if it fails at DP. It appears it's going to consume about as much power as the old Titan does, so if it's not more efficient for the same DP performance, it's going to have to do better to some degree to make sense as a Titan.

I am looking forward to reviews on the card. When the original Titan launched we had reviewers all treating it as a gaming card, with some mentioning the price was out of order. Then once 780 was available, later 780ti, these same reviewers referred to Titan as a 'niche product, not making sense for gaming, but for CUDA developers to use on the cheap'.

If the Titanx is $1350, does not have better DP performance than Titan Black and is the expected 30-35% faster than 980 - how will reviewers treat it then knowing there will be a much cheaper GM200 on the horizon without the Titan label ? There will have to be something to its DP performance, unless the whole draw is going to be that it has 12GB VRAM vs the 6GB on Titan Black.

 

[mutantmagnet]

Who here is going to buy this card if it's ~$1350 as rumored, and why?

Here's a better question. How much better than a 780 it needs to be before you see the potential $1350 price point as reasonable?

 

[RussianSensation]

Here's a better question. How much better than a 780 it needs to be before you see the potential $1350 price point as reasonable?

More than 3X faster than a 780Ti. Looking back at every single next gen flagship from NV, they increased performance 60-100% within $650-700 range, often in 50% in the $500 range. $699 780Ti doubled a $499 580, while 480 was 50% faster than a 280 at $499, less than $650 launch price of a 280. Essentially NV has provided ~50% more performance at a similar or lower price and 75-100% more peformance for less than $700.

Therefore, if they are going to ask $1350 over a 780Ti, more than 3x faster makes sense. The problem is 780Ti itself was overpriced as it was really a $549 videocard. Today a 780Ti can't outperform a 290X, a card that cost $549 back then and $300 today. We can't just use 780/780Ti prices as a reference and ignore $300 290X, $330 970 and $600 295X2.

I'll throw this back at you another way, what do you think a card 60% faster than a 290X should cost today considering a 290X is $300? Do you not see how absurd it is for it to cost $1350? Even $999 is way overpriced. During ATI/NV era, we would get 60-100% faster cards for less than $700. Unless you think Titan X will beat 290X by more than 100%, anything above $699 is a starting to get questionalbe for gaming historically speaking that is. Obviously for those who need 12GB of VRAM for rendering or need the compute performance, it's different. However with 295X2 going for $599, if Titan X is $1350, it better be WAY faster than a 295X2!

When I can buy 970s / 295X2 for myself and the same for my friend as a gift, and that still costs less than a single Titan X.... ?!

Also, even if we use 970/980/290X/295X2 as a reference point, we probably need to see 390/390X and consumer GM200 card's performance and prices before commenting if $999+ for the Titan X is justifiable. If the consumer GM200 card 95% as good as the Titan X at $699, well then the $999-1350 Titan X is a horrible purchase for gaming only. That's why we probably won't know how good of a value the Titan X represents until mid-summer 2015. However, historically speaking the odds are highly against the Titan X as being a worthwhile purchase for gaming.

Looking back at the original Titan, that card was an overpriced product for gaming. Dual after-market 290s embarassed it for $800 in 9 months, and in 16 months, one could buy 3x after-market 290s for $1150. In 2 years, you could get 4X 290s (~ equivalent to 4x Titans $4000!) or triple 970s in 19-20 months! In hindsight, the Titan, Titan Black and especially Titan Z were a pretty big waste or money.

None of those cards had any future proofing whatsoever. Today a $600 295X2 beats a $3000 Titan Z or $2000 Titan SLI at 1440p and up. This is not a knock against the Titan since that's how the GPU industry works. Imo, except for semi/professionals, top 10% income earners, Titan X SLI at $2000+ will be a waste of money when we see 390X/consumer GM200 launch in the next 6 months. So far for gaming only every Titan product has been grossly overpriced for most consumers. And unlike a McLaren, Ferrari, Porsche, Lamboghini super cars, it will get beaten by a mid-range Pascal and low-end Volta in 2 and 4 years respectively. Today a $120 750Ti is as fast as a $500 480 while using less than 1/4th the power!

In 4-4.5 years a Titan X will get smashed by a $250 GPU.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't think many more gamers are willing to pay these new prices and just a very small percentage will like similar Titan Sku's.

 

[Baasha]

From a reliable source, the Titan X will be priced at $999.95 like the OG Titan.

Just a week to go...

 

[imported_ats]

Believe it or not brute force with X86 cores is still the preferred way for the professionals. I don't know the technical reasons why, but GPU rendering is much lower quality. That's why Pixar, for example, opts for 25,000 X86 cores in their render farm.

I believe (pretty sure?) that when rendering with multiple GPU's the cards don't run in SLI/Crossfire and the VRAM is not mirrored. Also, I don't think DP is used, either. You might be better off with multiple cheaper cards for what you do.

There are a couple issues with GPU rendering for movie grade animation. Scene asset sizes can be rather insane for one. Algorithms used may or may not map well to the actual GPU hardware. Some of the advanced renders can make use structures and branching that just doesn't map well. And CPUs allow you to change rendering technologies with little cost (for example, Big Hero 6 used an entirely new rendering system, it was close just getting it production ready, let alone running and then optimized for GPUs). Cost is another. DP Xeons + standard ram are pretty cheap and even with GPUs they would need the Xeons + ram.

You might see people experiment with KNL when it comes out as it has minimal porting issues.

Also there are scenes where studios will make use of DP. For example, in Bug's Life, the scenes with the tree actually had significant issues rendering at the time with SP float. They turned on DP to get it to work.

 

[imported_ats]

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/26/how-pixar-uses-gpus/



Pixar is moving to GPUs.

That's not what that says. All it says is, Pixar uses workstations with Nvidia GPUs for content design. That has jack all to do with production rendering.

 

[imported_ats]

There is so much information about Pixar and nVidia from Raytracing to Latency.

That's content creation (previews), not rendering. prman doesn't currently use GPUs, AFAIK. Pixar uses prman for all production rendering. If Pixar shipped the level of graphics they talked about and showed off, they would be laughed out of the theater.

 

[SirPauly]

The point was Pixar takes advantage of the strengths of the GPU!

 

[RussianSensation]

From a reliable source, the Titan X will be priced at $999.95 like the OG Titan.

Just a week to go...

Sounds a lot more reasonable. I think with Titan features, 12GB of VRAM, a $300 price premium over the consumer $699 GM200 is a lot more justifiable to early adopters. :thumbsup:

 

[mutantmagnet]

I'll throw this back at you another way, what do you think a card 60% faster than a 290X should cost today considering a 290X is $300? Do you not see how absurd it is for it to cost $1350? Even $999 is way overpriced. During ATI/NV era, we would get 60-100% faster cards for less than $700. Unless you think Titan X will beat 290X by more than 100%, anything above $699 is a starting to get questionalbe for gaming historically speaking that is. Obviously for those who need 12GB of VRAM for rendering or need the compute performance, it's different. However with 295X2 going for $599, if Titan X is $1350, it better be WAY faster than a 295X2!

.....

In 4-4.5 years a Titan X will get smashed by a $250 GPU.

Personally I look for bang for buck as well but I would look at prices relative to everything they are offering moreso than their competitors if unique features exist to their product line.

Compared to the 670 back then or the 970 now obviously the Titan is overpriced. But I don't care too much because the X70 gpus offer solid performance. My only problem is how finnicky SLI usually is but with directX 12 I hope the compatibility issues with SLI/Crossfire are finally ended.

Even though I don't think the Titan is great value doesn't mean Nvidia has to cater to me or that they aren't within their power to sell this with a different price per performance proposition.