NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan Review, Part 2: Titan's Performance Unveiled
by Ryan Smith & Rahul Garg on February 21, 2013 9:00 AM ESTSleeping Dogs
Another Square Enix game, Sleeping Dogs is one of the few open world games to be released with any kind of benchmark, giving us a unique opportunity to benchmark an open world game. Like most console ports, Sleeping Dogs’ base assets are not extremely demanding, but it makes up for it with its interesting anti-aliasing implementation, a mix of FXAA and SSAA that at its highest settings does an impeccable job of removing jaggies. However by effectively rendering the game world multiple times over, it can also require a very powerful video card to drive these high AA modes.
Sleeping Dogs is another game that AMD cards have done rather well at, leaving the GTX 680 quite a way behind. The sheer increase in functional units for Titan means it has no problem vaulting back to the top of the list of single GPU cards, but it also means it’s crossing a sizable gap.
In the end, at 2560 at the High (second-highest) AA settings, Titan is just shy of 50% faster than the GTX 680, but a weaker 17% ahead of the 7970GE. As we drop in resolution/AA, so does Titan’s lead, as the game shifts to being CPU limited.
Notably, no single card is really good enough here for 2560 with Extreme AA, with even Titan only hitting 35fps. This is one of the only games where even with a single monitor there’s real potential for a second Titan card in SLI.
Meanwhile the gap between Titan and our dual-GPU cards is roughly as expected. The GTX 690 takes a smaller lead at 18%, while the 7990 is some 42% ahead.
Due to its built-in benchmark, Sleeping Dogs is also another title that is a good candidate for repeatable and consistent minimum framerate testing.
While on average Titan is faster than the 7970GE, the minimum framerates put Titan in a rough spot. At 2560 with high AA Titan is effectively tied with the 7970GE, and with extreme AA it actually falls behind. It’s not readily apparent why this is, whether it’s some kind of general SSAA bottleneck or if there’s something else going on. But it’s a reminder that at its very worst, Titan can only match the 7970GE.
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ponderous - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Cannot give kudos to what is a well performing card when it is so grosslyout of order in price for the performance. $1000 card for 35% more performance
than the $450 GTX680. A $1000 card that is 20% slower than the $1000 GTX690.
And a $1000 card that is 30% slower than a $900 GTX680SLI solution.
Meet the 'Titan'(aka over-priced GTX680).
Well here we have it, the 'real' GTX680 with a special name and a 'special'
price. Nvidia just trolled us with this card. It was not enough for them to
sell a mid-ranged card for $500 as the 'GTX680', now we have 'Titan' for twice
the price and an unremarkable performance level from the obvious genuine successor
to GF110(GTX580).
At this irrational price, this 'Titanic' amusement park ride is not one worth
standing in line to buy a ticket for, before it inevitably sinks,
along with its price.
wreckeysroll - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
now there is some good fps numbers for titan. we expected to see such. shocked to see it with the same performance as 7970ghz in that test although!much too much retail msrp for the card. unclear what nvidia was thinking. msrp is sitting far too high for this unfortunately
quantumsills - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Wow....Some respectable performance turn-out here. The compute functionality is formidable, albeit the value of such is questionable in what is a consumer gaming card.
A g-note though ? Really nvidia ? At what degree of inebriation was the conclusion drawn that this justifies a thousand dollar price tag ?
Signed
Flabbergasted.
RussianSensation - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Compute functionality is nothing special. Still can't bitcoin mine well, sucks at OpenCL (http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/20... and if you need double precision, well a $500 Asus Matrix Platinum @ 1300mhz gives you 1.33 Tflops. You really need to know specific apps you are going to run on this like Adobe CS6 or very specific CUDA compute programs to make it worthwhile as a non-gaming card.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
Really? People are going to trot out Bitcoin still? I realize AMD does well there, but if you're serious about BTC you'd be looking at FPGAs or trying your luck at getting one of the ASICs. I hear those are supposed to be shipping in quantity some time soon, at which point I suspect prices of BTC will plummet as the early ASIC owners cash out to pay for more hardware.RussianSensation - Thursday, February 28, 2013 - link
It's not about bitcoin mining alone. What specific compute programs outside of scientific research does the Titan excel at? It fails at OpenCL, what about ray-tracing in Luxmark? Let's compare its performance in many double precision distributed computing projects (MilkyWay@Home, CollatzConjecture), run it through DirectCompute benches, etc.http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/20...
So far in this review covers the Titan's performance from specific scientific work done by universities. But those types of researchers get grants to buy full-fledged Tesla cards. The compute analysis in the review is too brief to conclude that it's the best compute card. Even the Elcomsoft password hashing - well AMD cards perform faster there too but they weren't tested. My point is it's not true to say this card is unmatched in compute. It's only true in specific apps. Also, leaving full double precision compute doesn't justify its price tag either since AMD cards have had non-gimped DP for 5+ years now.
maxcellerate - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
I tend to argee with RussianSensation, though the fact is that the first batch of Titans has sold out. But to who? There will be the odd mad gamer who must have the latest most expensive card in their rig, regardless. But I suspect the majority of sales have gone to CG renderers where CUDA still rules and $1000 for this card is a bargain compared to what they would have paid for it as a Quadra. Once sales to that market have dried up, the price will drop.Then I can have one;)
ponderous - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
True. Very disappointing card. Not enough performance for the exorbitant cost.Nvidia made a fumble here on the cost. Will be interesting to watch in the coming months where the sure to come price drops wind up placing the actual value of this card at.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
LOL - now compute doesn't matter - thank you RS for the 180 degree flip flop, right on schedule...RussianSensation - Thursday, February 28, 2013 - link
I never said compute doesn't matter. I said the Titan's "out of this world compute performance" needs to be better substantiated. Compute covers a lot of apps, bitcoin, openCL, distributed computing projects. None of these are mentioned.